Trash by Dorothy AllisonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I've been known to devour books of short stories. What's not to love? Rather than chapters all advancing a novel forward, you have stories that are long enough to get (and keep) your interest for a short while, but not so long that you put the book aside and either lose track of the story line when you come back or lose interest altogether. It's like a platter of appetizers, all just a little different.
Trash, by Dorothy Allison, is a beautifully gritty book of short stories, each told of women who grew up in rural Southern poverty, struggling to escape their situations and their past, while loving their hard families. The rural poverty itself is almost alive in these stories, practically another character to be dealt with.
In the opening story, "River of Names," the narrator tells of being almost an outsider in a large extended family, "born between the older cousins and the younger, born in a pause of babies and therefore outside, always watching." She alternates telling about her family and talking Jesse, her lover, describing her family to Jesse. She is, in turn, talking to the reader, letting the reader, like Jesse, think, "How wonderful to be part of such a large family."
Except, of course, it isn't, the way the narrator describes it.
Fourteen other stories follow "River of Names," each showing the reader how difficult rural poverty is for many of its inhabitants. Each story will worm its way into the reader's mind, not wanting to be displaced or disrespected.
Of each of the fifteen stories, my favorite has to be "Mama." Allison describes growing up with a younger sister, their Mama, and their step-father, a small, violent man whom Mama states she'll leave just as soon as her daughters are grown. The reader gets the sense that Mama never does leave her husband; in fact, we're told point-blank that she is still with him, years after her daughters have grown up and moved out.
The story shows the bond between daughters and mother. At the end of the story, Allison describes how, on her stepfather's birthday, she'll make coffee and bread pudding with bourbon sauce, tell wild stories to her friends, and wait to talk on the phone with her mother.
If one is looking for a good read with pretty stories, this might not be it. But if one is looking for a really good read with the grittiness of life, the grittiness of love, Dorothy Allison's Trash fits the bill well.
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