Breathe At Every Other Stroke
Stories
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Life is suspended for the characters in this striking debut collection. Frozen with loss, numbed by the drudgery of routine, stalked by ghosts, or scared by their own violence, they hunker down and wait--for the return of sanity, new love, bloody revenge, self-control, or just enough courage to take one small risk.
Distinguished by psychological acuity and nuanced prose, each of these dozen stories involves a quiet--but pivotal--shift: villains become heroes, a fall proves to be redemption, a wrong is righted--or made worse. An aspiring nightclub singer joins a group of people waiting for the demolition of a condemned bridge; a jogger who thinks he's conquered his violent past is undone by a surprise visit from his grandson; a saleswoman who prides herself on her quick understanding of customers realizes, in the course of a holdup, that she understands less than she thought. All struggle to balance the joys of freedom with the comforts of safety, the dangers of chaos with the reassurance of restraint.
Liberally laced with the color and texture of teh pacific Northwest--San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland--Breathe at Every Other Stroke introduces a writer of sharp and singular observations. With sly wit and broad compassion, Pamela Gullard depicts the bumpy acquisition of wisdom.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Common throughout this fine first collection of 11 stories--besides their settings in the Northwest--are characters who are unsettled with their place in the contemporary world. Gullard's skill is in placing their sense of transience, suspension and isolation in the foreground. In "Jump Jack," a solitary middle-aged floral delivery man leads a regimented life so that he will never again be homeless, as he was just three years earlier. When his long-lost son, Greg, deposits Jack's five-year-old grandson, Eli, into his care, it soon becomes clear that Greg is not planning to return. Jack, abused by his father as a child, struggles to avoid reenacting that behavior with the spirited Eli; his reward is earning the child's trust, and the final line, "He was safe," poignantly applies to both Eli and Jack. "Does Your Tattoo Show?" is a clever story about a pair of casual lovers, Marta and Derrin, on vacation in Puerto Rico. Marta's impulsive decision to get a tattoo--the ultimate mark of permanence--seems to inspire her decision that her halfhearted affair with Derrin is no longer enough for her. But when Derrin reveals that he is, in fact, in love with her and proposes marriage, Marta understands for the first time what she truly desires. Finally, the title story explores the love and marriage of Stewart, a subcontractor, and Helen, who move from Seattle to the mountains to raise their infant son. The story gracefully reveals Stewart's initial disappointment with their new life, and then his realization of the many surprises and possibilities in store for him. Gullard's staccato prose sometimes feels disjointed, but it provides the space in which her well-drawn characters can breathe.
