I’m not always a fan of short stories. Often, they leave me unsatisfied – wanting something more. But in this beautifully written collection Shattuck creates echoes and resonances between pairs of tales, shifting focus and perspective through time and place to amplify their themes.
The mysterious reappearance of a suitcase of wax cylinders that triggers the writing of the first story is finally explained in the last. The intensity of first love associated with their recording is balanced by the fading of love for the woman who discovers and returns them.
Similarly, the painting of a captured bird that is created in 1795 as a parting gift for the painter’s first love reappears in a story set in 2008 where it changes hands as payment for a portrait of a woman whose artist husband has died.
Sometimes the connection is with a particular place, such as the orchard in Barnstaple that features in two stories linked by a theme of losing contact with a son. The Fog River mystery, a contemporary photograph of the long extinct great auk and the strange history of a religious community in New England are all presented from different perspectives.
Ultimately, the theme of love, and especially first love, weaves these tales into an intriguing, and thoroughly satisfying, whole.
Book review by Peter Gray
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ben Shattuck, a former Teaching-Writing Fellow and graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, is a recipient of the PEN America Short Story Prize and a 2019 Pushcart Prize. Shattuck’s first book, Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau was a New Yorker magazine Best Book of 2022, a Wall Street Journal Best Book of Spring, a New York Times Best Book of Summer, a New England Indie Bestseller, and a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award. His second book,
He lives with his wife and daughter on the coast of Massachusetts, where he owns and runs the oldest general store in America, built in 1793. He is also the founder and director of the Cuttyhunk Island Writers’ Residency.
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