Stopping for Strangers ~ Reviewed by Brenda Brooks
Book Reviews Wednesday, January 18th, 2012
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Stopping for Strangers By Daniel Griffin
Vehiculé/Esplanade (2011) 142 pages
Reviewed by Brenda Brooks
On Daniel Griffin’s website you will find the “liner notes” missing from his collection of short stories, Stopping for Strangers. Here he writes of his enduring love for CD’s in their entirety, rather than just the downloaded single track, comparing them to a collection of stories where, hopefully, the whole adds up to more than its individual parts.
This is an apt allusion, because the stories in Stopping for Strangers would be a terrific soundtrack on a car trip where nobody really knows the route, or where they’ll end up, or what events might unfold on the way to … somewhere. And what about that hitchhiker? Is it me, or you?
Our traveling companions through these ten stories are people such as these: Brothers trying to keep brothers from doing irreversible damage; fathers jealous of sons; half-grown men; fateful detours; streaks of bad luck; incandescent moments of good luck; calamity-laced evenings veering off into genuine tragedy; careless cruelty; sharp humor; the tenderness of children; weary, fed-up women and jealous men, and lots of examples of the unique dynamics between an assortment of couples. There are plenty of car trips and almost as many guns, the most ominous and vivid being a Luger laying in fragments on a white cloth (“The Promise”), waiting to be cleaned and reassembled. You would think the soundtrack for stories such as these might be heavy metal, but that’s nowhere near true. Instead, they’re more akin to Emmylou Harris, or Shovels and Rope singing “Forsaken Blues.”
Each of the stories in Stopping for Strangers is told with an ear for texture, dialogue and timing. In the title story, Sheri and her brother head off to bid a final adieu to their dying grandfather. On the way, they pick up a hitchhiker who leaves a self-addressed insulin kit on the back seat. Returning it, they find themselves drawn hesitantly into a house occupied by a mother and her damaged, veteran son, Allen. Sheri’s brother (the story is told through his eyes) is invited up to Allen’s bedroom to examine a suitcase full of souvenir carvings he brought back from Rwanda. There, in a scene as combustible as it is claustrophobic, Allen proceeds to describe the suicide of a fellow-soldier named Mark: Allen lifted a rifle from where it leaned against a wall then sat back down on the floor. “This is what he did. Mark Elliot. He put a pen through the trigger loop down here, opened his mouth, stepped down on the pen, and boom.” Allen set the rifle butt between his feet, held the barrel near the muzzle and opened his mouth.
In “The Promise,” Doug visits his brother Marshall who is under a restraining order issued on behalf of his ex-wife, Susan. Throughout the story Doug tries to assess his brother’s volatility in hopes that he can set their mother’s mind at ease. But it becomes apparent that hostility and bitterness are now the sum of who Marshall has become. The unfolding events are leavened and soothed by the presence of Doug’s daughter Tracy. Innocent and oblivious to the adult disappointments and heartaches that can deform a grown man, the toddler grows impatient for nothing more than lunch at “Old MacDonalds.” The story ends with an implied (post-story) act of violence, stated with shocking simplicity.
Griffin’s poignant portrayal of young children becomes a steady reminder of how far the adult characters have wandered from their own beginnings. In the story entitled “X,” twenty-four-year-old Ryan sets out with his roommate’s rifle to rid his mother’s cottage of bothersome raccoons. In conversation between son and mother we discover that Ryan’s ex-girlfriend is pregnant with his child (after a brief, drunken fling) and that Ryan’s roommate Alfie has marked the baby’s due date on the calendar with “a big, black X.” Alfie is a reminder of how tempting the world of adolescence remains no matter what our age, much like the seminal Alfie of the 60′s.
“Something I’d been waiting for had happened tonight,” says a character in the title story. The author builds that same sense of expectancy into each of these tales of world-weary but hopeful strangers, and we leave them behind recognizing that they aren’t really strangers at all. Whether behind the wheel, or standing on the road with our thumbs out, we’re all going each other’s way.
Excerpt:
As my sister guided us out of the lot and drove north towards the highway, I dug my hand into my coat pocket, ran it over the smooth surface of the wood and gave the figure a little squeeze. Something I’d been waiting for had happened tonight. It was like a whip cracked so close to my back I could feel it. We splashed through puddles on the empty streets. The tarmac glistened. As we neared the 401, the moon emerged from clouds and winked at us. Inside and outside, all was silent.
Read more about Stopping for Strangers
Brenda Brooks is the author of Gotta Find Me An Angel, and two collections of poetry.
Other Reviews by Brenda Brooks
The Girl in the Box by Sheila Dalton
Memoir of a Good Death by Anne Sorbie
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