Book Reviews

In the Gloaming: Stories

Simon & Schuster, 288 pp., $23

The title story of Alice Elliott Dark's second collection In the Gloaming has already received accolades and attention that other writers can only dream of. The story was published first in The New Yorker, subsequently included in Best American Short Stories 1994, then selected by John Updike for Best American Short Stories of the Century. The story also served as the basis for an HBO movie starring Glenn Close.

"In the Gloaming" deserves its acclaim. It concerns a mother, Anne, and her gay twentysomething son Laird, who has returned home to die of AIDS. The story creeps along quietly, as mother and son, who through the years have grown apart, become reacquainted while talking on the porch just as the sun fades -- a time of day Anne has always referred to as "the gloaming." Early in the story, thinking of her family, Anne is amazed at "how little comprehension there was of one another's story. Everyone stopped paying attention so early on, thinking they had figured it all out." Before he dies, Anne must overcome her own unknowing stance, her inability to comprehend her son's adult life. The story is heartbreaking and stunning.

Unfortunately, the other stories in the collection don't measure up to "In the Gloaming." But then how could they? Nonetheless, what's so surprising is just how disappointing and lackluster so many of the other stories are. "Dreadful Language" is bloated yet somehow also underdeveloped: A woman falls in love with an artist, a relationship that colors the rest of her life, yet her scenes with this man barely fill two pages before he gets smacked and killed by a car. Dark "tells" us -- without "showing" us. Such bland summarizing -- which occurs in other stories -- leaves the reader unconvinced; the story fails to spring to life.

Dark is also prone to streaks of soap-operatic melodrama (a rape and incest in "The Jungle Lodge"), or shocking twists worthy of O. Henry (in "The Tower" a man may be dating the daughter he never knew he had!), both which undermine, and cheapen, whatever the author is trying to achieve. Dark does regain her footing near the end of the collection (especially with the sad and funny "Watch the Animals"), but only after forcing the reader to sludge through a handful of clunkers. Still, In the Gloaming deserves praise for the title story alone, which remains untarnished in the company of other, less stellar stories that can't help but look dull and unpolished in comparison.