Excitable Women, Damaged Men
by Robert Boyers
Turtle Point Press, 172 pp., $15.95 (paper)
The irresistible title of Robert Boyers’ new short-story collection likely finds expression in many a family dynamic, and anyone who can relate to it will especially appreciate the title story, about the impossible relationship between a loyal son and his aging, antagonistic mother. “I had no power to call her out of her misery,” writes Boyers from the son’s point of view, “but I exercised over her a sovereign power as the only person able to offer upon her existence some meaning, if only by virtue of my steady distaste for her and her principled unloveliness.” The complicated relationships among Boyers’ characters are highly constructed in stunning and often painfully familiar detail. But the characters themselves tend to be more opaque. Boyers reveals them through their actions, which often contradict their thoughts and surprise even the characters themselves. Sometimes we see this to the extreme, as in “A Perfect Stranger,” where a man finds himself stalking someone he doesn’t even know, and sometimes more subtly, as in “Tribunal,” where a handsome money manager can’t resist the woman he hates. In any case, it should be hard to relate to these people, but Boyers has a gift for re-creating the familiar ways in which we hide from ourselves, our behavior belying our beliefs. His prose is an exercise in skillfully unfolding a personality, and it’s a pleasure to be surprised anew every time he approaches this task, revealing common ground with the unlikeliest people.This article appears in January 13 • 2006.