NEW
RELEASE
Esther Stories
by Peter
Orner
Description
One of the most
acclaimed and original story collections of the last decade, Peter Orner's
first book explores the brief but far-reaching occasions that haunt us.
The discovery of a
murdered man in a bathrobe by the side of a road, the destruction of a town's
historic City Hall building, and the recollection of a cruel wartime decision
are equally affecting in Orner's vivid and intimate gaze. The first half of the
book concerns the lives of unrelated strangers across the American landscape,
and the second introduces two very different Jewish families, one on the East
Coast, the other in the Midwest. Yet Orner's real territory is memory, and this
book of wide-ranging and innovative stories remains an important and unique
contribution to the art of the American short story.
Excerpt
Initials Etched on a Dining-Room Table, Lockeport, Nova Scotia
The girl was young when she did it, and she didn't live there. This was
in 1962. She was eighteen. She'd been hired to tidy the place. It was three,
maybe four years before anybody noticed. The letters were so small, and they
always ate in the kitchen. And when they did discover them, she was already gone
to Halifax. By that time the girl had a reputation to escape from. So when they
put two and two together and figured out it was she that did it, they weren't
surprised. Of course she'd be the one to do something like this, they said —
shameless girl, not shocking at all.
A cod fisherman, a captain, lived in the house with his wife, one of the
original Locke mansions on Gurden Street overlooking the harbor. They never had
children, but dust collects nonetheless in a house so huge. The girl had never
been in a place that grand. At least that's what they told each other when they
found her letters. RGL. That she'd wanted to leave her mark in the world,
something that would last, something that would stay. The family still lived in
town, her father and brothers sold hardware, so they could have held somebody
accountable for the damage if they'd wanted to. But the captain and his wife
talked it over and decided not to mention it to anyone. Not that they approved
— Lord no. It was defacement of property. Vandalism. Of course it was an
heirloom; it had belonged to her mother's mother, a burnished mahogany
drop-leaf built in York in 1844. They could never approve. But they were quiet
people; they kept to themselves in the hard times, and even in the good times
they held their distance. Besides, what could anybody do about it now? What was
done was done. Still, that didn't mean the captains wife didn't watch more
carefully over the other girls who came to clean, and it didn't mean the
captain didn't sometimes think of her sugar breath, that morning, the one out
of a thousand when he was home and slept late — he'd startled her in the kitchen.
Captain Adelbert! I didn't have any idea you were home, me banging the pots
down here to wake the dead. His only intention was to touch her sweater (Lucy
was out, still teaching school then), but he couldn't stop and kissed her, her
hands at her sides. She didn't resist or desire, and that had made him a fool
for years.
Yet over the longer years — when the fish became scarcer, when they'd
long since failed their vow to fill that house with children, when the silences
between them sometimes lasted hours, when the captain's wife no longer paced
the house, waiting for him, or word of him — an odd thing. They still talked
about the letters. RGL became a part of the table that had always been too good
to eat on, as important as the deep swirls carved at the top of the legs. She.
The simple fact of her once among them, among their things, dusting, opening
closet doors, tracing her finger along the frames of the paintings in the front
room. Taking a needle — she must have used a needle — and climbing up on the table,
walking on her knees to a spot just off the center.
In the dark, now older, now retired, still in the house, they murmur:
“She was a pretty girl, wasn't she?” “Curls. Yes, yes. Got in trouble with the
boys early on, didn't she?” “What do you think the G stands for?” “Gina?
Gertrude?” “Georgette?” “Never came back here ever.” “No, never heard of it.
Family acts like she never existed.” “Well. She was a disgrace, I suppose.”
“Yes, well.” They both think of her. Sleep comes slowly. Now the captain coughs
and twists. Age and too much time on land have made him restless, a man who was
never restless, a man who had always slept the unmovable sleep of beached
whales, now tossing and muttering, waking with sweat-wet hands, afraid. Now he
dreams of drowning. And the captain's wife stares at the ceiling in the dark
and thinks of leading a child, Rachel Larsh's child, an angry boy in new
leather shoes, through the house, pointing out the captain's trophies, the
swordfish he caught during that trip to the Pacific (on the wall in the
library), the hidden staircase behind the summer kitchen, and here, see, look,
beneath the vase he brought back from St. John, your mother's initials. And the
boy not curious, shaking free his hand.
Review
Beautiful stories,
intricately wrought. So glad to see it with new cover and forward by Marilyn
Robinson. Especially loved "Up at the Rainbow Motel." If you are a
short story lover don't miss this book
About the Author
Peter Orner is an American writer of fiction, born in Chicago. He is the
author of the novels Love and Shame and Love (2011) and The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo (2006) and the short
story collections Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge (to be released August 2013) and Esther Stories (2001). His short fiction has been published in the Atlantic Monthly and
the Paris Review, as well as the Pushcart Prize Anthology, New Sudden Fiction:
Short-Short Stories From America and Beyond and The Best American Short Stories
2001. His short story "The Raft" is being made into a short film
starring Ed Asner. Orner co-edited "Hope Deferred: Narratives of
Zimbabwean Lives" (2010) and edited "Underground America: Narratives
of Undocumented Lives," (2008) a collection of true stories about
undocumented workers in America, which are both part of the Voice of Witness
series from McSweeney's in April 2008. A resident of San Francisco, he is on
the faculty of the graduate writing program at San Francisco State University.
Esther Stories was originally published in 2001 and has been re-released. It was
awarded the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the
Goldberg Prize for Jewish Fiction, and was a Finalist for the Pen Hemingway
Award and the New York Public Library's Young Lions Award. Esther Stories was a
2001 New York Times Notable Book. Of the book, Margot Livesey wrote in the New
York Times Book Review, "Orner doesn't simply bring his characters to
life, he gives them souls."
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