Things That Pass for Love by Allison Amend
(2008, OV Books)
Robert Yune
Alison Amend has a gift for inciting incident, that magical intersection of character and opportunity. Most stories in Things That Pass for Love begin with characters in bizarre situations: a fifth-grade teacher attempts to conduct class as bodies rain from the sky, a government agent tracks cult members at garage sales, and a disabled photographer finds himself lost in Miami.
Although these scenarios seem ripe for cheap thrills and easy humor, Amend uses them as opportunities for psychological exploration. Ms. Gold, the fifth-grade teacher in “Dominion Over Every Erring Thing” is rightly horrified at the splattering bodies in her schoolyard. The fact that no one else seems to mind—her students, the school’s guidance counselor, even Ms. Gold’s husband remain unaffected—proves to be the source of the story’s tension. What initially sounds like a headline from “News of the Weird” becomes, in Ms. Amend’s hands, an examination of control and the quiet freefall that occurs in its absence.
Some stories in this collection map new physical and cultural terrain, such as the numerous destinations the climber/photographer conquers in “What Was Over There is Over Here.” Another, “How Much Greater the Miracle”, juxtaposes the genteel rules on a golf course with the strain of a 25- year marriage. Amend’s views into these worlds is warm and thorough—in many stories, she carves out space for a redemptive moment, something positive to salvage the story from the wreckage that this kind of fiction seems to require. Despite this range of serious subject matter (incest, insanity, suicide golf), Amend’s humor and sympathy for her characters rescues her stories from their own depressing ends.
Half the blurbs on the outer jacket discuss the Amend’s skillful range—and Things That Pass for Love is impressive in its variety of characters, settings, and conflicts. Amend is equally adept at writing from the perspective of a male Vietnam veteran, detailing corporate guidelines, and testifying for an entire town in the flash fiction piece “Bluegrass Banjo.” Although her language is consistently clear and calmly objective, Amend deftly accommodates the voices of her characters, as evidenced by the stylized prose in “The Janus Gate,” which moves swiftly to mimic the frenzied pace of a professor’s relationship with a pupil:
He could throw back his head and cackle with the thought of what he could make her do with his glances and his fingers. He could touch her pinkie next to the computer and feel her stiffen. Repulsion, attraction, surprise, it was all the same to him, so long as he provoked in her a sharp, uncontrolled physical reaction. He could make her scream, he knew, during sex. He did. Not knowing or caring whether it was out of pain or ecstasy, whether she craved or hated him. Whether she did it out of duty or gratitude, desire or curiosity. She was unused to it, he could tell, and he liked to look at her, both of them with their eyes opened wide, hers sparkling with terror or suspense.
Like many stories in this collection, “The Janus Gate” is itself a study in several themes: a racy story about a professor having an affair with a student, a meditation on language and duality, and a wry observation on academic politics.
Here and elsewhere, Amend’s strongest stories provide a multifaceted glimpse of their characters: in “Dominion Over Every Erring Thing,” we see Ms. Gold as a fifth-grade teacher, but also as a novice Hebrew student. Marca, the main character in “The People You Know Best” can navigate the chatty politics of the book clubs she hosts, but she’s also a successful cyberotica writer. It’s fascinating to watch Amend converge her characters’ dual worlds in unexpected ways.
Amend’s collection is impressive for its range, but it’s also an entertaining take on finding the unexpected in the mundane. Though their subjects and situations might appear to test the limits of possibility, these stories take place in our real world. Here, the current pulsing through Amend’s collection—connecting cults, cyberotica, terrorism, and suicide golf—seems to whisper, There is a logical explanation for all of this. And isn’t there? Things That Pass for Love offers a thoughtful, sympathetic, and often surprising view into the world that belongs to its characters, and to us.