So, the first burning question: would I have ranked this book higher or lower if she spelled her first name the same way I do? I can’t recall meeting another Meghan, so I don’t know how I’d feel about that.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to reviewing.
Almost Famous Women is a book of short stories about (wait for it) almost famous women. Conjoined twins, heiresses, female’s pushing against the norm. Lots of lesbians or, at least, women interested in women as well as other men. Race car drivers, ambulance drivers from World War One, high divers, dancers, the sister of Edna St Vincent Millay. All women, all the time. Nothing wrong with that. I like women. I like pretending I’m rich and living in 1950s London (especially so close after my re-read of The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets). Or on a private island near Cuba. The little hints of the exotic are what give the stories momentum. A quick read. I read most of the book on an airplane.
But then, Almost Famous Women is also full of completely self-involved, unlikable, egotists. Yes I know, we’re not supposed to want to be friends with fictional characters, but it’s hard to really feel compassion for someone who denies her servant medical care to prove a point or to not ruin a party or, really I have no idea why Joe (who’s female, just got a masculine name) doesn’t want to take Celia for medical aid. It’s hard to feel much for someone who sells her coat for morphine and then rubs the fact her lone friend’s face. It’s hard to feel for a painter who is miserable to everyone around her out of obstinacy only. These women, and most of the stories are based on real women, skirted the edges of propriety, eager to be iconoclasts, but at the same time, many can only be described as unpleasant people, grating and aloof. Most of the stories aren’t long enough to go deeper than that initial repulsion and many of the stories end, it seems, mid-thought. Sure, the sentence ends, but they’re all so abrupt. My kobo is full of my notes of Why end here? and Another brusque ending. It’s almost discourteous of the author to give such tantalizing hints at characters that could engage the reader, and then yank it away by ending the story and starting anew. It makes this collection feel less like a collection of stories and more like a collection of architectural plans of stories: with imagination you can see what the roof will be like and the shingles and where the bath will go, but it isn’t real yet. Or is that the point? A short story should leave you wanting more? But these feel incomplete, so I don’t think it works.
But of these story/plans, what did I like? My favourite stories in this one: Expression Theory or The Pretty Grown-Together Children. Funnily, they are the ones that are the least solid in terms of time passing or reality or any of that jazz. Maybe the book could have used with some actual jazz music. In a way, it reminds me of difficult-to-approach music like that.
Almost Famous Women by Megan Mayhew Bergman went on sale January 6, 2015.
I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.