Robinson’s writing is flowing without flowery, descriptive and intimate. Experience of observation and a keen understanding of human nature and relationships is woven into each story of this collection.
Shame: Friends gather at the New Mexico ranch of a rather eccentric and cantankerous older man, with the main story focusing on one of them in a relationship of a lesbian love affair with another. Though one has accepted and established herself, the other, Caro, is newly divorced, has grown children, and is still carefully examining the issue as she seeks her own inner self and freedom amid the turmoil. Caro has found new interests and immerses herself in history of the Catholic Church, and Robinson ties this in with the issue at hand:
Her topic was the Spanish colonial period, the relationship between the Catholic Church and the indigenous population. Each day, in the dim and silent document room in the state archives, she handled stiff parchment pages the color of dried grass, reading close slanting script in seventeenth-century Spanish. The hand of the church had been brutal here and ruthless. The records were full of orders for imprisonment, torture, executions–hangings and public burnings. The Church had seen the New World as a wide wild landscape, rich but unclean, polluted with heresy. They’d used the tools of the Inquisition, trying to burn a whole continent clean.
What interested Caro, among other things, was the philosophical inversion–the process by which the Church had transformed itself from an inclusionary institution, one based on compassion and brotherly love, into an exclusionary one, one driven by hatred and discrimination. Zealotry interested Caro. (p. 151)
This then, is the underlying message of the story, as the grumpy and opinionated Edward rebuffs Caro’s attempts to fit in. However, it is odd that this is not really the turning point of Caro’s acceptance or rejection, but which based instead on a statement regarding letting pets run free. Robinson seems to have inserted a bit of authorly input here, and goes on to liken Edward to the discriminating disapproval of the Church when he notices Caro and her friend Eloise show a small sign of affection.
I’m not convinced of the character here, as Caro flip-flops between love and shame based on outside approval. Though this would certainly be the case, I am sure, when someone is unsure of themselves in who they are. I think that the religious background given was not necessary to use as a base for the changes. Often, nothing at all leaves us questioning ourselves, and that is enough.
The Football Game: Two friends of very different backgrounds are brought to a football game by one’s parents, and meet two boys whom they sneak off to see during the game. Once again, Robinson’s exquisite attention to grounding in setting and character reads like reality. Here too, I recognized the Yale Bowl and felt even more a part of the story. There is also Robinson’s insightful sharing of her knowledge of human nature, and the lessons we learn when we look beyond our own vistas to find them not very different at all.
The Perfect Stranger: A woman seeking acceptance within a peer group offers her home for a weekend stay by an elderly lecturer on opera. Unfortunately, in her enthusiasm she has neglected to seek her husband’s acceptance prior to the invitation, and the relationship is tested by this imposition into their lives. A well-written narrative structure that builds through a braiding of two points of view (both in third person) of that of the woman, and that of her guest. Very well done as the two views meet upon certain episodes or events, and the reader is given the diversity of perception.
All in all, Roxana Robinson’s style is impeccable in grounding through description, attention to detail, and elaborate character study through the everyday type of trials faced and overcome by her characters. There is incredible knowledge of her protagonists that leads them through their stories. As I glance down on this autographed copy of A Perfect Stranger, I notice a brief statement on the cover:
Start in on any sentence and I’m absolutely sure you’ll read to the end of the story, and of the book, and you’ll come out of it feeling grateful, deeply stirred, seriously happy." — Alice Munro
My own admiration and appreciation of Munro’s work indeed had me likening Robinson’s work to her own. Very good reading, and I look forward to eventually reading one of her novels.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology