EDITORS' CHOICE

Kerry Neville Bakken. Necessary Lies. Kansas City: BkMk Press, 2006.

No matter how much we might try to dodge the inevitable sludge that life stirs up for us, how much we might try to navigate our way around disappointment—there will always be the curveballs.

In Kerry Neville Bakken's first collection of seven stories, Necessary Lies, winner of the G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction, the people are relatively normal—meaning there are no axe murderers, no teachers having relations with adolescent students, no newlyweds lost at sea on their honeymoon cruise. Still, these middle class characters are dealt their share of tragedy. Bakken's characters don't give up, for the most part, they cope; their flaws are human, tender, forgivable.

In the first story, "The Effects of Light," Jack and Sarah travel to Greece, where Jack's sister Kate has recently committed suicide.

"Though Sarah is with me here, it is right that she appears as if she is not: we are divorcing. I no longer have a claim." Jack's voice is that of someone who is losing his grip, but not completely.

"Jack, let me be clear," she [Sarah] says, "I'm here to help you get through this, to manage with the getting around. But I'm not yours all the time. You know that, right? This is not save-our-marriage-through-shared-devastation-vacation . . . "

Jack's leg, is "anchored together by pins and screws" much the way his life is. He fell down four flights of stairs; the crisis will pass; he will walk again without crutches, both physically and emotionally.

Jack, who sees himself as his sister's "brother-knight charged with her safekeeping" struggles with love—"love is horrifying, holds us hostage, requires us always to answer the phone, to make the drive, to wash the blood from the body, to look at each other clearly under light and not flinch, not look away."

The transition from the above passage to, "We eat yogurt, honey, and peaches for breakfast. Sarah reads the guidebook," is typical of the pivots in the book. Bakken's language, specifically her details, imbues each story with a sense of hope, despite the dark currents.

"Eggs" begins: "Naturally, Noah and I had been trying to have a baby . . . " then we find out that they've been trying for a year and that it's been hell—the fertility treatments, the sex on schedule, the temperature taking. Annie and Noah, anxious to start a family suffer through mornings, afternoons, and evenings of "unreproductive sex" only to learn that Annie's sister (even with protection) gets and remains pregnant.

Annie, fittingly enough, runs a flower shop called Blossom. "I carefully pinned the mother leaves to damp sand, spreading them back so as not to damage the pale yellow, trumpet-shaped flowers. With a sharp, curved knife, I sliced off the baby shoots that rooted from the ribs, pinched them carefully between miniature forceps, then buried the seedlings in empty pots of soil." Some seedlings never bloom, Bakken suggests.

"Necessary Lies," the title story, centers on the impending birth of Mike and Gwen's first child—a daughter. Mike, a schoolteacher, feels somewhat neglected as Gwen shares a bond with their unborn child. His alienation is compounded when he is pushed, in part, by Gwen to help a troubled teenager in his English class. Jill pours out her self-destructive longings in her class journal that Mike and Gwen read.

Unlike Gwen, who feels it's Mike's duty to get involved in the troubled teenager's life, Mike finds himself unsure of what to do if anything. Ultimately, he does get involved, but the question remains whether his good intentions accomplished anything. His doubts parallel his own fear of fatherhood.

We also learn that Gwen as a teen downed a bottle of aspirin—per-haps her concern with Jill has to do with her own history. But Gwen is also consumed with not being able to choose the perfect wallpaper for the nursery. Eventually, this sends her into a mini rage.

Yet at the emotional center of the story is this: Jill's parents missed her attempted suicide; Gwen's parents missed hers—what's in store for Mike and Gwen's daughter?

In "The Body/Love Problem" a married woman with a grown child and successful husband takes on a neighbor as a student. Both she and her husband socialize with the new piano student and his wife. Life is pleas-ant enough until relationships shift. Does Ethan (the new student) have an interest in music? Yes, but he also has other interests, including his piano teacher.

In the final story, "Renter's Guide to the Hamptons," Bakken's humor runs wonderfully wild. The story is broken into ten short sections such as 'Entertaining Should Be A Casual Affair' and 'You're Paid Up Through Labor Day So Be Sure to Make the Best of It'.

After searching for something they can afford, Isabel and Finn begin to grow disillusioned. "It seemed that the only things we could afford in those areas were parking tickets." Those areas referring to the uber-rich towns like Sagaponack, Bridgehampton, Quogue, East Hampton, etc. But Finn and Isabel do find something they can afford on their own—though they have to share it with the mold.

"I didn't want cocktail parties and Little Neck clams, caviar in tomato cups, and foie-gras sandwiches. I didn't want to have to worry about running into supermodels on the beach. I didn't want to have to compare penis sizes of husbands."

Isabel manages to make it through her hideous Hampton summer despite Finn throwing a curveball—actually a set of velvet lined handcuffs appear on the bed. As a result, Isabel begins to reassess their relationship.

Sometimes curveballs hit us hard, but ultimately send us in a direction we'd never have seen on our own.

Madeleine Beckman