CONTEMPORARY MAINE FICTION
Edited by Wesley McNair
296 pp.
Down East Books. $25.

Reviewed by Patrick Shawn Bagley

Maine’s stony landscape may not be the best for agriculture, but we have been blessed with an abundance of talented writers, both native and “from away.” We have also been presented with plenty of anthologies over the years, each one purporting to contain the best of what Maine literature has to offer. Few of them lived up to that goal. So do we need yet another Maine anthology?

Yes, we do. Contemporary Maine Fiction is unique in that it presents only short stories written within the last quarter century. Poet Wesley McNair is fast becoming a veteran anthologist. His previous offerings were The Quotable Moose (1994), which featured a mix of fiction, essays, and poetry, and last year’s impressive The Maine Poets: A Verse Anthology. In Contemporary Maine Fiction, McNair has collected fourteen short stories that not only spotlight some of our best writers—from Pulitzer Prize–winners to lesser known but no less talented authors—but they do an excellent job of revealing the widely varied experiences of those who call Maine home.

Fictional though they are, we have seen these characters every day of our lives. We have stood in line with them at the post office and the Wal-Mart checkout. We have driven past their brand-new homes and their dilapidated trailers. We have looked at them with envy, disdain, sympathy, and admiration, even love and hate. They are Mainers and flatlanders, Franco-Americans and Down East Yankees, welfare mothers and artists.

Elwood Tibbetts is the town loser who gets back a little of his own in Elaine Ford’s “Elwood’s Last Job.” Elwood’s unlikely revenge takes the form of holding up the local Laundromat (there are a lot of quarters in those change machines) and leaving his old antagonists a few things to think about. Then he blows out of town like a character in a John Hiatt song.

“The Music of Angels” is one of Cathie Pelletier’s Mattagash tales, stories set in a fictional Maine town that is as real (though much less seamy) as Carolyn Chute’s Egypt. Lily King’s “Five Tuesdays in Winter” chronicles an antisocial bookseller’s fumbling attempts at expressing his feelings for a female employee who also tutors his daughter. Mitchell, the bookseller, recalls that his ex-wife “said the most emotion he’d ever shown her had been during a heated debate about her use of a comma in a note she’d left him about grocery shopping.”

“Monhegan Light,” by Pulitzer Prize–winner Richard Russo, is a moving exploration of love, loss, and betrayal in which the widower protagonist travels from California to Monhegan Island to confront the artist who’d been his wife’s lover for the past twenty years. Susan Kenney’s “The Death of the Dog and Other Rescues” also covers love and loss, but the effect is achieved with more humor than sadness.

One of the highlights of Contemporary Maine Fiction is Monica Wood’s “Ernie’s Ark.” Wood is one of those lesser-known Maine writers who deserves much greater exposure. In fact, I’m not going to tell you anything about this particular story. Just get a copy and read “Ernie’s Ark” first. You’ll be glad you did.

Bill Roorbach’s contribution is taken from his award-winning short fiction collection, Big Bend. “A Job at Little Henry’s” is the story of Richard Milk, an out-of-work log home designer bored with his life and left to his own devices by his busy wife. Milk (perfectly named) falls in with the wrong crowd, led by Dewey Burke, his former yardman—who’d previously beaten him up. There’s a great scene in which the planned store robbery goes wrong, and Milk ends up being used as Burke’s hostage. “I’m an architect,” he calls out to the state troopers who have their guns aimed him. “I’m an architect.” It’s small touches like that, the inane things we’re likely to babble when confronted with extraordinary circumstances, that make “A Job at Little Henry’s” so effective.

Two of the stories are only marginally concerned with Maine, though both of them are quite good. “A Short Wedding Story” by Debra Spark, interesting for its use of magical realism, is mostly set in New Jersey. Jim Nichols’s “Slow Monkeys” takes place in Florida, in a Salvation Army homeless shelter and among the rows of an orange grove. Its narrator tells of his long friendship with a former TV personality who has fallen on hard times and his newer relationship with a young man, known only as “the kid,” who wandered down from Maine and wants to be a writer.

Repetition is a danger faced by all anthologists. Scan the content pages of half a dozen collections of “classic” modern American fiction, and you’ll find three or four stories that appear in most of them. McNair stumbles into the same trap. Two of the best stories in Contemporary Maine Fiction appeared in earlier Maine anthologies. Carolyn Chute’s disturbingly beautiful “Ollie, Oh…” was collected in Downeast Books’s woefully misnamed Best Maine Stories (1994). Stephen King’s “The Reach” is a ghost story on a level with Robertson Davies’s best work. It shows just how good King can be, but it was previously featured in Maine Speaks: An Anthology of Maine Literature (1989). It would be a shame to see either of these fine stories diminished by overexposure, which—in the narrow field of Maine anthologies—is entirely possible (Oh, there’s that same old Stephen King story again. I’ll skip it and see what’s next.).

Unfortunately, not all of the stories in Contemporary Maine Fiction are so enjoyable. Take Pulitzer Prize–winner Richard Ford’s piece, for example. Ford’s “Charity” is the story of a couple examining their lives and marriage during a trip along Route 1. Reading it is more like traveling up I-95, though. You trust that the driver has a clear destination in mind, but the ride is so monotonous you find yourself keeping a desperate watch for those green and white road signs, just to learn how many miles lie between you and release.

Ellen Cooney’s “See the Girl” is told from the point of view of a young girl suffering from cerebral palsy. Little Ronda believes she is finally about to be healed and will live happily ever after. The story gives an interesting look into the hearts of the people who surround her—family, schoolmates, doctors, and social workers—but Ronda’s voice is not quite there. She’s just too cute and plucky, and the story feels trite as a result.

Contemporary Maine Fiction is not the perfect Maine anthology, but it comes closer than many of its predecessors. If you keep a summer reading list, place this book at the top. Take it with you to the beach. Take it to camp. Take it to work and read it on your lunch breaks, one story at a time. Savor it like you would a pleasant Maine summer’s day, even with the occasional black fly.

 

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