‘Maggie Brown and Others’ by Peter Orner (2019) – 319 pages

The story collection ‘Maggie Brown and Others’ consists of many very short stories written from varying characters’ points of view, each story by a different individual, that somehow get to the main issues in each person’s life. The following sentence from one of the stories goes a long way in explaining why these stories in ‘Maggie Brown & Others’ are so attractive to us readers:

“I’m always interested in the way people edit the details of their lives, the way they compress all the years into sentences.”

This compression of a person’s life into a very few pages is exactly what Peter Orner does in each of these stories. These stories are character driven.

Along the way, there are penetrating insights into how we people live.

“Is it always a choice between love and pity? Back then she felt neither. Is there nothing in between?”

Many of the stories appear to be based on acquaintances that Peter Orner has met along his way from Fall River, Massachusetts to Chicago to Wisconsin and then winding up in northern California. Others are based on his relatives residing mostly in Fall River. Other stories concern himself and his wife and family.

All of the stories involve this compression technique of telling vignettes from a person’s life to get at the essence of that person. Even the 110-page novella which ends the collection is made up short one-to-seven page vignettes which tell a meaningful story of, I assume, his father’s life in Fall River.

Peter Orner uses one device that I particularly appreciate, the old-fashioned use of an astute observation or moral to tell the reader the point of the story. Even the one-page stories have a clear point. So many current writers in order to “Show, not Tell”avoid this device today, and their stories wind up seeming pointless and aimless. I see nothing wrong with a writer being straightforward and just telling us what the point of their story is.

In the story ‘On the Floor, beside the Bed’, the story about the guy who used to play for the San Diego Padres, the narrator who volunteers as a paramedic is fascinated by this former ballplayer husband and his wife.

“I’m sometimes struck by how people who don’t look like they’d fit together actually do.”

Throughout this book of stories, there are memorable characters, poignant moments, and life lessons. This is fiction at its most moving and meaningful.

Grade:    A