Help
Wanted: Female
Sara Pritchard. Etruscan Press, $15 paperback (220p) ISBN: 0983294488
What do we know about the woman we
say hello to at the bus stop, or the homeless man standing at the interstate
entrance next to the shopping complex, or the widow across the street with a
yappy little dog? We get hints and snippets here and there—we piece together a
character as best we can, if we even care to. Sara Pritchard is the author of Crackpots and Lately. Readers who enjoyed Pritchard’s playful humor and
unsentimental treatment of human imperfections will find Pritchard has further
honed her story-telling craft in Help
Wanted: Female. The new collection contains ten linked stories in which she
treats her readers to more than a hint about what is behind ordinary faces in
ordinary houses in ordinary lives. In Pritchard’s prose, we discover that those
commonplace minds contain darkly comedic and wrenching confessions, authentic
worries and sorrows. Nina, in “What’s Left of the Jamie Archer Band,” reflects
in late middle-age: “What does it mean to
be human. . . Is it being biped with opposable thumbs and a big brain. . .
Is it something a saliva test can ascertain . . . what on earth are we doing
here?” Often those revelations arise when absurdity crashes through the predictable
structure of daily life. Often we are desperate for answers and are not even
aware of it until we ask the questions that Pritchard’s characters ask.
Pritchard,
like Carol Shields and Bobbie Ann Mason, reveals the inner lives of the
working-class and how they manage and strategize when faced with unpredictable
circumstances, yet they do not have the endearing whimsy and affectionate touch
of Pritchard’s voice. In “The Jaws of Life,” Widowed Abigail finds herself
caring for an emotionally unhinged house cleaner which leads to Abigail’s acknowledgement
that she isn’t innately maternal, except with her dog, Richard Burton: “She
loved her dog. That was certain. No one could ever say Abigail Shaprio wasn’t a
good dog mother.”
There
are plenty of “good dog” mothers in Help
Wanted: Female. The supporting characters of lovable pets throughout the
collection, along with their eccentric celebrity names is one of the many treasures
Pritchard leaves for readers to discover: Evangeline, the white terrier of a
worried widower; W.B. Yeats, the nauseous elk hound of an impulsive office work,
and Ponce de León who is devoted to a nostalgic Nina, even if she isn’t his first or
last owner. “Forever Home,” the seventh story in the collection, finds Ponce de
León on the verge of homelessness again. Pritchard ties together many
characters and locations through Ponce de León’s presence. With the same affection
for her human characters, Pritchard presents a “stinky” old dog’s philosophy
when he sees another dog in the window of a house where he used to live: “This
Ponce de León knew: 1)at any minute, your life could change, even your name;
2)at any minute you could end up back where you started; 3)at any minute you
might have to leave home; 4)at any minute, someone you loved might leave you.”
If your heart hasn’t melted by this point, if you aren’t weeping, you’ve got a
hard heart, my friend.
Themes of home, homelessness, whims
of chance, odd jobs, and jobs that lead people to odd experiences provide the
structure for Pritchard’s exploration of how people treat one another. We
rarely notice that a simple gesture in our own lives causes echoes in another’s
life. Pritchard is tuned to the spectacle of humanity like a mystic, and then she
weaves stories out of grief, empathy and befuddlement. Her astonishing,
entertaining stories reveal the emotional richness of our own obscure lives.
(July 2013)
Purchase Help Wanted: Female HERE.
Reviewer bio: Kim Loomis-Bennett is a life-long resident of Washington
State, besides a detour into Oregon where she met her husband. Her poems and
book reviews have appeared in The November 3rd Club, The Copperfield
Review, Poet’s Quarterly, and Hippocampus Magazine. Her recent work is included in
The
Prose-Poem Project. One of her poems is also featured on the Washington
State Poet Laureate's blog at http://kathleenflenniken.com/blog/. She teaches at
Centralia College. She will graduate with her MFA, January 2014.
