WHAT HAPPENED HERE
Bonnie ZoBell. Press 53, $17.95
paperback (192p) ISBN 978-1-941209-00-4
The aftershocks of the 1978
plane crash that shook San Diego’s North Park neighborhood are still, decades
later, rippling through the lives of its residents. Both the new and long-term
are struggling with some deep emotional trauma that is simultaneously
exacerbated and deflected by the neighborhood’s macabre obsession with the
tragedy.
The book opens, rather
brilliantly, with a 42-page novella that serves to introduce the rag-tag group
(who will later flow out into their own linked stories) and to set the tone for
the overall collection, which moves from a view of doomed paradise to
redemptive oasis.
The main focus of this opening
novella, which appropriately lends its title to the book, is a couple whose
marriage is strained by the husband’s worsening depression. As we get
increasingly tender and heart-shattering glimpses into their lives, we watch
another more manic neighbor plan an anniversary gathering that will mark the 30th
year since the tragedy.
This “party” is complete with
photos of mangled homes and body parts, and the husband John, who is also a
writer and planning to cover the event, is soon pushed into the hospital by the
stress of the situation. It is then that
his patient wife Lenore reflects on her choices and realizes that the same
beautiful brokenness that has attracted her to John is also what has drawn her
into the artsy but ghost-infested North Park area.
After this brief moment of
clarity, when her husband finally returns, she is more determined than ever to
help him and the neighborhood purge itself of these ghosts. With another
neighbor, she encourages a ritualistic walking of their properties. ZoBell (speaking as Lenore) describes the scene
like this:
The two tall men paced the
backyard, first the burly one tracking the boundaries of his land, the slim
red-headed one pacing behind, the dogs barking, the cats following, even two
green macaws looking on from a satellite dish.
The men would make it the other side now. They chanted something
melodic, their hands clenched around smoking sage, and I saw my husband close
his eyes, now given over to the anointing of our North Park property and
praying for everything and everyone who’d ever tried to live here.
This
is somehow the perfect close to the emotional roller coaster that the talented
ZoBell has orchestrated. The short
stories that follow it, each highlighting some other pairing of characters, are
equally well-constructed, and contain, quite frankly, some of the best writing
I’ve come across in a long while.
In
many places, ZoBell’s work feels like a grittier version of Raymond Carver’s
psychological fiction, but in others it’s more like something lifted out of the
pages of Isabel Allende or Sandra Cisernos. And I’m not just saying that
because of the Latin American characters and themes introduced in those spots.
It is more about the lushness of the prose.
I’d
love to see her try her hand at a full-length novel with one of the strong
female characters she is so adept at capturing at its center. Either way, I
highly recommend this collection and would not be surprised to see it on
university syllabi in the near future. (May, 2014)
Reviewer bio: C.A. LaRue is a writer/artist working out
of New Orleans. She studied creative writing at Hollins University and holds a
B.S. from the University of New Orleans. She is a registered member of the
Tlingit Nation of Alaska with recent work in Deep South Magazine, The Review
Review and Ardor Literary Magazine. Find her at http://bonesparkblog.wordpress.com
or on twitter @bonesparkblog.
