Book Review: Anagrams

(Read on my phone on the Libby app.) At about 100 pages into Lorrie Moore's first novel, I said to myself, "What the hell is going on here?" There are four sections and the first three are short vignettes with three main characters, recurring in each section but with different relationships and circumstances. Then the final long, novella-length section is the "reality" of their shared situation (I guess). Then I remembered the title and realized what Moore was doing--rearranging the plots and characters like anagrams in a puzzle. I won't reveal too much of the multiple, shifting storylines, except they revolve around Benna, who is either an amateur nightclub singer or a community college professor of art history or poetry. Musician-singer Gerard may or may not be in love with her. Benna's friend Eleanor is the third point of a triangle or maybe she's not. 

I've enjoyed Moore's short stories and her other novel Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? Here, the characters may like wordplay a bit too much. They are always making clever puns. But I did feel the emotions for which the jokes act as a shield. Benna, Gerard, Eleanor, and other characters Darrel and Louis are all desperately lonely with tragedies impacting them. Their aches comes across in their eccentric actions and Moore depicts them with compassion.

Book Review: Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?

(Downloaded on my Kindle for $6): I loved the title of Lorrie Moore's early novel and enjoyed this quirky story of two teen girls' summer of verging on adulthood in upstate New York. The narrator is Berrie, reflecting back on her girlhood friendship with the pretty and somewhat dangerous Sils, while accompanying her husband to a medical conference in Paris. In her recollection, Berrie and Sils work at an amusement park and skirt the edges of bad behavior. They rescue frogs tortured or injured by callous boys, hence the title. Moore captures their yearning for maturity and freedom in their dreary little town. The adult Berrie is not quite as well developed. It's not clear why she is slightly dissatisfied with her marriage. Her friendship with Sils fades as they move apart and Berrie regrets the lost connection. The evocation of lost youth is affecting.

Book Review: Self-Help

(Borrowed from the NYPL on 40th St.): Lorrie Moore's early collection of short stories follows confused and unhappy women in frayed relationships. I liked the first one, How to Be an Other Woman best. Written in the second person, it follows a single woman navigating an affair with a married man as she tries to value herself and not sell herself so cheaply. The prose is fragmentary in places with short sections of no more than a paragraph, like a tightly edited indie film. The Kid's Guide to Divorce is brief and shattering as a young girl recounts a night with her mom, watching old movies and dancing. The final story, To Fill, is longer and almost a novella. Another depressed woman deals with an unfaithful husband, her ailing mother, and the urge to steal from her department-store sales job. Quirky and compassionate. I liked these better than the one in Bark, a later collection.