BookBrowse
The stories in
Tunneling to the Center of the Earth grab you from the
first line (It took me damn near a week to convince Sue-Bee to come watch
this guy shoot himself in the face) and surprise you with shocks of
tenderness mingled with absurdity. Many of these stories involve some little
tweak of reality that makes them loveable, funny, and engaging, illuminating
their often sad underpinnings. The opening story, "Grand Stand-In," is narrated
by an older woman with no family of her own who answers an ad in the paper:
"Grandmothers Wanted - No Experience Necessary." Soon she's employed by a
Nuclear Family Supplemental Provider - in short, she's a rent-a-grandma for five
families whose own matriarchs have died before their kids got to know them, or
who are too unwell to be any fun. In a novel such an improbable premise would
likely devolve into science fiction of the least interesting kind. But in 26
pages, Wilson makes this a beautiful and deeply human meditation on loneliness,
and the expectations and failures of family.
My favorite story in the
collection, "The Museum of Whatnot", involves a serious young woman who cares
for a museum of obsessively collected junk, and an older doctor who comes in
once a week to stare at the collection of ordinary stainless-steel spoons. All
of the characters in these stories are lonely; each story is about
finding a way to become a little less lonely – in the most unusual ways.
Abbreviated from "Short
Stories for Summer" by Lucia Silva
