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My copy of
Lydia Peelle's debut collection,
Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing,
is filled with bookmarks notating remarkable lines and passages, starting with
the first line of the first story: My father was eighteen when the mule
killers finally made it to his father's farm. Each story demands to be read
in one sitting, but you'll need a break in between to take in their often
surprising emotional heft; this is no lightweight collection, and Peelle knows
how to break hearts. In my favorite story, "Sweethearts of the Rodeo", the
narrator remembers the summer she and her best friend spent together as wily
stable girls - "the last summer, the last one before boys."
We are
covered in scrapes and bruises, splinters buried so deep in our palms that we
don't know they are there. Our bodies forgive us our risks, and the ponies do,
too. We have perfected the art of falling.
The story
is alive with the proud fearlessness of these rough-and-tumble girls who still
know how to play, undaunted by the dawning awareness of the adults misbehaving
around them. (Rodeo is our favorite game, because it is the fastest and most
reckless, involving many feats of speed and bravery…) Writing mostly in the
first person plural, Peelle nails the inseparable pair, the fierce solidarity,
the superiority that is possible only in childhood. "Sweethearts" is deeply
atmospheric – for a few pages I really lived in that hot, dusty world, wishing
I'd been a sweetheart of the rodeo. As I reached the last page, guessing at some
loss of innocence approaching, all of a sudden my throat caught and my eyes
filled – a sudden cry escaped when I reached the last paragraph. No plot spoiler
here; nothing "happens," except the end of that summer, the summer before boys.
I couldn't read anything else the rest of that day – except for this one story,
over and over again, to try and figure out how it was done, and to spend another
moment inside that summer.
Abbreviated from "Short
Stories for Summer" by Lucia Silva
