Stories in Another Language

by Yannick Murphy

Murphy's fictional debut evinces a deadpan voice that powerfully taps the interior world of emotions and thoughts. Though they are evocative and intriguing, however, these experiments with language do not add up to substantive short stories. Many of the 17 pieces are fragmentary; the last contribution, The Killer, is a mere paragraph. The author is clearly fascinated with the dynamics of in The Slit,`The Summer the Men Landed on the Moon and A Good Father, a child protagonist observes how adults deal with the death of another child; the first-person young narrator of Where Dead Is Best, puts his head through the noose that hanged a neighbor. Another favorite theme is incest ("a father and a daughter courting until death made them part'' in Ball and Socket, and between siblings in Headdress). Murphy masterfully recreates childhood games and family idiosyncrasies, and her keen eye for small, mundane details captures the likes of bumper stickers and stretch marks ("all of the places on her skin that showed you she had children, like the rings on the insides of trees or the squares on turtles''). Unfortunately, many readers will conclude that Murphy's stories are written in another language, a private, inscrutable tongue.

Genres: Fiction

Paperback

First published May 12, 1987

About the author

Yannick Murphy is the author of the novels, The Call, Signed, Mata Hari, Here They Come, and The Sea of Trees. Her story collections include Stories in Another Language and In a Bear's Eye. Her children's books include The Cold Water Witch, Baby Polar, and Ahwhoooooooo!. She is the recipient of various awards including a Whiting Writer's Award, a National Endowment for the Arts award, a Chesterfield Screenwriting award and her story In a Bear's Eye was recently published in the 2007 O'Henry Prize Stories.

Reviews

[Diane Eskridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to review a book of short stories. Some i liked, some i didn't. Kind of strange but enjoyable.

[Lisa]

I just could not get into these stories -- each one reads like flipping through a few unrelated snapshots of people you don't know in places you can't discern doing either nothing or something you can't determine. No plot is fine if the characters are interesting or the writing really dances, but that's not the case. The writing isn't bad, but each story is a few pages of whatever, sometimes from multiple and unclear viewpoints, and then it's over. I read four of the stories in this collection (not the first four -- I skipped around) and just didn't feel like reading any more.

[TJ Wilson]

I really liked Here They Come. Great book. And I got to see the origin of that narrator's voice here in Stories in Another Language. But the same voice story after story became tiresome. Some stories, the voice completely works, in others, the voice sounds too done up, innocent and simplistic. But on the whole, the book is very creative and definitely a character building read.

[Les · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just reread it and it was even better this time.