Stygo

by Laura Hendrie

Hendrie’s first book, STYGO, is a collection of interlocked stories about a fictional town on the sugar beet plains of southeastern Colorado.

Stygo is home to Mama Jewell, who runs the foster home where Baby Annie primps and rants and Hallie lives life as a gremlin; Jack Stiles, who locks wild dogs in an old Chevy behind the Sweetwater Truck Stop; Billy Fiddle, the twin who's left to call everybody's bluff; Willa Moon, who has come home because no place else pays nearly as much attention to her; and a cast of children, powerful and wise, who know what to take from life and when to leave it alone.

First published by MacMurray and Beck, it won the 1995 American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Award. In addition, this collection won The Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award and was one of three finalists for the PEN/Hemingway Award. (Laura Hendrie).

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

225 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1994

Reviews

[Felicity · Rating 4 out of 5]

Any novel in the form of short stories about the life of a small American town probably invites comparison to Winesburg, Ohio. In Stygo's case, the comparison is not all that apt: Stygo is not a sleepy town full of quiet desperation, but a desperate town in its own right. No main character emerges from the novel or leaves at the end (in fact, the only young man we know to have struck out from town is a spree-killer.) It's its own book.

What I enjoyed most about the book was the way it spiraled outward, each story bringing the reader farther into the margins of town, farther from the apparent heart of the community. By the time the chapters come back to the center, back to the bar and Willa Moon, it's clear that neither a place nor a person is the center of this community, but rather an unanswered need, a void.

My favorite stories in this volume were those of teen and tween girls, especially "Corsage" and "Calliope." Hendrie does a great job with these lives and voices, on the edge of self-consciousness and the edge of transformation. Individual stories in the book may end too easily or too pat, but the images and people stick with you, and it's an engaging read. Push on beyond the establishing shot of the first story, and you'll be well-rewarded.

[Elissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting interlocking stories, but too bleak for my taste