Refund

by Karen E. Bender

We think about it every day, sometimes every Money. Who has it. Who doesn't. How you get it. How you don't.

Bender uses this very powerful force to pull together a unified collection of stories that deeply explore the ways in which money and the subsequent estimation of value affect the lives of her characters. The stories in Refund reflect our contemporary world--swindlers, reality show creators, desperate artists, siblings, parents -- who struggle to figure out how to obtain money, how to give it, earn it, lose it, all the while trying to answer the What is the real definition of worth?

In "Theft," an eighty-year-old swindler, accustomed to tricking people for their money, discovers she has Alzheimer's and boards a cruise ship to see if she can find something of true value--a human connection. In "Anything for Money," the creator of a popular reality show is thrown into the real world when his estranged granddaughter reenters his life in need of a new heart; in "The Sea Turtle Hospital," a young teacher and her charge survive

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Adult, Book Club, Literary Fiction, Money, American

271 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2015

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The only word to describe this particular set of short stories is dour. They were all so similar in theme that is was difficult to infer anything new from one to the other, and generally unmemorable as a whole. I was left with a very bitter taste in my mouth and was happy to have arrived at the end.

[Dianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enjoyable collection of short stories that are unrelated to each other, but all have a theme around money or security. A bit uneven, as collections sometimes are - a few stories will stay with me, but as a whole, well written but not something that will linger in my memory.

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

She was a small, tense girl who burrowed firmly into any ideas that came to her and then refused to come out. She moved, swiftly, to Malaysia to teach English and hear any language but her own.

I was left here, with no plan for myself: I knew that I was supposed to live. I felt like I was made of sand. No one was watching me, and I had duty to nowhere. But I wanted to be of use. I took a plane to a small, unremarkable city and decided to settle in. I went through security and watched the agents do their work. They stared at the X-ray machine, they patted passengers’ sides and shoulders, they fixed their bright, tense gaze on the crowd. I was drawn to them, beautiful, standing in their dark blue uniforms, scanning the crowds for something suspect, something that you could stop. Their faces were serene, enviably remote with understanding. I wanted to inhabit that knowledge and suspicion. I wanted to stop something, everything. I applied for a job in airport security, and they placed me here. [From “For What Purpose?”]

I’ve been surprised, as I’ve made my way through this collection, that the GR ratings for this book are not higher for this National Book Award Finalist. I loved these stories: exquisitely written, provocative, insightful, tender toward its characters, no matter how messed up they are, and occasionally funny.

Almost all the stories involved the idea of people and money, their requirements for it and how they obtain it, or try to, but the theme is really about emotional need and the transactions involved in trying to satisfy that requirement.

Favorites include:

“Anything for Money”: a very wealthy but isolated game show host, specializing in reality-show-grotesque, without warning becomes the guardian of his 12-year-old granddaughter. His money and the power it brings is a key factor in how he tries to solve the problem she brings with her.

“Refund,” about a couple who sub-let their New York City apartment near the WTC when they take urgently needed teaching jobs in Virginia in September 2001 and the problems they have with their unhappy tenant when they return.

“This Cat,” which isn’t really about a cat; he’s just a character in a story about something much, much larger.

“For What Purpose”: A young woman whose family dissolves when her parents are killed in a car accident and her sister moves away takes a job as an airport security agent hoping to find purpose and meaning; a relationship she develops with a frequent flyer goes a different direction than we expect.

Stand-Outs:

“The Loan Officer’s Visit” about a grown daughter who tries to get her parents to visit her in a distant city for 25 years and what happens when they do.

“The Sea Turtle Hospital,” narrated by an elementary school teacher who experiences a lock-down and her relationship with one particular little girl in her charge.

There is so much wonderfulness here. Somebody please read this book and get back to me with your own impressions.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overall, a rather satisfying collection of (13) short stories. In most of these stories, the author uses what I consider a classic structure for short story writing: blending something very basic about the human condition with two seemingly opposing storylines, building both to a point that matters and a conclusion that doesn't. As well, in these particular snapshot tales, Bender finds it useful to mix past events with present ones, sometimes suddenly juxtaposing in consecutive paragraphs for effect - and seeming to always succeed. With the time-shifting, Bender seems to ask questions about how we change over time.

Most of the characters we meet here go through huge emotional changes - some more serious or threatening than others. So there's a fair amount of adjusting at work here as well, presented as an active requirement not open to discussion.

At times, the adjusting hardly seems dramatic at all - as in 'The Loan Officer's Visit', in which (over a period of decades), the need for familial affection shifts from parents to child to ultimately no one... as the purpose of such longings comes to a final question.

So yet other sub-categories come into play: acceptance and resignation. When I looked back on the table of contents after finishing the book, the titles of each brought these elements (changing, adjusting, being resigned, accepting) back in a wave. Of course, the stories were still fresh in my mind but I could feel the people who populate them clearly... people just shuffling along, as proactively as they can... trying their best (to get through whatever) or trying their worst or actually trying to be better people.

The volume's first 3 stories ('Reunion', 'Theft', 'Anything for Money') impressed me most - maybe because they seemed to challenge the author in ways that the other stories did not. (They are each longer than the subsequent stories.) There was only one story ('A Chick from My Dream Life') that I didn't particularly take to (but perhaps someone else would).

Sometimes I laughed out loud: for example, in 'Candidate' - when a Republican running for state legislature is canvassing, exhausts himself in front of a progressive single mother of two - and falls flat on his face in her home. (Accidents - and tragedy - are big in Bender's stories.) Mainly, though, I very much took to Bender's use of language: it's strong, often surprising and reflects a unique voice.

[Sue Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like nothing else I've read. These stories are mostly about the edge we all live on financially, and how it affects everything else in our lives. They are stories of the middle class in a time of downward mobility and downsizing. They are funny and precise, and the social commentary is subtly present.

[Beverly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful stories. Bender has amazing range and unique slants on the people we may pass by in the street, in the halls, on a cruise ship to Alaska. No matter where, surprising things (not impossible things) happen and the writing sparkles.

[Sophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a big fan of short stories. They offer authors a chance to explore thoughts and writing styles in a condensed format. If a story is character-driven, authors must develop them quickly, which I imagine is no easy feat. Reading short stories introduces me to new authors, not that I need to add more books to my reading list. 😉 Reading a collection by one particular author is a different experience than reading anthologies like the Best American Short Stories series or the O. Henry Prize collections. But as with any compilation, not all the stories hit the mark.

Here are the stories I enjoyed the most in Karen E. Bender’s “Refund”:

Reunion – This story had a fascinating main character with some surprising twists. You never know who the people from your past turn out to be.

Anything for Money – Set in what may be the near future, a TV host gets people to debase themselves in the most awful ways. He seems removed and heartless until he is reunited with his long-lost daughter. There's a lot of reality tucked into this one.

The Third Child – This was heart-wrenching and relatable. A woman makes a decision that she should not have made alone.

The Loan Officer’s Visit – A study in how adults view aging parents, at once younger than they are and then older and frailer than memory serves.

Refund – This was definitely the best story in my opinion. It takes place in NYC in 2001 and the terrible event on a September morning. It brought back memories from that time and gives a perspective from what seemed like someone who was there. Well-developed characters and a complex, heart-wrenching storyline.

Candidate – This was sort of a tragicomedy. A struggling single mother finds herself in a town where she doesn’t really know anyone. She is visited by a Bible-thumping candidate for political office. He’s not quite ready to hear her viewpoints.

The Sea Turtle Hospital – I enjoyed this one. An ultimately heartwarming story after a horrific event. A reflection of the world we live in now where school shootings are so common.

The other stories were fine, but these were the standouts for me.

[Kim Mencer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had three reasons for reading this book: (1) "Refund" is on the shortlist for the National Book Award; (2) I haven't read a collection of short stories in ages and found the prospect of doing so appealing; and (3) The theme of money and "worth" threaded throughout the stories interested me. My "3 star" rating has more to do with the realization that short stories may not be "my thing" than any other shortcoming I can dredge up. A decent collection of stories - I just found myself with too many questions unanswered at the stories' end; left wanting to "know more", which a short story format doesn't permit. I'm happy that I read "Refund" but think it may be awhile before I give another short story collection a go.

[wade · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wide variety of thought provoking short stories by a master of the genre. These are virtually twenty five page novels such is the depth of characterization and plot. The book's title story deals with a couple trying to sublet their New York dwelling space unfortunately during the 9-11 period. Another involves a game show where people are willing to do "Anything for the Money" and another is about a pair of sisters one on which has an impaired hand that she must compensate for. I can certainly see why the book got all the acclaim that it did.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this collection of stories. Favorites include Refund, and This Cat. I didn't realize that Ms. Bender is sister to Aimee Bender, one of my favorite short story authors, but it seems obvious to me now. Both are very talented writers, with a similar writing style. Looking forward to reading her novels now!

[Liz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I trudged through this, wanting to like it, because it had its moments. But I couldn't believe most of the characters - if I had to sum up my thoughts on the book, I would say "people don't act this way." The prose is competent, but this book is uninspiring and the stories felt forced.

[Ben Loory · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the stories "Anything for Money" and "Candidate"

[LindaJ^ · Rating 3 out of 5]

How does one describe these 13 short stories? The are full of despair, disappointment, disillusionment, and are often disturbing. It appears they are stories that were previously published in the years of 2001 to 2014. There is no happiness here. These stories are about people whose lives did not turn out as they expected. They concern mostly intelligent people who at some point were overwhelmed by an event or by the everyday struggle to get ahead or achieve.

In Reunion, a women's class reunion (15th or 20th) goes very wrong, although things were not going that well for her before. In Theft, an 80 year old woman gets a diagnosis that devastates her as she realizes she will no longer be able to continue her occupation as a swindler. In Anything for Money, the successful but lonely producer of the TV show Anything for Money finds himself responsible for his 12 year old granddaughter, realizes he loves her, and then finds out he is likely to lose her forever and all the money in the world doesn't seem able to fix the problem. In The Third Child, a woman and her husband struggle with job loses and the needs of two young children.

In The Loan Officer's Visit, a woman's parents finally come to visit here (instead of vice versa) and she agonizes over their aging and how or whether they or she will be remembered. Refund is a 9/11 story. A family struggling and living in a rent-controlled apartment near the World Trade Center and trying to find money to send their child to the premier private day care/preschool subleases their apartment for a month while they take a temporary post at a Southern college. The renter is tramatised when 9/11 occurs in her second seek there and seeks a refund.

In This Cat a woman deals with the trama associated with the possibility of breast cancer, telling no one that she is being tested. In A Chick from My Dream Life two sisters don't understand why there father has withdrawn. In The Candidate, a young mother of two, whose husband has left struggles in a low paying job and with a son who seems likely to be autistic. In Sea Turtle Hospital as disgruntled rich father shoots up the magnet school his child is attending. The assistant in the kindergarden classroom is struggling with loneliness and depression and attempts to do something for one of the poor minority students in her class.

Free Lunch involves a woman whose family finds itself in North Carolina after she and her husband were both laid off from their good jobs in Manhatten. They do not fit in and are struggling to make ends meet. In For What Purpose, a woman who recently lost her parents in a car crash takes a job as a TSA agent. She endows those on her crew with the good traits of her lost family. Then the word comes down that one of them will be laid off in six months. The last story is What the Cat said in which a woman and her husband argue over to which of them the cat said I love you.

This book made the short list of books for the 2015 National Book Award for Fiction. I ended up reading the Kindle edition when I could not find a copy of the hardcover. The stories are well-written and quirky, but I cannot say I liked them. But, the book is definitely worth the read.

[Alec Hastings · Rating 3 out of 5]

The craft in these stories is good. I thought a lot about what the stories say. I read reviews from professional critics who lauded the stories. Refund was nominated for the National Book Award, by the way. Maybe for the professionals, these stories are great because they are honest? Certainly, they are realistic in describing the lives of some people, lives of loneliness and isolation, lives fraught with anxiety and emptiness, lives that seem meaningless. Some reviewers said the humor in the stories softened the blow of the bleakness and sadness. What humor? I didn't see it. This book made me think about why I read. I don't want to read a book that is a "revelation" of the bleak side of life, that shows characters like blind mice in a maze who are only motivated by want. Too depressing. Others may want to, may need to, but I know about Willy Loman and Ivan Ilyich. I want to be inspired. I want to be reminded of our potential to transcend pain and loss. I want to read about characters who are flawed, yes, but who show courage or love in their struggles. Do I want escape? Yes, probably. Why not? But I also want a more balanced Truth about humanity. People do have the capacity for honor and nobility and generosity. I don't want art that is a mirror of the many moments in which we are somehow small or disappointing. To me, these stories are an indictment of a decaying civilization--ours. They describe people living in a post-Affluent Society, a world of Walmarts and plastic and bread & circuses, and a constant, fearful scramble to get ahead or avoid being left too far behind. It's a sad, sad world when viewed only through such a lens. I don't entirely disagree with the indictment, but what does it do for us? I want art that mirrors the moments when we rise, when--win or lose--we find inside ourselves whatever is really good. I know stories serve different purposes for different people, and they serve different purposes even for me, but the most important, the acid test, is whether or not a story makes me hopeful. We don't need to be depressed by art. We need to be lifted up.

[Jessica Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is another excellent short story collection that I’m glad to have read. It’s full of poignant prose that convey hard truths about love, marriage, parenthood, loneliness and other deeply human experiences. Think the pensive wisdom of Olive Kitteridge combined with the quirky subversiveness of Miranda July.

Bender’s protagonists are ordinary people struggling to live fulfilling lives amid the anxiety, desire and yearning that exist (at varying depths) below their coveted sense of comfort and security. The stories are each distinct, but the common theme that appears throughout is money: not having enough of it, or knowing that even if you did, it still wouldn’t be enough to make you happy.

Don’t read this if you want a light, happy read. But if you find yourself drawn to dark, damaged characters navigating situations both mundane and extraordinary, I think you’ll love it as much as I did.

[Anissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up because it's a finalist for the National Book Award. It's a collection of short stories that highlights many contemporary themes: financial issues, family issues, loneliness and looking for love, acts of violence and terrorism. The stories take place all over the US (shout out to my neck of the woods, the IE and Long Beach!). Although she deals with some serious themes, the stories didn't drag you down into a well of depression (there's always funny moments when kids are involved, and she has a bunch of them in this collection). Also, she was spot on in her depiction of marriage and young children.

[Kate Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Favorite stories: Refund, This Cat

A sad, haunting, heart-wrenching collection, maybe more for me specifically. Karen Bender lives in Wilmington, and some of her stories take place there (though they don't mention it by name), and it's strange to read about a place I lived and loved and only recently vacated, to peek into sad lives being lived there. These stories hurt; they ask questions about life and death and the purpose of it all, and they do it in a lovely way.

That being said, I do not, however, think that Karen Bender should be allowed to own a cat, really.

[Anne Killheffer · Rating 5 out of 5]

For readers who love John Cheever or Raymond Carver


I've enjoyed Karen Bender's short stories for years, and thank goodness Counterpoint has brought out this handsome collection of some of her best. Bender is a master storyteller who captures both the tiny aches and big truths of modern life. Her characters tend to be well-educated, hopeful strivers who never imagined they'd have trouble earning a living from their talents, or have trouble being happy with children and marriage. And yet here we are.

[John Hatley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This really good collection of short stories by Karen Bender presents, more than anything else I've read recently, a haunting picture of how Americans are having to cope with the "financial crisis" that the world has been suffering from since 2008. Fiction, yes, but the stories are frighteningly realistic.

[Kathleen · Rating 1 out of 5]

These short stories are too melancholy for my taste. There is a sadness to each—a father’s futile attempts to make up for being absent for much of his daughter’s life; the betrayal of trusting the wrong person; survivor’s guilt when others die around us; the helplessness one feels when fired, or is unable to afford the things our children want. None of these stories is balanced with hope. Pass.

[Stacey · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a collection of short stories centered on the topic of money. There were some decidedly poetic passages to be found but the overall tenor of the book is depressing. The writing style in some spots became a little disjointed causing it to feel like there were two different authors. In the end, I'm glad that I read it but wished for it to be a little higher reaching.

[Patty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning. This is what great sentences look like and very complicated paragraphs that start out making the reader feel one way and ending eliciting feelings that are the exact opposite. This is how I want to write. someday.

[Barbara · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sad and depressing. If I had bought this book, I would want a refund.

[Leona · Rating 2 out of 5]

These stories seemed unfinished, like they were an early draft. I only liked a couple.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too depressing. Anyone have suggestions for some well-written, interesting, not-depressing short stories?

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was ok but just ok. A few good ones, no great ones. I feel like I love short stories but I keep getting disappointed in them.

[Ed Bernard · Rating 5 out of 5]

The New Order
Refund
Karen Bender

I love short stories – variety, experiments, fast reads, ideas that are worth exploring but not worth a novel. I hate short stories – frustration of incomplete stories, untraditional story arcs, wacky self-indulgence, the same-ness of a particular author’s style over and over. But mostly, I love short stories, particularly ones that are linked thematically. I read both these volumes at the same time, jumping back and forth between them. Refund is centered around money, The New Order (the newer, non National Book Award nominee) explores topics that have arisen post-Trump. The best ones are unified across both themes by their desire dig inside the disappointments and inner insecurities of mostly ordinary people. The experiments are few – one features a talking cat, another a dystopian future in which all work is controlled by the state (that one, The Department of Happiness and Reimbursement, combines Bender’s psychological insights seamlessly with a scary vision of the future and is one of the strongest in both collections) – the core of Bender’s stories is the emptiness and emotional disappointment that comes from both money and modern life (the Loan Officer’s Visit, The Sea Turtle Hospital), with moments of terror when raw emotion must be confronted (Anything for Money, about a TV producer of a humiliation reality show and a long-lost granddaughter, maybe the best story of all). It’s a strong collection – Refund is maybe slightly better but I thought they were both excellent. Quibbles: Bender has a certain obliqueness to her writing; one tic is the misdirection of language – which I assume is designed to keep the reader off-kilter emotionally – which can get annoying over 500 consecutive pages and 30 or so stories. But that wouldn’t have been a problem if I’d read them as written – one at a time, with a break between. I was impressed – entertaining and thoughtful.

Grade (Refund): A
Grade (The New Order): A-

[Taylor Norman]

“The sight of her father, a man of six feet, gentle but bad with money, carefully guiding groceries across the parking lot made her ache with useless love” (11). —“Reunion”

“She remembered her sister Evelyn’s walk—Evelyn just seventeen then—her walk her first successful con . . .” (32). —“Theft”

“Once, Evelyn told Ginger that she tried not to be afraid for five minutes a day. Ginger was impressed that Evelyn could identify when she was afraid, for her own fear floated just outside her skin, like a cloud; she experienced nothing but a heavy numbness. She watched her sister closely, trying to catch her in those precious five minutes when she was clearly not afraid. In those five minutes, Evelyn owned something mysterious, and even the claim of strength made Ginger ache to experience it, too” (38).—“Theft”

“There was always one who was a lesson for the others. The door slammed, and the woman was marched back to her life. They all listened to her heels clicking against the floor, first sharp and declarative, then fading. The others stood, solemnly in the silence, as though listening to the future sound of their own deaths” (51). —“Anything for Money”

“She remembered the first time she and her husband hired a babysitter and went to dinner, two months after their boy was born. They had walked the streets, ten minutes from their home. They had hoped that when they sat down in a restaurant, they would enjoy the same easy joy of self-absorption. But they realized, slowly, that they would never in their lives forget about him. The rest of the date they spent in a stunned silence understanding, for the first time, how this love would both nourish and entrap them for the rest of their lives” (94). —“The Third Child”

“Then my mother and father appeared. Slowly. Them. They were themselves” (108). —“The Loan Officer’s Visit”

“We sunk into one of those silent, glum familial nights in which every glass we rinsed seemed about to break, every lampshade unfortunate, our breath too loud and alien” (114). —“The Loan Officer’s Visit”

“The next morning, I slid down the chute of our normal activities . . .” (115). —“The Loan Officer’s Visit”

“When we got through that, I just showed them foliage I liked. Here was an important bush. In the winter, it was dotted with pink camellias like knotted satin bows. Here was a sewage drain where orange leaves got clogged but looked pretty in the fall. Here was a stretch of pine trees that had not been knocked down for a housing development” (116). —“The Loan Officer’s Visit”

“The sweater smelled like them, their peculiar salt, their sweet fragrance. I did not know low long the sweater would smell like them, how long I would remember the way they gingerly walked inside the airport terminal, how long it would take me to drive home, holding onto the wheel, turning through street after street, how long it would take me to go visit them again, how long it would be before they died, and then how long I would own this sweater, how long I would recognize it as a sweater, how long my children would keep it after I was gone. I held onto the steering wheel, and I wondered how long before the tracks from the tires would disappear and it would be as though none of this, none of it, had ever really happened” (119). —“The Loan Officer’s Visit”

“She thought that they should make some grand entrance, that they should say something profound to each other, but she merely listened to the sound of their presence ring through the apartment” (127). —“Refund”

“The phone stopped ringing. It was quiet for a few minutes. . . . We listened to the air, to the gorgeous, peculiar sound of nothing. We could hear anything in it; that was our revenge. We could sit there, each moment, and listen” (154). —“This Cat”

“Before he said his name, he was just an ordinary stranger, standing there, slim, brown-haired—a salesman of encyclopedias or cleaning equipment—with the belligerent, trudging optimism of someone who went door to door. After he declared his name, she hated him. This shift in feeling was so abrupt she felt she had been slapped” (177). —“Candidate”

“The phone began to ring. Her husband was most lonely around dinnertime. He did not love them but did not know who else to call” (181). —“Candidate”

“How had her life come to this, hoarding minutes of kindness doled to them by strangers who knocked on her door?” (189) —“Candidate”

“It was the rare, divine dance between teacher and student, in which I helped her locate what she already knew” (204). —“The Sea Turtle Hospital”

“She stood in the tide a few minutes, the water pooling, foaming around her ankles. She was perfectly still. The wind riffled through the feathers she had pasted on. She nodded, briskly, every thirty seconds or so.
‘Why are you nodding?’ I asked.
‘I want the wave to go down now,’ she said ‘And now. Now.’
We stood for a moment, and the waves came down at our command. Now. Now. Now” (208-9). —“The Sea Turtle Hospital”

“I remembered what I had told Keisha when we were standing in the parking lot of the sea turtle hospital. The type of tub I wanted to build for Hugh would be big, a mile long even, with slides and curving parts in certain places to make it fun. It would have special pools with rocks so that Hugh could imagine he was in a tide pool. Maybe there could be other nice turtles in there that would be his friends. Slowly, Keisha had stopped crying. Maybe, she had said, a smart doctor might invent special drops that could cure his blindness and then Hugh could paddle out to sea. Maybe, I had said, we would all gather at the shore and watch him swim out, and he would take in the sea with his perfect new vision he would remember how to swim, and he would feel the buoyancy of the waves under his fins as he floated into the deep blue water. Floating, she had said. He would like that. Floating, I had said. He would swim, strong, into the waves; he would swim and swim into the sunlit water. She had nodded. The sky above us had seemed weighted, holding back something invisible and enormous. I had knelt in the crumbling asphalt while her small hands gripped mine, and I had waited for her to tell me the next thing” (214). —“The Sea Turtle Hospital”

[Ian Mond · Rating 5 out of 5]

While the 14 stories in Karen E. Bender’s short story collection, Refund, span a twenty year period there’s a consistency to the themes that feature throughout. Most of the stories have a middle America vibe coupled with a creeping sense of ennui and hopelessness as families battle to survive in a shifting, narrowing economy. Beneath it all there’s a feeling of awkwardness, especially between family members, as siblings and parents and married couples struggle to find commonalities.

If that sounds depressing, fear not. The stories are infused with a wry sense of humour and a keen understanding of human nature. These might be short stories, but in an economy of words Bender draws well developed, sympathetic, relatable characters, most of whom are woman – 13 of the 14 stories are told from the female perspective. More than that, while there’s a number of stories where at least one parent is unemployed, or the family is barely scratching a living above the poverty line, each work is very different in terms of tone and plot. Bender avoids sameness by allowing for the unexpected. For example, the opening story, “Reunion” has a horrifying moment where a man opens fire on the attendees of a thirty year school reunion. For most writers it would be the focus of the piece, but for Bender it’s acts as catalyst for the protagonists mid-life crisis. In the “Candidate”, a political hopeful running on an anti-gay, family values agenda knocks on the door of Diane Bernstein, a single mother who has better things to do with her day then listen to a rant about homosexuals. Midway through a sentence, the candidate topples over in a dead faint. It’s a surprise both for the reader and Diane, but it’s also not the focus of the story which is about faith and politics.

While all the stories are excellent the one story that really plays to Bender’s narrative and thematic strengths is, predictably, the title piece, “Refund”. John and Clarissa, struggling to make ends-meet as artists, are desperate to enrol their three year old son, Sammy, into an expensive private pre-school. When they are both offered short-term employment at a University in Virginia, they see this as an opportunity to raise the money for the tuition by accepting the job and sub-letting their low rent apartment at an inflated rate, which happens to be located a few doors down from the World Trade Centre (AKA the trendy part of town). This story takes place during September 2001, and you all know what happened next.

Bender’s description of New York a handful of days after the falling of the twin towers highlights both the subtlety of her prose, but also her ability to avoid cliché and sentimentality:

Burning concrete and computers and office carpets and jets and steel girders and people. There was nothing natural about the smell; it tasted bitter and metal in her mouth and blew through their neighborhood at variable times; the mornings began sweet and deceptive, yet the afternoons became heavy with it. She began to get a sore throat, and her tongue became numb. The girls at the American Lung Association table gave her a white paper mask and told her that there was nothing to worry about, but to keep her windows closed and stay inside. She walked against the small stream of people wearing paper masks. The streets were dark and shiny, the sanitation trucks spraying down the street to keep the dust from lifting into the air. A man walked by in a suit and a gas mask. Did he know something that they did not? Where did he get the gas mask?

The deceptive sweetness in the air, the bitter, metallic taste, the man with the gas mask, all vivid images – but all tainted by a lingering anxiety, a fear that someone might know more than you do, might know that the air is poisonous, that there might be further attacks, that the place you live in is not safe.

Fantastic prose aside, what’s surprising about the story is how Bender uses entitlement and privilege to explore the way different people deal with unexpected tragedy and horror. Even before Clarissa and John have returned home they receive an email from the woman they sublet the apartment too, Kim, requesting a refund. Not only was she disappointed with her lodgings, Kim, wants John and Clarissa to pay her $1,000 for every nightmare she’s experienced since witnessing the destruction of the towers. As Kim’s letters becomes increasingly unhinged – with constant references to the terrible condition of the apartment, questioning how anyone with a modicum of pride could live in such squalor – I found myself belittling Kim’s experience – I mean, it’s not like she was in the towers, is it? – while feeling sympathy for the poor struggling artists. And yet what becomes clear is that these angry missives asking for impractical sums of money are Kim’s only way of coping with the horror she witnessed. It’s powerful stuff.

While I’ve chosen to speak about ‘Refund’ it’s not my favourite piece in the collection. That would be the oh so wonderful and touching, “Free Lunch” where a middle class family – both the husband and wife have been made redundant – are invited over for Passover lunch by the local Chasidic (Lubavitch most likely) Rabbi. Bender perfectly captures the anarchy of the Chasidic home, that mix of warmth and religious devotion and an endless supply of children who refuse to behave. And while at its heart “Free Lunch” is a story of a husband and wife trying to come to terms with the economic reality of not having jobs, of not being able to provide for their own children, it’s a surprisingly optimistic story.

Last year a collection, Phil Klay’s powerful set of stories about the Iraq War, Redeployment, won the National Book Award. I’m hoping this year the judges sidestep favourites like Fates and Furies and A Little Life and once again hand the award over to this magnificent short story collection. It’s seriously that good.

[LisaMarie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not badly written, but I just couldn’t get into this collection. I mean it’s good to have a theme I guess, but I got tired of reading about financial problems and the deeper “real” issues that love them from just reading most of the first story (dialogue bit over the top, even though the oh-who’d-be-that -rude -at-a-reunion guy did turn out to have a gun) and skimming a few others, including collection title Refund. Lately, unless I’m really blown away early on I DNF short story collections, because even if there is something to be learned about structure or technique I probably won’t catch it if I’m not into it.