I Bring Sorrow: And Other Stories of Transgression

by Patricia Abbott

A collection of extraordinary riveting and thought provoking stories from Edgar and Anthony award nominee Patricia Abbott that explore the dark side of human behavior.

Genres: Short Stories

320 pages, Paperback

First published March 6, 2018

About the author

Patricia Abbott is the Deringer-winning author of more than sixty-five stories in print and online publications. She has forthcoming stories in the anthologies: Damn Near Dead II, Bats in the Belfry and Beat to a Pulp, The First Round. Her latest novel Shot in Detroit has been nominated for an Edgar Award. She lives and works in Detroit.

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Abbott's short story collection, I Bring Sorrow, packs a sledgehammer-size literary wallop. It all starts with the title, I Bring Sorrow, which gives you a taste of the dark roads that are traveled here. The stories are diverse and start with stories about a search for a lost parent, now homeless, wandering with dementia. Other stories delve into helping a shut-in relative out, but are twisted. There is a sadness in the very walls of the houses in these stories. Other ones include a story about a kid who is a little off, but a good kid, and manages on an odd day to be the one running the police department. Then, there's a story about another time before cellphones where smallpox devastated the world and the madness that goes with burying one's child. From there, you might move on to a guy listing all the things he can't stand about his wife and a story about dating and singles bars. There are full-length stories here and some short quick pieces about revenge and angel's wings and fur capes. Of course, it wouldn't be complete without a story about fishing and the big catch and a story about a professional musician and devotion to artistry. There is often a wistfulness in these tales, a sense that things have gone horribly wrong, but maybe no one's quite at fault. Well-written, captivating, and definitely worth reading.

[Heath Lowrance · Rating 5 out of 5]

For my money, Patricia Abbott is one of the greatest and most insightful short story writers currently working. This collection is her at the top of her game.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Starred Review in Library Journal online, April 2018

Transgression is the central theme in this stellar collection by Abbott (Concrete Angel; Shot in Detroit). Each diminutive story packs a wallop, with plots as varied as the characters that inhabit them. The standout tale “Pox” describes a harrowing attempt by a grieving mother to save her family from a smallpox epidemic. A bleak but surprisingly redemptive story, “Won’t You Pardon Me?” focuses on a veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) who committed a sin years ago that he can never make right. Creating a bleak and dystopian future in diary form, “The Annas” transports the reader to 2097, where all but a select few humans remain. Abbott’s craftsmanship is on full display in the short story milieu, with an underlying sense of tragic destiny in each of these selections. The pieces can alternatively leave one with a sense of despair or a tentative hope for better days.

Verdict This collection of 26 distinct and penetrating tales belongs in all libraries. Just when the reader thinks they’ve found the best one, they’ll turn the page and fall in love all over again. Strongly recommended for fans of suspense and enthusiasts of the short form.—Amy Nolan, St. Joseph, MI

[Tracyk · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book contains 25 short stories by Patricia Abbott, for the most part previously published in anthologies. Abbott has published two novels of psychological suspense: Concrete Angel (2015) and Shot in Detroit (2016); both are darker in tone. I wondered if this collection of stories would follow suit. To some extent it does, but of course a short story book usually offers a lot of variety and this is no exception.

One of my favorite stories is the first in the book. "On Pacific Beach" is about a daughter whose mother is homeless. She feels incredible guilt for having moved away and left her mother behind and tries hard to stay in touch. The daughter's first person narration of the story is incredibly moving. I knew after reading that story that I was going to be happy with the rest of the book.

There are three unusual stories from different genres. "The Annas" is set in a post-apocalyptic future where fifty women have had 50 android duplicates created, which they will train in their areas of expertise. "I Bring Sorrow to Those Who Love Me" is a beautiful story with a musical theme and elements of a fantasy story. "The Cape" has a historical setting, telling the story of a tailor who makes a cape for Enrico Caruso.

Not all of the stories are totally dark. Some have the element of humor, especially in the ending. "My Social Contracts" is about a woman who sees marriage as a contract that she can use to her advantage. In "Stark Raving," Elsa Scotia mediates a will for a brother and a sister who have inherited from their mother and have only one small area of contention to resolve. Two couples who have known each other for years share a weekend at a summer home in "Old Friends."

Parts of Abbott's first novel Concrete Angel were published first as short stories and they stand alone quite well. “Mad Women” is about a woman who is caught shoplifting. The last story in the book, “Fall Girl,” is about a daughter used by her mother as a patsy for a murder that the mother committed.

As Reed Farrel Coleman tells us on the cover of the paperback edition: "Any one of the stories in I Bring Sorrow is worth the price of admission." And I could not agree more with Ken Bruen's assessment: "Patricia Abbott's collection of stories are just electric and utterly amazing... A dark, captivating collection.”

[Fleur Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-have in your short story book collection. Patricia Abbott has been a long time favorite author of mine, and I think this collection really shows her superb writing of characters.

Perfect for fans of dark, intelligent fiction.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A colorful collection of short stories, dark and darker, with some humor added in the mix. Abbott is a great crime writer, and her strength in depicting colorful characters living on the fringe really shines through in this compilation. I am reminded of the work of Flannery O’Connor.

[Mathew Paust · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Coal."

Back in the day, when I worked for a small daily newspaper, "Coal," as the first sentence of a news story, won high praise from our editor, and for a while was imitated by some of the writer's colleagues. It was lauded as original and catchy, more likely than the ordinary first sentences we'd been writing to entice readers into stories.

Alas, an opening like that in I Bring Sorrow might have been sorry as a lump of coal attempting to entice any fiction lover beyond a momentary gape and head shake.

Here's how Patricia Abbott successfully enticed me to read Lamb of God, one of the twenty-five tales in her astonishing collection of "stories of transgression":

The first time Kyle Murmer’s mother tried to kill him, he was nine.

Or this opening of Old Friends:

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit,” Henry swore through clenched teeth, “You’re sure this is the right road, Gillian?”

Ah, the glorious unmitigated freedom to be bold, to jolt, to tell the truth! People say they prefer nonfiction because it's real. They say fiction is fantasy. Well of course facts are imaginary in fiction, but anyone reading I Bring Sorrow could not but agree that while no mainstream newspaper would dare take such liberty with the above-mentioned slangy term for feces, it’s how real people talk.

I read all of the stories, including those that didn’t entice me with startling starts. I read them all because I’d read and enjoyed Abbott’s two crime novels and knew that even were she to begin a story with the word “coal” her writing is so sly and original she’d have me gasping with delight and admiration by tale’s end. I shan’t reveal whether in fact she did start a story in this collection with “coal” but I will say she left me gasping with delight and admiration after every one of them.

One of the most intriguing of these is the title story—full title: I Bring Sorrow to Those I Love. There’s big-time sorrow here, big and hauntingly familiar. Yet there is a delicate, mystifying, almost comical aspect to the relationship between the cellist and her lover. I said “almost comical” because the two characters are so real I cannot help but feel empathy for them in their dilemma—for each of them. But who is the bringer of the sorrow? Should the blame be shared, as it usually is? Or is there another, a third sorrow bringer? One more selfish and wicked than we mortals can be expected to imagine? I think I hear the cello’s mellow voice now—it’s...it’s plucking the theme from The Twilight Zone...wait...yes! Yes, I can hear it!

The collection’s first story, On Pacific Beach, is a tender one with a much more conventional sorrow. It’s about a woman who periodically visits her homeless, mentally ill mother wandering the beach with her grocery cart filled with oddities. The mother never recognizes the daughter as her daughter but as a familiar face she’s given an unfamiliar name. This poignant sentence touched my heart:

“She’s gotten her hands on a bright blue boogie board, which she strokes possessively. She’s a vessel of maternal gestures she never expends in the usual ways.”

The mother refuses treatment or conventional shelter, and seems perfectly happy making do completely on her own in her own unfathomable way. The daughter’s concerns for her safety heighten dramatically when she reads that a serial killer’s been murdering women on her mother’s beach.

This story’s ending made me sigh, with a chuckle mingled in.

I Bring Sorrow is a delicious salad of styles and tones and fiction genres. I could see Papa Hemingway grinning from the cockpit of his yacht, Pilar, as I read the fishing story “Um Peixe Grande,” and Flannery O’Connor smirking enviously while sneaking a peek at Is That You?
And is that Philip K. Dick or Murray Leinster nodding approvingly at The Annas, set in 2097?
A Kid Like Billy takes place in Lebanon, Pa., but it might as well be some small town in Iowa or Texas, with Ed Gorman or Bill Crider watching us shed a tear as we read this poignant, tragic, heartfelt tale of senseless violence and a kind of understanding that allows justice to be handled with compassion.

Need a good laugh about now? Give Stark Raving a looksee. Two adult siblings fighting over the legacy of their recently deceased mother: five hundred Beanie Babies. This has a few twists to go with the nuttiness, but no real Beanie Babies were abused in the making of this story.
There are some tales of well-deserved revenge that brought out the worst in me as I laughed and almost cheered at the conclusions.

My favorite story though (I admit I had to pick this one at random because they’re all so damned good) is The Cape. It’s a spooky yarn with Gothic overtones and a plot arc that brings to mind great Russian writers of the Gogol/Turgenev ilk. It’s mysterious as hell to start with, based on a true story (which I confirmed on Wiki) about a forbidding man with aristocratic bearing who wants a humble tailor to make him a very unusual cloak. That’s all I shall say about it except...heh heh heh heh...

[Mark Stevens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Patricia Abbott makes it look easy. Her stories hit you as matter-of-fact. In their simplicity and everyday flavor, they are beguiling. After she delivers a few twists, jabs you with a surprising jolt, you might think you’re ready. But you drop your guard again and you dive in again, all innocent and unaware.

Not all her stories are of the twisty-twisty-whoa variety. The 25 entries in I Bring Sorrow & Other Stories of Transgression are a variety pack—from plaintive to moody to shocking to surreal to whimsical. Abbott gives a dose of sci-fi, a splash of history, and many keenly-observed characters of the present dealing with friction, troubles, issues, obsessions, conflict, and the occasional murder. Abbott follows no formula for setting the stage for these gems; she doesn’t tip her hand on what level of darkness (or relative lightness) lies ahead.

Empathy is a hallmark. She writes warmly of the overlooked and some of her characters, like the woman who owns the Tucson café in Is That You?, see less-fortunate lives and wonder about getting involved.

But at every turn, the storytelling is organic, easy-going, and unforced.

“You’ll find my mom sitting most days on the sun-bleached bench outside Von’s Market.” That’s the opening line of “On Pacific Beach,” about a daughter with a need to find and protect her homeless mother from a looming danger—and an unusual plan to do so.

“When I was twelve, my mother shot a soda pop salesman she’d known less than eight hours.” That’s the opening line of “Fall Girl,” one of the most literal and ironic titles ever.

“Weddings after a certain age, say thirty-five or forty, often smack of a bargain.” That’s the opening line of “Social Contracts,” one of those murder-twisty stories, a splash of Patricia Highsmith washed and rinsed through O. Henry.

I was enjoying all the stories but then hit No. 13, “Ten Things I Hate About My Wife,” and No. 14, the story that lends part of its title for the collection, “I Bring Sorrow To Those Who Love Me.”
The structure of both stories is clever. The first, quite obviously, is a list. “Number one: no one knows more about almost anything than Kerrie. No kidding. You might your degree in social anthropology makes you an expert in gang practice in modern L.A., but I’m telling you that Kerrie, despite only being in Los Angeles once, knows more about the subject than Mayor Garcetti.” The ending of this one will have you circling back to the beginning and wondering how Abbott suckered you along for the ride and its gut-punch ending.

In “I Bring Sorry to Those Who Love Me,” Abbott deploys mini-headers to set off her story of obsession and a certain cellist. The mini sections are Prelude, Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Minuet and Gigue. I’m not too proud to say I had to look up all but ‘prelude’ and ‘minuet.’ The other four are all references to Renaissance or baroque dances, which is perfect once you learn how deeply Eli and Nanette will tangle. Again, a zinger finish. Why do some of us see the “door to freedom” and run the opposite way? Eli hangs around Nan’s practice room “as if it were a hive and he, a drone.” You’ll be the one buzzing when this story wraps.

"I Bring Sorrow & Other Stories of Transgression" is a dazzling collection. Due to the variety, it might be best to wait a day or two between reading each one or savor a dish of mango sorbet to cleanse the mental palette so you can start each story fresh, uninfluenced by what you just read. But the next story is sitting right there. And it starts so well. So …

[Bookreporter.com Mystery & Thriller · Rating 4 out of 5]

On a California beach, Andrea looks for her mother among the homeless. Brady, as she is known for her distinctive long braid, has lived on the streets for a long time, but a new danger is lurking and Andrea’s panic is rising. Someone is preying on area women, grabbing them by their long braids before killing them. The more mundane tension Andrea experiences regarding her mother runs parallel to the new, more violent and more immediate threat that Brady faces.

“On Pacific Beach” is the opening story in Patricia Abbott’s collection, I BRING SORROW: And Other Stories of Transgression. The 25 tales here are dark explorations of human desires and actions, and many involve a clever twist. Abbott’s characters are real and relatable, even as their responses and deeds are jarring or shocking.

“Ten Things I Hate About My Wife,” “How to Launder a Shirt” and “My Social Contracts” all involve spousal murder. In “Fall Girl,” a 12-year-old girl takes the blame for her mother shooting and killing a man she had brought home. Needless to say, there is violence in Abbott’s wicked little stories, but there is also desperation and loss. All of it is so crisply captured and depicted that the violence itself is secondary, as it should be, to the lives and motivations of the characters.

Many of these characters are good people stuck in terrible situations. In “Um Peixe Grande,” Gaspar is a husband beleaguered by his nagging wife, Loretta. Unwilling to give up the livelihood he loves, even when it won’t pay the bills, Gaspar sets out to fish every morning, hoping for a decent catch. One day, what he catches is the victim of a crime, and the rescue brings him into the circle of a crime boss. Suddenly, Loretta doesn’t seem so bad. Doe, the central figure in “Doe in Headlights,” also finds herself at the mercy of a crime boss. Over the past two years, Feck has been using her and grooming her to assist in larger and more lucrative crimes. Like Gaspar, her complicity only goes so far. When the victim is an innocent, she must decide if she is willing to risk her own life to defy Feck.

While most stories in this collection present readers with traumatic or at least troubled familial relationships, Abbott includes a few stories that are different. “The Annas” is a look into the future where a small group of women have been cloned to rule a new world. In “Mad Women,” a shoplifting wife gets institutionalized. What makes people act in ways detrimental to themselves? What drives them to harm others? Despite, or because of, the disparate characters and settings, the shared themes of the stories are highlighted. Fear and greed drive Abbott’s characters, but so do need, love and loneliness.

It is not necessary to try to discern themes or describe tone because I BRING SORROW is such an entertaining and interesting read. Abbott is fantastically skilled at drawing readers into the lives of her characters in just a few pages. There is plenty of suspense and surprise here, but Abbott is also capable of bringing remarkable insight and tenderness to her stories. This book is recommended for short story fans as well as readers simply looking for finely crafted work.

Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

[Leigh Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

HEA? N-A-Y.

Abbott brings not just sorrow, but also pity, horror, the macabre, madness, and murder. Lots of murder. Sometimes it's easy to see coming, and sometimes it's a complete surprise murder. There is only one story that ends happily, and it takes quite a bit of strum und drang to get there, so it's more "relieved" than "happy."

The bulk of the tales could be classified as "contemporary Detroit noir"; though the time setting is modern, Sam Spade would feel right at home among these blue-collar, down-on-their-luck folks who either do desperate things, or have desperate things done to them. The stories start fairly tame, and then gradually get weirder and weirder. Occasionally a genre piece pops up: sci-fi, historical ficition, etc. But mostly it's straight fiction about terrible people. Or poor people. Or terrible poor people. You get the idea.

90% of the stories have crackerjack construction, too. There are a few towards the end of the collection that are merely depressing, and slightly disappointing. However, the sizzle of the good stories more than makes up for it; after all, nobody can be brilliant ALL the time. Not even someone a brilliant as Abbott clearly is.

It's hard to pick the best of the best in a collection that includes standouts like "Pox," "The Annas," and "Ten Things I Hate About My Wife." The were, however, two standouts.

"I Bring Sorrow to Those Who Love Me, " from which the collection gets its name, is a tale of music and obsession that ends in either a macabre burst of magical realism or a mad murder, depending on how you look at it, and is just...brrrr...all the way through, particularly if you play an instrument. My partner and I can't agree on what happened, and both of us have enough evidence to be right. I love stories like that, that can be read in multiple ways. Like Lovecraft, but--thankfully--not at all racist.

The best piece in the bunch, however, is, hands-down, "Burned the Fire," which is all of three pages long and yet manages to take three whiplash turns before it gets to the final paragraph. Here is, literally, what went through my head while reading it.

"Oh, that guy's a jerk."

"Oh wait, that guy's a vampire."

"OH SHIT THAT ESCALATED QUICKLY."

Anybody can go on for pages and pages. If you can freak me out in three, you're somebody I want to read more of.

This collection will do well in libraries where both mystery and horror are popular, as it's decidedly a mixture of both, with that delightful random sci-fi bit thrown in there for fun ("The Annas" is my third-runner-up for best story). Also recommended for libraries with short story collections, as well as those where Abbott's other writings have been popular. Small libraries with limited budgets could also confidently spend their budgets on this and get a good ROI. Highly recommended.

[Dorene · Rating 5 out of 5]

A premier practitioner of short fiction, award-winning author Patricia Abbott’s latest story collection, I Bring Sorrow & Other Stories of Transgression, is a masterpiece of mixed-mood fiction. From psychological realism to haunting supernaturalism, Abbott’s writing is by turns gritty and elegant, seductive and shocking. In “Pox,” a story set on the Midwestern frontier, fire burns “a trail in the dirt, a black path zigging and zagging for miles, as if Satan himself charged through the countryside, leaving a sooty trail to remind them of their impotence.” Shortly thereafter the protagonist had “dreams where wild animals chewed on children’s toes and women wearing black dresses with huge silver buttons spun like tornadoes.” Merging the real and the ethereal is a hallmark of the collection, as are Abbott’s settings, which are also conjured effortlessly, almost magically, with an economy of words, each locale unique but true. We are swept from the metal-scrapped home in Detroit to a Pacific beach where strangled women lay, a pot-bellied pig rescue center in Tucson to an east coast tilapia farm, a haunted Parisian hotel room to a pioneer farmstead, a circus ring to an android-populated planet.
But her characters are the stars of this 25-story collection. While they are legion and varied, they share that rare authenticity delivered only by confident writers in control of their craft. The book is populated with mesmerizing women: shoplifters, vagrants, and tiger tamers, those who forget their daughter’s names, those who hock their children’s belongings, those who do not like to be touched. There are wily women who shoot soda pop salesmen with impunity, naïve women who are unwitting accomplices to criminal enterprises, dead women who warn us from beyond the grave. We meet U.S. Army Specialist Ronnie Bixby, a sharpshooter who does not fire her weapon in battle until after she arrives home from Afghanistan, and Polly, who grows eerily incapacitated whenever she travels, and Cara Willis, the realtor whose client dupes her, though of course she gets the last laugh. Then there are the enchanting, brutal, unforgettable Annas that will live in my mind for eternity.
Abbott is a writer of great range, which is amply demonstrated in this collection whose life-changing props include a Spiderman wristwatch, a fur cape with singular modifications, a cache of Beanie Babies, a motorboat named The Clytemnestra, and a hair braid that spills from the back of a baseball cap “like a dragon’s tongue.” This writer knows how to open a story, drawing readers in with palpable tension or extraordinary imagery before taking them on a ride worth twice the price of admission, but her endings will leave you breathless.

[Keeley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got this one for review from NetGalley.

This is a collection of incredibly dark short stories that I thoroughly enjoyed. Each one tackles the darkest aspects of human nature and what we are willing to put ourselves through for love, money, etc. From homelessness, drug use, murder, to kidnapping, Patricia Abbott has compiled a beautifully written handful of some seriously messed up stories. Definitely recommend this one to horror/thriller fans.

[Chris Rhatigan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Abbott is a master of the literary crime short story. Every piece in this collection is a polished work of art. Her attention to detail, in terms of each story's context, characters, and language, is rare. Read this one and then go pick up Concrete Angel and Shot in Detroit.

[Barbara Manzi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dark stories. Bu good.

[Kristy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fast and easy to read. Most short story collections are a mixed bag for me. There are always a certain number of the stories that I just don't enjoy, but that wasn't the case here.

[Judy Gacek · Rating 5 out of 5]

A dark, intelligently written but easily read, collection of short stories I couldn’t put down. Not my favorite genre but I thoroughly enjoyed these and will try her novels.