Sweet Talk: Stories

by Stephanie Vaughn

A collection of short stories chronicles the life of a woman named Gemma, from her upbringing on American army bases in the shadow of her father's breakdown, to her adulthood, troubled by a dying love affair

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Literature, Literary Fiction

Hardcover

First published January 27, 1990

Reviews

[Klari Moreno Cela]

He de decir que me estaba chiflando hasta que mi perro, el Migas, se comió el libro. Algún día lo terminaré.

[Vanessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first encountered Stephanie Vaughn years ago when her story "Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog" was featured in American Voices: Best Short Fiction by Contemporary Authors. That collection also introduced me to my first Raymond Carver, Andrea Barrett, and Alice Adams stories. I loved Vaughn so much that I filed her name away, apparently in the part of my brain where things actually stay put.

Many years later, I heard Tobias Wolff read her story "Dog Heaven" on the New Yorker Fiction Podcast. The story has a bittersweet, nostalgic tone throughout, but the last page and a half turned me into a 5-alarm snot bomb. This was incredibly awkward, because I was listening to the podcast while walking my dog in the park at the time.

Despite or maybe because of that, I finally tracked down a copy of what appears to be Vaughn's only book, a collection of her short stories which includes the two I've mentioned above. There is not a weak story in the bunch. Some of them, as Wolff himself marvels in the introduction, are even funny, like "We're on TV in the Universe" about a woman who wrecks her car on the way to a party with a caged pet rooster in tow as a party favor.

The best stories, however, are the five that tell snippets from the life of Gemma, a young woman who grew up in a military family: "Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog", "My Mother Breathing Light", "Kid MacArthur", "The Battle of Fallen Timbers", and "Dog Heaven." The last story in particular approaches crystalline story-telling perfection, from its beginning:

Every so often that dead dog dreams me up again. It's twenty-five years later. I'm walking along 42nd Street in Manhattan, the sounds of the city crashing beside me-horns, gearshifts, insults-somebody's chewing gum holding my foot to the pavement, when that dog wakes from his long sleep and imagines me. I'm sweet again. Sweet-breathed and flat-limbed.

Until the end:

"You're AWOL! You're AWOL!" we cried at the dog. "No school!" the dog barked back. "No school!" We skated across the darkening ice into the sunset, skated faster and faster, until we seemed to rise together into the cold, bright air. It was a good day, it was a good day, it was a good day.

(Pro-tip: Don't read this story in a public place. Actually, don’t read “Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog” or “My Mother Breathing Light” in public either....)

I don't know why Stephanie Vaughn never wrote anything else*. I know this book was somewhat hard to find; our local library didn't even have it despite Vaughn being an Ohio native and our local library being pretty baller. So seek this out, please. It's so worth it, even if I did have to watch the second half of What's Up, Doc on TCM to cheer me up when I finished.

*I'm fairly certain that the other book Goodreads claims Vaughn wrote ("a sexy, swoony romance" whose cover looks like the silhouette of the Marlboro man is fixing to hog tie a woman in a bustle) is a different Stephanie Vaughn.

ETA: A discussion I had earlier reminded me of this collection, which achieves the short story ideal for me. Making this a five star read.

[Michael Livingston · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a beautiful collection - surprising, smart and heart-breaking.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why haven't there been more books and/or stories from Vaughn? Her stuff is up there with the best. A light touch, using humour and sarcasm to illuminate the corners of family life, covering schooldays and bullying and adultery and illness. Even though I don't like dogs, 'Dog Heaven'* and 'Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog' are two of the best stories I've read in a long time. Yet this came out in 1990 and nothing since (that I can track down)...

*Dog Heaven begins: “Every so often that dead dog dreams me up again.”

[Javier Font · Rating 4 out of 5]

Periódicamente, en la vida de todo lector surge un elemento estacional e inmutable que alumbra los valles de papel y los ríos de tinta, es un elemento hecho de oro, un santo grial, que de repente recaba todas las miradas, todos los comentarios, todas las reseñas, una obra en la que cristalizan todos los anhelos, todas las envidias y todas las alabanzas de esto que llaman literatura.

Ese elemento refulgente usualmente cambia de aspecto, de diseño, de autor, pero raramente de temática y tamaño, y por supuesto nunca cambia de nombre. Estoy hablando de la “Gran novela americana”

Por encima del lector, más allá de las montañas, refulgiendo en el cielo de los grandes literatos, surge, brilla y repica, llamándonos a la oración, prometiendo la salvación eterna, ungiendo a sus seguidores con el estigma de la modernidad.

He de reconocer que como creyente viejo que soy en esta religión, cada vez que veo esas señales arrugo el morro y con desgana me preparo para la travesía por el desierto, atento a las palabras, atento a la estructura, y anhelando encontrar una vez más esa gran obra que me deje con la boca abierta, con el alma apretada, zarandeada y erosionada, pero feliz.

No sé qué coño es la gran novela americana pero últimamente cada vez que me enfrento a su sello de garantía, me pierdo, me aburro y empiezo a contar las normalmente innumerables páginas que quedan frente a mí para llegar a las tres letras mágicas, al paraíso perdido de los elegidos.

Sin embargo, a veces la fortuna pone inesperadamente frente a mí, sin fanfarrias ni sermones, textos que me indican lo que debiera ser, obras que me transportan a esas ciudades hechas por tipos teóricamente hechos a sí mismos, pobladas por mujeres que se olvidan de respirar, esos vecindarios de casas con porche, con perro en el patio y pickup a la entrada, plagadas de seres que envuelven su desesperación con papel celofán, esas sociedades donde la vida se disfraza, la muerte se camufla, se ignora o directamente se decora, una vez al año, con colmillos de juguete y calabazas de plástico.

Es gracioso, casi ridículo, ver las cabriolas y malabarismos que los orgullosos ciudadanos del primer mundo hacemos con tal de aplazar la gran pregunta existencial, ese gran “que cojones hago aquí” que llena las mesillas de alprazolam.

A veces me acerco, a veces disfruto, a veces encuentro antologías de cuentos como este singular “Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta” de Stephanie Vaughn publicado por Sajalin Editores que me hacen recordar a Salinger con una sonrisa, que me hacen pensar que la gran novela americana, quizás tiene formato de cuento.

[Ann Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned about this book by chance, when Fiction Writers Review (one of my favourite websites about fiction craft) republished a much earlier review of the book. I was happy to discover that the book is still in print and, apparently, still much beloved by many other lovers of short fiction. (The book was originally published in 1990 and so, even at the time of the original review (2012), it was already a pretty old book.) I ordered a copy and have been treating myself to a story a day since the book arrived. The stories are beautifully crafted, steeped in empathy, and often laugh-out-loud funny. My kind of book, in other words.

[Günter Voelker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thrillingly good, creates little storms in the imagination.

[Bárbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,25.

[Dave Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't familiar with Stephanie Vaughn prior to hearing her story, "Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog" on the New Yorker fiction podcast. The experience was one in which I remember where I was during the story, one in which I sat in my car after the commute from the office, unable to move until the story had completed. I remember sitting there, in that car, as Gemma looked out over the icy river after her father. "I was his eldest child, and he taught me what he knew," one of the closing lines of the story, still echoes around my head. I searched out the story that same evening, and purchased this collection simply because of it.

I think the reason that "Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog" caught me so by surprise, struck me so where I live, is because of the intricate, fragile relationship between father and daughter that the story portrays. I read it shortly after the birth of our daughter, and in the midst of attempting to imagine our future and the care with which I was attempting to craft my relationship with her from the beginning, this story was...shaking...to me as Vaughn so clearly painted each character through the other's eyes.

This collection is filled with just that...moments that are familiar to each of us in some capacity, not in their setting but in their events, capturing the one through the eyes of the other. I found myself examining many of the moments through which I have already traveled, and anticipating those through which I still must, looking to the other individuals that inhabit my own narrative with fresh perspective. The events that Vaughn captures are astounding in their normalcy, familiar in their commonality. There are no moments here in which I found myself closing the book to examine what the author meant. What Vaughn is doing, and what she is doing well, is placing each of us, either retroactively or predictively, into these situations through her characters and giving us the opportunity to explore ourselves.

Vaughn is following the same cast of characters here through various settings and stages of life. I immediately equated this with Salinger's Nine Stories, but don't, because, while parallels are easily drawn to the approach, there is nothing nearly as metaphysical going on in Vaughn's collection. It's absence is in no way a detractor. Vaughn's stories are complex but never overwhelming. The timbre of her language resonates with a uniqueness, her prose is concise but never succinct, and always original. Her wit is quick, leaving the reader with a smile but never quite laughing aloud. This is not a lengthy read at just under 200 pages, but you may find yourself spacing it out into a story per evening as I did for over a week. This is because, what I did find myself pondering after each...the relationships in my own life...was worth the time to digest.

I wasn't aware of Vaughn prior to that podcast. I'm certainly glad that has changed. Sweet Talk is a touching and sincere addition to your shelf that you will find quite necessary.

[laur · Rating 3 out of 5]

⭐️3.5
I picked up this book in the Strand because I loved its cover and I love short story collections. I have always liked that short story collections are densely creative bursts of imagination, tied together by a common thread or idea. In "Sweet Talk" this is exactly the case: the ten stories are either related through the same protagonist, telling of different moments in her life, or through the idea of an adult woman trudging through a life that has drained her out. Perhaps what I love most about short stories, as someone who often carries herself away from the book in daydreams when she reads, is that they're easily digestible and the plot is seldom dull. I enjoyed "Sweet Talk" because it served that purpose for me.

It is clear through Vaughn's prose that she excels in writing short stories. Her work is brilliantly crafted, from her sequence of plot to her vivid descriptions. She skillfully captures heavy topics, such as loss, through a child's lens in "Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog," "The Battle of Fallen Timbers," and "Dog Heaven." She beautifully captures harmony by an adult relearning how to be a child in "Snow Angel."

I recently read another collection of short stories last year which I did not enjoy as much, and what most notably sets the two books apart is that Vaughn's translation of scenery and feeling, and her delivery of plot, does not give the impression of a writer struggling to make an idea work: it succeeds in doing so.

What also separates the two books is that the half of the stories in "Sweet Talk," as I mentioned before, follow the same protagonist. The stories are sprinkled in between other, unrelated stories, and are not organised chronologically, and it was my first time coming across something like this. Unexpectedly, it became my favourite aspect of "Sweet Talk." All the stories touch on some aspect of the protagonist, Gemma's, unbalanced family or her military childhood, or a combination of the two. The reader learned little pieces about Gemma through each story, so at the end of a novel, fragments of her life are glued into a full narrative in the reader's head. Gemma also reacts to her life in a very mature, factual way, making the first-person-perspective tales seem as if they are told in an omnipresent third-person point of view. As a result, the concept was thought-provoking, well-carried out, and original.

All of this being said, I gave the collection 3.5 stars because only half of the stories really struck me or stuck with me (and those are notably "Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog," "The Battle of Fallen Timbers," and "Dog Heaven," as well as "Kid MacArthur," and "Snow Angel" – also, the ending of "My Mother Breathing Light"). The others I felt were too similarly dreary, plainly odd, or did nothing to enrich the collection. I would certainly recommend it, though.

[Michael Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant collection by a forgotten master.

[Ana Cristina Garrido · Rating 5 out of 5]

some of the stories i didn’t really get, but all of them were so well written it didn’t even matter!!! <3

[June · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writing is lovely. Some of the stories really touched me.

[Andrew Dewey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very unique ways of saying things all throughout. And many feels from each story. Makes you hate a normal life. Makes you hate an abnormal one.

[Kit · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first introduction to Stephanie Vaughn was through the New Yorker fiction podcast with two stories selected by Tea Obreht and Tobias Wolff, respectively. "Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog" is one of the most poignant yet straightforward portraits of small moment of coming-of-age I have ever read. "Dog Heaven" explores similar themes but is more pointed and painful, yet less sentimental. Both stories are narrated by Gemma, a young woman recounting her formative experienced growing up on military bases with a tough but tight-knit family. Though not all the stories include Gemma, these are the strongest of the collection. "Snow Angel" and the title story are also very strong sketches of women struggling, questioning, accepting, and fighting. Vaughn's voice is direct; her language lyrical yet concise. Her writing mirrors the characters' difficulties maintaining the balance between past and present, ideals and realities. It is as if her characters' emotions, hopes, and aches are constantly expanding and contracting, unable to either escape their confines or disappear into nothingness.

[Robert Morgan Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Revisiting this iconic collection with introduction by Tobias Wolff who has championed Vaughn's examination of the seldom-explored world of military dependents. Worth reading again. Still holds up.

[René · Rating 3 out of 5]

Si tuviera a alguien a quien contarle todo esto, creo que podría convertirlo en una colección de entretenidas anécdotas.

[Anne]

Found inside: a 4x6 glossy photograph of a cat, and a library hold slip dated 9/25/08.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Sweet Talk" is a slim but enjoyable collection of stories. It was selected by Tobias Wolff as the winner of a contest, which makes sense, because Vaughn and Wolff are both primarily writers of literary short fiction and both share a military connection. Wolff served, so military themes enter his work. Vaughn grew up as a military brat at different bases around the world. I'm a sucker for linked story collections (like those of Lewis Nordan), and several of the stories here are linked by their characters--a stern father who is a high-ranking officer at his base, his cantankerous mother-in-law, a mother who denies her own declining health, a sweet-natured brother who ends up serving in Vietnam, and a female narrator who stands in for the author, someone whose left-leaning politics and interest in writing sometimes stand in opposition to her beloved father's gruff demeanor, his role in the military, interest in guns, etc. Most of the stories take place at Fort Niagara, and the combination of the military base and the upstate New York setting makes them unique. "Sweet Talk" is well-worth reading, although occasionally I found the stories to be a bit pat or cookie cutter, with overused literary tropes. Someone is literally staring into the distance, but this is also a metaphor for anxiety about the future. I think Vaughn is a very gifted writer, but her voice would be even stronger if she wasn't trying to write stories for the New Yorker.

[Gregg Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Sweet Talk" is a book that is incredibly easy to read, and unlike most short story collections, it doesn't feel too long. The prose is masterfully fluid and the stories precise and evocative. The only thing lacking here is creativity in the subject matter. Just about every story is about a woman with a graduate degree whose personal history sounds suspiciously like the author's, and it can become repetitive. Those who have read a lot of short story writers of this era will find that the book covers ground that's familiar. The result is a really good first book that would make me excited to see what the author will do next, when she expands her scope and tries something different. However, it seems that was not meant to be, as 30 years later there is still no second book. I don't know why Vaughn never decided to churn out another one, but it's a shame because this one shows a lot of promise.

[Nick Milinazzo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection is about relationships, both familial and romantic. Many of the stories involve a young girl (the author) describing her military family: armed services father, brother, mother, and grandmother. There is a humor and frivolity that run through the pieces, but also an undercurrent of calamity, of trauma. It can be extremely difficult to concoct an entire world within a finite number of pages, let alone imbue them with pathos, but that is precisely what Vaughn does here, beautifully and consistently. Her voice is wry and sorrowful and amusing and lovely and above all, honest. There is an ease to her writing, a confidence that lifts each story beyond the commonplace. A line within the text perfectly encapsulates how I felt: "I was struck by their grace and invention." The real tragedy is that this is the author's only published work. Once you start reading these stories, you immediately want to read them again -- even before the book is finished.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reviewing for the story Dog Heaven which I listened to via the New Yorker Podcast. Having just recently lost a dog to old age and kidney disease, this was the wrong story for me to read since the dog in the story and a bunch of other dogs that we never are introduced to in the story end up dying due to a malicious act by some unnamed character. From the title of the short story, I am not surprised that the dog passed away but still this was made worse by the additional accidental drowning of a child character in the story. In short, this story is a very sad one. I need to read something else less depressing to get myself in a better mood now.

[Artemis · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author definitely has technical mastery over her sentences and craft, as you can tell by her descriptions of the scenery and control over the details. It's a very sort of quiet story, with a silent implosion happening in the background as you watch something normal unfold in the foreground.

However, probably only half of the stories left me with a lasting impression. And her meandering way of writing made it easier for me to lose interest.

Some stories that stuck out were: "Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog", "Kid McArthur", "We're on TC in the Universe", "Dog Heaven".

It feels a little bit like elitist literary fiction, not gonna lie... the very Western kind...

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd heard a few of these stories on the New Yorker fiction podcast and I enjoyed hearing them again along with the rest of collection just as much. Of course, coming from a military background gives me an extra appreciation for that aspect of her stories. But more than that is how she describes the little moments is what really makes it worth reading.

[Moe Lauher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't write reviews normally, but I absolutely love this collection of stories. They are so real. Prior to reading Sweet Talk, I had just finished his collection. Where I'm Calling From which I enjoyed as well. The two are very different but both make the characters come alive. They seem like real people, folks I might have known. I really like this book.

[Leila · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really lovely collection of stories. I enjoyed the overarching themes and through lines that connected some very separate narratives. Would be a great book to add to your list if you’re trying to reach your reading goal!

[Rob Forteath · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories have something of a Reader's Digest tone, except somewhat subversive and occasionally even disturbing. The writing is good, but I didn't find the stories themselves engrossing.

[Elisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

does everyone on goodreads just really like short books?

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crisp, enticing stories-- I had no sense reading them how long ago they were published. A good story stands up to time gone by. What a discovery.

[Diane Hurst · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every single story is exceptional. A wonderful collection.