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Comparisons of Roxana Robinson's short stories to the work of another canny miniaturist of exurban-upper-middle-class-life in the Northeast, John Cheever, suggest something of her depth but not her special distinction: an ability to reveal in an unanticipated flash the emotional isolation separating men from women, children from parents, and our older selves from the expectations of our youth.
The fifteen stories in Asking for Love, several already published in such magazines as Harper's and The Atlantic Monthly, range widely in feeling, situation, and characters, but most take place in the privileged world of townhouses, aging summer places, sailing lessons, and boarding schools.
Still, the divorced men and women stunned by the collapse of their marriages and the hostility of their children, the middle-aged lovers nervously balancing their acute loneliness against the demands of family, or the teenagers suddenly learning to understand their parents as victims or heroines-these credibly flawed but quietly courageous human beings in Asking for Love could have sprung from almost any socioeconomic background, despite the golf pants and deck shoes. At the same time, the defining dilemmas of divorce, child care, and diminished income render their problems specific to the America of the last decade or two.
Some readers may fault Robinson for a tendency, perhaps unconscious, toward portraying the male as always the less psychologically astute or dependably caring in romance and other relationships, but others may well cheer and give her high fives. If nothing else, this habit can weaken a story's dramatic impact by foreshadowing the plot. A notable exception to the rule is "Mr. Sumarsono," chosen for The Best American Short Stories 1994, in which a precocious young girl learns just how much smarter, and kinder, is an older man she thinks a fool.
Occasionally, Robinson takes surprising risks, such as writing in the voice of a teenaged boy who visits a black community in Florida during the legally segregated 1950s. These are commendable experiments, but she is most eloquent and powerful when exploring the sundered inner landscapes of middle-aged, middle-class divorced women who wear little makeup and bleed silently within.
The title story, in particular, is devastating in its clear, strong depiction of a sensitive lover and mother who is not herself loved in any quarter. In "King of the Sky," the loss of a child is so indelibly evoked, though the events themselves are revealed by indirection, that a lifetime of permanent grief and guilt is made palpable on the page. In "The Nile in Flood," a second marriage that has been undertaken in polite, sensible fashion is unforgettably unmasked as a sexless hell of arid solitude.
In the end, however, Asking for Love is in no sense a depressing or mournful collection, for Robinson's characters are stronger than the disasters of love and family life. Their dialogue is typically witty and accurate in aim, and their confrontations with emotional pain can become acts of potential deliverance. These are stories that can be admired for their dexterity and cherished for their conviction that the heart is central.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.