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He notices and notes all the little hurts we inflict on ourselves and each other in marriage, divorce, infidelity, and other familial relationships. He also catches the fear his characters have of losing their footing in an uncertain world, and the moment of grace that occurs when one person reaches out for help and another extends a hand to break the fall.
Lott's new short story collection, How to Get Home, contains 16 exquisite stories and a novella. Many of the stories are set in winter. The ice and cold suit the grayness of these characters' lives, yet also emphasize the crystalline purity of Lott's writing. This is most obvious in the shorter stories, some as short as four or five pages, in which every word is clear, clean, and biting in its appropriateness.
The stories in How to Get Home depict ordinary working men and women trying to live simple, secure lives as best they can. When circumstances such as a death in the family (as in "After Leston" and "From Ulysses, Kansas") or the loss of a job (as in "Driveway") disrupt these lives, the characters realize how precious and how delicate their existences are.
The opening novella reacquaints readers with Jewel Hilburn, the title character of Lott's novel Jewel. A powerful book, it is the story of a woman's insistence on finding a better life for her mentally disabled daughter, regardless of the consequences. In "After Leston," Jewel at last admits to herself the role her determination played in her husband's death. She recognizes the Faustian bargain she made: In order to save her daughter, she destroyed her husband. She brought him west from the gentle rhythms of Mississippi to Los Angeles, where he lost his self-respect and couldn't find it again in the harsh California sun.
The fragility of self-respect is a recurrent theme in How to Get Home. In the title story, an executive is hospitalized soon after moving his family to a new town. Emerging from the hospital weak and disoriented, he realizes that the importance he has placed on himself might be overblown, and that the world has continued on its course without him. In "Between Jobs," two men struggling mightily to maintain their images of themselves find a moment of respite as each drops his respective load in an unguarded moment. And in "After Ulysses," a son sees at last the emotional prison his father has trapped himself in and mourns the loss of what might have been had the man been able to let go of his hard-shelled pride.
Like Andre Dubus and Raymond Carver, Lott goes deep into his characters' thoughts, often revealing through a deft turn of phrase more than the character realizes he or she is letting on. He paints a tableau of human failings, but also describes with broad, energetic strokes how the smallest expressions of strength, compassion, and hope can change lives. How to Get Home is a stunning example of Lott's vision and talent.
Laurie Parker works as Marketing Manager for Vanderbilt University Press and is a frequent contributor to this publication.
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