Book Review

Short, But to the Point

A Providence-born author named a finalist for National Book Award in Fiction

East Side Monthly Magazine ·

Edith Pearlman is perhaps the best short story writer you’ve never heard of.

Born and raised right here in Providence and occasionally described playfully as the “Bard of Brookline,” she has devoted her life to writing short stories, winning numerous literary awards in the process, including this year’s national PEN/Malamud Award. This past January, her latest book, Binocular Vision: New & Selected Stories, received a spectacular front-page review in the Sunday New York Times Book Review section. Yet Ms. Pearlman continues to churn out several short stories every year in relative obscurity.

In her glowing NY Times review of Pearlman’s book, author Rosanna Robinson expressed her own puzzlement about why Ms. Pearlman remains so under appreciated by the general public. “It certainly can’t be the fault of her writing, which is intelligent, perceptive, funny and quite beautiful,” Robinson noted, adding, “And her works appear repeatedly in Best American Short Stories so she should be better known.” This same sentiment was echoed by best-selling author Ann Patchett who posed it in question form as part of her introduction to Ms. Pearlman’s latest book: “To that great list of human mysteries which includes the construction of the pyramids and the persistent use of Styrofoam as packing material, let me add this one: Why isn’t Edith Pearlman famous?”

Fortunately for both Ms. Pearlman and the general reading public, this lack of recognition is likely to change this month. Her new book has just been selected as a finalist for the prestigious 2011 National Book Award for Fiction, perhaps the country’s top literary award, the results of which will be announced shortly.

Recently, Ms. Pearlman came down from Boston, where she now resides, to share her writing philosophy with the Providence Rotary Book Club, gathered at the East Side home of one of their members, Barbara Harris, a cousin of the author. Ms. Pearlman admitted that even after all these years, writing for her remains a long and painstaking process. “It can take me hours to get a single paragraph right,” she confessed. She credits a rigorous schedule of regular meetings with close writing colleagues as important to ensure a consistent flow of several short stories per year.

For subject matter, Pearlman often draws on the events around her. Her characters are bright, urbane, generally well traveled, and encompass the most prosaic to the most fanciful. Many live in the fictional upscale Boston suburb of “Godolphin.” And while many of her stories draw upon her Jewish upbringing and include tales of Holocaust survival, assimilation challenges and the clash of cultures, many more delve into relationships that will resonate with readers of all backgrounds. And, as befits a winner of the O’Henry Award for short stories, most involve an unexpected twist at the finish.

Most of her characters are principled, yet still susceptible to temptation. In “Fidelity,” the editor of a small national travel magazine has nurtured a longing, only occasionally requited, for the wife of his most popular columnist, an aging, somewhat reclusive wordsmith of the highest order. Suddenly, the places in his articles, embellished as always with his usual poetic brilliance, turn out to be fictitious. Yet the readers of his travel pieces are so devoted to the columns, the editor is forced to scramble to fictionalize photos of the imaginary places he describes. It isn’t until the final paragraph that the reasons for all this are made clear.

Ms. Pearlman’s gift is her ability to create beautifully crafted literary pictures of people who are unique and memorable on the one hand, yet are described with such attention to detail, with such precision, we find in them things that are recognizable in ourselves. They often deal with the kind of problems that confront us all: finding ways to adapt to new surroundings, bridging cultural chasms, dealing with the pleasures of the flesh, doing battle with the aging process or worse, the end of life itself.

In the case of the story “Vaquita,” it is an aging community activist and health minister in a small South American banana republic, a survivor of the Holocaust, who comes to terms with the reality that her services are no longer required, and that she is about to be made rootless again. “In Lineage” Pearlman cleverly employs alternating texts; an old aristocratic Russian woman reflects on her heritage in two languages as we the readers and the physicians who are attending her try to unravel the reality of her past.

Some of the stories are told through the vantage point of the young. “Inbound” describes the heart-stopping anxiety that develops when a parent loses sight of a child in strange surroundings. But in Ms. Pearlman’s version, we see the crisis both through the eyes of the parent and the child. In “Hanging Fire,” one of my personal favorites, the protagonist is a shy, insecure young woman just finishing college, who stands paralyzed as to which path she should follow next. She hopes spending some time in Maine with her three closest female relatives, a maiden aunt, her mother and a cousin, will help her decide on those tentative first steps, And lest you think all Ms. Pearlman’s stories deal with the prosaic, there’s “On Junius Bridge” that introduces us to the residents of a guest house located high in the mountains of Hungary near an historic bridge rumored to be a hiding place for trolls who snatch wayward children.

So if you’re looking for something thoughtful and incredibly well-crafted to help while away the hours during the cold and snowy winter evenings ahead, you might very well consider curling up with a cup of tea and a few pages of Pearlman. Her new collection, whether it wins the National Book Award or not, has convinced her many fans, Ann Patchett in particular, that this will be the one to allow Edith to finally “shake off her secret handshake status and take up her rightful position as a national treasure. Put her stories beside those of John Updike and Alice Munro. That’s where they belong.” Check out Binocular Vision to see if you concur.

Binocular Vision: New & Selected Stories Written by Edith Pearlman Published by Lookout Books

Editor’s Note: Born in Providence and educated at Radcliffe where she majored in English, Pearlman currently lives in Brookline with her husband, a psychologist. They have two children, neither of whom she happily reports is a professional writer.

edith pearlman, binocular vision, review, national book award, east side, short stories