House Parties
In the short stories of Lynn Levin’s wry, tragicomic collection House Parties, some people struggle; others behave badly.
In “Tell Us About Your Experience,” an office worker who’s sick of filling out satisfaction surveys decides to rebel. Elsewhere, Henry Harris attends the funeral of a man who shared his same name just to “vamp his own self-esteem” by way of eulogies. In another story, a teenage boy saves his parents’ marriage by scapegoating a Russian dissident violinist whom his mother is enamored with.
The book’s women are lonely: one is estranged from her daughter and takes up community service, caring for an elderly woman in a retirement home during a pandemic. In a magical realist entry, a Jewish woman fashions a golem out of meatloaf to be her companion. Elsewhere, the fear of being single leads a woman to tolerate dating a pugnacious man. People engage in strange, petty actions too: in “Sendings,” a nosy woman “blank mails, not blackmails” her neighbor for snubbing her on the street.
Commanding with their distanced points-of-view, these tales unveil the emotions between the truths people tell themselves and the truths they present to others. In “House Parties,” the hypocrisy of a neoliberal, nature-loving planned community is exposed by the wanton killing of a coyote. And in “Evermay Blair,” a school vice principal kills a girl in an act of vehicular manslaughter; his anguished efforts at self-redemption are gripping and tragic. In another tale, a woman who inherited her grandmother’s French milliner papier-mache head struggles to rid herself of it, but learns that psychic burdens aren’t so easily disposed of.
Morality balances on a precipice in the lingering short stories of House Parties, which are unflinching in exposing how people sometimes know what’s right, but still choose to do otherwise.
Reviewed by
Elaine Chiew
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
