A writer friend sent me Maile Meloy’s new short-story collection, Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It. Here’s the first paragraph of the first story, “Travis, B.”:
“Chet Morgan grew up in Logan, Montana, at a time when kids weren’t supposed to get polio anymore. In Logan, they still did, and he had it before he was two. He recovered, but his right hip never fit in the socket, and his mother always thought he would die young.”
Not your usual contemporary story beginning. Meloy is still in her thirties, but she writes like an older person, someone who’s seen it all, a kind of Munro-Hemingway hybrid. Her writing is spare, translucent, vivid. These stories feature characters going to the edge of something – betrayal, murder, a love affair – sometimes plunging off that edge, but more often pulling back. Eight of the eleven stories feature male narrators, inarticulate but deep-feeling guys in complicated situations. She’s even written a short-story version of a Bruce Springsteen song (“Lovely Rita”): lonely, orphaned Stephen, who’s stuck in his beater Rhode Island town working on the new nuclear power plant and falling in love with the wrong girl. It’s set in 1975 and refers to “Born to Run,” and it’s a terrific story. (Though in my book a great Springsteen song will always beat a great short story.)
Many of these stories are set in Montana, which has probably led readers to compare her to Annie Proulx. I see more of a resemblance to Ellen Gilchrist, with Meloy’s close focus on family: middle-aged brothers who can’t stop fighting, even on double-black-diamond ski trails; teenage girls who adore their fathers and get subtly betrayed by them.
Meloy is a novelist, too, but I hope she keeps writing short stories. I can’t wait to read more of her work.