In the Gloaming: Stories
Alice Elliott Dark
Simon & Schuster
ISBN 0684865211

If there is a problem with In the Gloaming, it’s that the title story is placed too soon in the book. I suppose there is some benefit to placing the strongest story of a collection right up front, but when it’s this particular story, it makes the rest of the book seem a little anticlimactic. Not that the rest of the book is shirking it’s responsibility in any way. Each story holds its own, and to Alice Elliot Dark’s benefit, they each make a place for themselves following the harrowing introduction of "In the Gloaming."

"Home," for instance, at the opposite bookend, presents us with a woman (unfortunately named Lil Pepper, which I was barely able to look past at first) in the midst of confronting Alzheimer’s, saying goodbye to her home—and hello to a retirement community--while at the same time not really understanding the necessity of the move:

The long, narrow room was divided neatly in half by a wooden shelf, on one side of which was a sofa and on the other, a bed, creating "areas" for living and sleeping. Lil Pepper surveyed it in an instant, then headed for the door.

(See, you had trouble with the name Lil Pepper too. Admit it.) The story reveals itself by layers, moving gradually toward an acceptance of the situation. The questions that remain are those that simply cannot be answered. Does she accept her situation in the end or is she simply resigned to it? And what is the difference?

Alice Elliot Dark’s style is nothing short of novelistic. When setting the book aside after just finishing a few of the stories in the collection, I had to ask myself which would have been more complex and satisfying: this short story or a novel? Each of these stories is as moving as the last. Each glimpses a few lives and disparate lives influenced therein.

"The Jungle Lodge" tells the story of two sisters on a Jungle vacation with their stepfather. Many of Dark’s stories are full of expectations and revelations. Somehow we expect that something is going on in the Jungle that we don’t yet know about, and the characters are bound to be blindsided in some way. In an Alice Elliot Dark story, this usually means we’re going to be blindsided as well, probably more than once.

"Triage" is a brief (the only story in the collection that is), kind of silly but very lovely and entertaining story of the telephone relationship between a mother and daughter. This one doesn’t explore the depths of relationships quite as strikingly as her others, but even in this short space it manages to lull us into a kind of cool enjoyment, then gives us a smack.

"The Tower" is probably the lightest piece in the entire book, and asks the reader to bite off a bit of coincidence that might strike us as ridiculous. Luckily the prose itself is entertaining enough to keep me going.

"The Secret Spot" is primarily about assumptions, about how we might read something one way when it is actually the reality is actually the opposite. It’s about how we fool ourselves, how we stay in love despite any evidence that we should fall out of love, and how that colors our entire lives. A very moving and simple story.

"Close" is probably the most disappointing story in the collection, if only because it never seems to make up its mind about what’s going to happen. And I really want it to. But even though I want it to, I don’t want to read any more of it, so I was just as happy to see it end.

"Maniacs" is an extremely moving story of two sisters, one whose traits are primarily illusory, the other whose entire life is in the concrete. It begins:

Silent sound, vivid absence, pressure from beyond the quilts and walls, the taste of pennies on the tongue; several miles apart two sisters awoke within moments of each other and instinctively knew it had snowed. Diana, the little sister at thirty-four and still known as the pretty one, didn’t even have to confirm it by looking; she smiled; hadn’t she prayed for this?

The story takes place as one sister (Margaret) puts her children on a plane to their father’s home in California, while the other sister (Diana) chases yet another dream/remembrance. A vivid, gut-wrenching tale.

But I keep thinking about the title story. When I first read "In the Gloaming" several years ago, my impression of it was of a story of almost supernatural strength. It is one of those stories that tells you that you are in the hands of a master storyteller, and even as you read it you recognize that you are never going to forget it.

"In the Gloaming" is the story of a mother caring for her dying son. (Christopher Reeves made a terrible movie of the story a few years ago. I hope if you haven’t read the story that you also haven’t seen the movie. The movie was just another movie about someone dying. The story is terrifying and beautiful.) The layers of the mother/son relationship are revealed in a series of conversations they have in the early evening (a time of day, or a quality of dusklight, known as "the gloaming")—conversations like they have never had before:

He wanted to talk again, suddenly. During the days, he still brooded, scowling at the swimming pool from the vantage point of his wheelchair, where he sat covered with blankets in spite of the summer heat. In the evenings, though, he became more like his old self: his old old self, really. He became sweeter, the way he’d been as a child, before he began to gird himself with layers of irony and clever remarks. He spoke with an openness that astonished her.

It isn’t often that I turn to the last page of a story and begin openly weeping. With this story, I did. This one story makes the entire book worth buying. But I warn you. Read it last. Start reading with the second story, "Dreadful Language," (which is an entertaining and moving tale of a woman’s life and her relationship with a dead lover, even after he is long dead), and don’t turn back to page one until you’ve worked your way through the entire book. Save "In the Gloaming" for last, for a climactic finish that will leave you utterly limp, praying that not a word of the story is from life, but knowing full well that in excellent stories like "In the Gloaming," every word is true.




Recommended: Yes