Far From Brooklyn

The first book I read this year was pretty damn depressing, even if the writing was good: “You Are Not a Stranger Here,” a collection of short stories by Adam Haslett.

I had looked at it a few years ago, when it came out and received a lot of attention (Pulitzer finalist, National Book Award finalist) but for some reason I didn’t engage with it back in 2002 or thereabouts.

The topic, generally, is mental illness.  Which – possibly – is intrinsically boring, no?

The first story, “Notes for My Biographer,” is the strongest, mainly because it’s leavened with humor, unlike any of the other stories. It opens fast and frenetic and it’s not initially clear if the narrator is crazy or just a blowhard.  It’s really a superb story.

The rest of the book isn’t up to that level.  All of the stories are beautifully crafted; Haslett’s diction is careful and accurate.  But the portraits are unrelievedly, sometimes almost ridiculously, dark.   And the plotting – backstories, really – can be heavy-handed and contrived.   This is particularly so in the long last story of the collection, “The Volunteer,” which is about the faltering relationship of an older woman in a rest home and a high school boy who visits her for volunteer credit at his school.  It’s a good story weighed down by a portentous and melodramatic backstory involving the death of a child and the mysterious appearance of schizophrenic apparition who happens to be named Hester.  Hmmmm, Dark Shadows….

That false weightiness mars other stories, like “The Good Doctor,” which feels like it was inspired by a Newsweek cover story on the methamphetamine epidemic.

But when Haslett is good, as in “Notes for My Biographer” or “The Beginnings of Grief,” a horrifying story in which a depressed teenager allows himself to be beaten up in order to feel a connection with another human, he’s really good.

It’s now been six years since the collection was published.  Haslett supposedly was working on a novel.  Don’t know what’s up with that.