{"id":9118,"date":"2022-07-22T12:24:52","date_gmt":"2022-07-22T18:24:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/?p=9118"},"modified":"2022-11-07T16:42:09","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T22:42:09","slug":"salvation-in-the-sugar-bowl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/golf\/lifestyle\/9118\/salvation-in-the-sugar-bowl","title":{"rendered":"Salvation in the Sugar Bowl?"},"content":{"rendered":"\"Library<\/a>\n

[As a Library Thing Early Reviewer I’m in the running to be sent books in exchange for a review. It’s a bit of a lottery \u2013 you choose one or two books from scores offered each month, and maybe one shows up, or not. This one did.]<\/em><\/p>\n

The characters in Jessica Treadway\u2019s latest story collection, Infinite Dimensions<\/em> (Delphinium Books, $27.50) being human, are flawed. We\u2019re not talking tragic flaws here; there\u2019s nothing out-sized about her protagonists or, necessarily, their problems. They\u2019re not English or Scottish kings, just regular folks.<\/p>\n

\"infinite-dimensions\"<\/a>There\u2019s the bank executive who uneasily hires a women she knows, from when they were both patients in a psychiatric hospital, regrets it, and then makes questionable moves to have her fired. A college philosophy student who passes off as his own a paper his cousin has written for him. A couple whose relationship began because both suffered from dizziness, then runs into trouble when one of them is cured. A woman who upends her entire family because her theft of a cake from someone\u2019s car has been discovered.<\/p>\n

In the longest piece in the book, the richly textured \u201cSky Harbor,\u201d a woman makes the miscalculation of telling her dying son that his late father may<\/em> have committed an act of sexual predation that he went to prison for, despite his steadfast claims of innocence.<\/p>\n

Treadway isn\u2019t being bleak, or cruel; the stories are deft enough to pack in compassion for the characters, even when they take, usually, the wrong turn. And in \u201cCliff Walk\u201d she has some fun with a couple, both writers of stories, who come at it in different ways. Stuart \u201c…set out to celebrate the more positive side of life: people doing the right thing, even if nobody else knew it; feelings of inspiration, admiration, hope and\u2014most importantly\u2014love.\u201d<\/p>\n

Valerie\u2019s stories, on the other hand, perfectly describe Treadway\u2019s: \u201c[They] tended toward the dark and sad; they were internal explorations of people nobody would look at twice on the street, or suspect to have the depths she discovered in them\u2026.Her characters were not generous or relaxed or optimistic, but you understood that they wished more than anything to be all of these, and more\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

Valerie and Stuart also have a minor debate over a story by Russian writer Anna Chaykovskaya, about a housewife forced to confront her humdrum existence by a persistently questioning sugar bowl that suddenly begins talking to her.<\/p>\n

\"Jessica<\/a>

Jessica Treadway<\/p><\/div>\n

This is more literary playfulness from Treadway, since Chaykovskaya is her own creation, most notably in the story \u201cProvidence,\u201d in which she appears. But in all but the last, title story, she is mentioned, or there is a reference to the story about the talking sugar bowl.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t arch. Readers are, after all, in sure hands; Treadway has written four novels and two other story collections, including Please Come Back to Me<\/em>, which won the 2010 Flannery O\u2019Connor Award for Short Fiction.<\/p>\n

The references come along briefly, wittily and effortlessly, and the sugar bowl is a suitable symbol throughout in any case, for characters who should be paying closer attention to their\u2014possibly\u2014wiser inner voices.<\/p>\n

July 22, 2022<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[As a Library Thing Early Reviewer I’m in the running to be sent books in exchange for a review. It’s… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":9120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[670,100586,18],"tags":[1029901,1035307,1035341,1035342],"class_list":["post-9118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rummaging-around-in-the-bag","category-the-bookshelf","category-lifestyle","tag-library-thing","tag-short-stories","tag-jessica-treadway","tag-infinite-dimensions"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2022\/07\/Treadway_photo.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9118"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9126,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9118\/revisions\/9126"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}