![\"\"](\"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/1healy1104.jpg\" "\\"IT")
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I wanted to like all the stories here more than I actually did \u2013 in other words, while Nick Healy has definite talent in his short fiction, he doesn\u2019t always employ it to the best use. Two of his ten stories here \u2013 \u201cThe Baroness\u201d and \u201cUncle Ed\u2019s Packard\u201d \u2013 are first-rate, while others, laden with vulgar words and gratuitous lambering (people using the toilet, for example), describe \u201cnatural\u201d behavior one assumes but would rather not read about. So why do this \u2013 or use vulgar euphemisms? Healy tosses it all in and lets it brew up \u2013 not always to an edible portion. He also uses clich\u00e9s (\u201cbust my chops\u201d) and even split infinitives. Healy belongs to the school of writing who seem to believe getting the essence of human experience in short fiction can be done any old way. I\u2019m trying to remember if Dorothy Parker or Virginia Woolf or Thomas Hardy or Helen Simpson ever wrote with such carefree abandon. (Of course, Simpson is the only one now living \u2013 born in 1959. So far, she hasn\u2019t \u2013 and is one of the U. K\u2019s most significant short-story writers.) As for Healy, from his photograph I\u2019d say he\u2019s near 40 or so and since this is his first book, perhaps we should \u201ccut him some slack\u201d \u2013 to use one of Barack Obama\u2019s favorite trite phrases. (Don\u2019t misunderstand; I voted for him!)<\/p>\n
So now that I\u2019ve complained a bit about Healy\u2019s excrescences, there is \u201cThe Baroness\u201d \u2013 gleaned from his six-year stint in St. Paul covering the state legislature for a now-defunct publication. Unlike one critic who did not read this book carefully (i.e., Anthony Bukoski, reviewing for the Minneapolis Star Tribune<\/em>), I saw that the female character dubbed The Baroness is not<\/em> a lawmaker but rather one of the protagonist\u2019s reporter colleagues. The speaker also has a possessive girlfriend named Kayla, who discovers the Baroness in his apartment, although they haven\u2019t reached intimacy yet. The Baroness is really Liz, unaware of her other moniker until the very end of the story. Here is the point-of-view, presumably the author\u2019s, in response to being found out:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019ve never been so screwed in my life, never been<\/p>\n served such a shit sandwich as this, and I could think<\/p>\n of no excuse or apology worth the breath. I stood there.<\/p>\n I said nothing. When Liz pulled on her jacket and strode<\/p>\n between Kayla and me, I didn\u2019t try to stop her. I looked<\/p>\n at Kayla. Her reddened, tense-jawed face showed a<\/p>\n different beauty than I\u2019d seen before. I looked at that face<\/p>\n and saw hostility and heartbreak \u2013 nothing masking them,<\/p>\n all wide open and honest. I looked at that face, and felt<\/p>\n happy Kayla still hadn\u2019t walked away. Not yet, not yet.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As I said, my dislike of vulgar language comes from a lifetime reading authors such as Woolf and Parker. So when a contemporary writer indulges in \u201cshit sandwich,\u201d there is only resigned distaste. Still, Healy knows how<\/em> to tell a story \u2013 and the general critical responses, aside from Bukoski\u2019s error-laden notice, have been fairly positive. The M.F.A. program in Mankato (south central Minnesota) is where Healy got his \u201ccredentials\u201d as a creative writer after leaving St. Paul. He and his family decided to stay in Mankato after he took his degree, finding solace and camaraderie in the small community of writers there. \u201cHealy writes with enormous sympathy for his characters,\u201d wrote Amy Goetzman in Minn Post<\/em> (21 November 2012), \u201cmindful that one\u2019s 20\u2019s are full of natural missteps \u2013 and sometimes the following decades, too. These are real people, sometimes kind and virtuous and often clumsy and unfocused and accidentally funny.\u201d I\u2019d say she\u2019s right \u2013 and she didn\u2019t complain about banal phrases or usage errors, as this one-time grammar and composition teacher is prone to do.<\/p>\n In sum, Nick Healy\u2019s It Takes You Over<\/em> has some fairly decent work \u2013 ten stories, 190 pages \u2013 and for a writer with St. Paul roots transplanted a bit south but still in Minnesota, his \u201cpoetry\u201d emerges from his portrayals, as Ms. Goetzman said in her piece, reminding the reader of the unfinished and imperfect mortal within each of us.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n New Rivers Press, 2012. $14.95, paper. Moorhead, Minnesota, USA.\u00a0 Order your copy here<\/a>\u00a0or, for e-reader, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I wanted to like all the stories here more than I actually did \u2013 in other words, while Nick Healy has definite talent in his short fiction, he doesn\u2019t always employ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4330"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23725,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4330\/revisions\/23725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}