#355 The Cat Lady’s Kiss- Jerome Charyn
I appreciate the attempt at fantasy and originality in this
story, but I think it falls a bit short. The style is inconsistent and jagged.
What starts out as a straight forward story about a shy, troubled woman caught
in a patriarchal battle for her love, morphs into a story more befitting a
fairy tale (kind of).
Angela is a Latina woman who has never had a real
relationship with a man. Her mother was crazy, her father disturbed, and she
ended in a juvenile detention center. When she comes out, she and a co-worker
begin seeing each other, but a local gangster has his eye on her and sends him
to the hospital. Then, kind of out of nowhere, the writing turns into something
else:
“But she didn’t understand Bronx mountain lore. No woman,
descended from the Dukagjinis or not, could demand a kiss from Lord Leke, the
baba of the Bronx. It was Leke’s right to appear in a woman’s bedroom and
ravish her, even with a husband at her side—it brought luck and long life to
copulate with their lord, and husbands often delivered their own wives…etc.”
Then it kind of alternates back and forth between realism and
fantasy. Perhaps he’s illustrating Angela’s unsound mind, but if he is, it’s a
bit unclear. I absolutely love using fantasy, or skewed styles in a real
setting. However, if you do, it has to be fully used…all or nothing. Here we
are left in a no-man’s land of styles.
No comments:
Post a Comment