Getting Over Tom by Abigail Thomas

This is the last time I'm reading a book of short stories for a very long time. Next time I will treat myself to a whole long book. I like the short stories fine, and they suit my busy lifestyle (la-di-dah), but I am SICK of writing reviews on books of short stories. In fact, I bet it takes longer for me to write this review than it did for me to read this humorous book. And it is, mighty funny, and on top of it mighty familiar because the ideas and expressions Thomas just trips over in passing are the kinds of things my friends and I say to each other. Within three pages of the story Sisters I found two good examples:

1. (casual, yet accurate critique of parent)

"In 1968?" My mother squints up at the ceiling briefly. "Banging the boss probably," she replies. This is a typically inappropriate bit of information, given that I am thirteen and Janet will be ten tomorrow. Then she gets to her feet and leaves the room. She is always leaving the room to do something important somewhere else. A foot out every door. The woman is double-parked through life."

2. (passing references to things mystic and un-scientific)

"The thing is, I am fairly sure that I was once alive in Egypt. Certain shades of blue have always given me a funny feeling, as well as certain shapes of bugs, and I recognize them now to be the colors and scarabs famiiar to ancient Egyptians. This might be why my memory is so bad, it has to stretch back so far. Janet is a newer soul, she remembers the things of this life better. Our mother is a brand-new soul, and it is tough to have a beginner for a mother. How else to explain her behaviour? "

The stories are about different women, but they are organized starting with the voices of children and finishing with a narrator in her mid-forties. In between, a young girl speaks with a ghost; an inauspicious marriage is formed, and matures; and in the last part grown women feature, women with kids and grandkids. I began to get bummed out as I realized that a book like this takes half a lifetime to write, and then some twit like me comes along and reads it in one sitting.

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