Creatures of Habit

September 10, 2001
The title creatures of McCorkle's third short story collection and eighth book are humans with animal qualities and animals with human qualities. In lesser hands, such a setup could be formulaic, but McCorkle has a poet's skill and the necessary restraint to make the conceit work. The interconnected stories follow the arc of a life span, beginning with the memory of a summer evening in 1970 in smalltown North Carolina. Running in a pack, the neighborhood children follow the mosquito truck and get high on its fumes, talk about murder and suicide, and swim clandestinely in a motel pool. The way these seventh graders deal with their impulses and fears foreshadows their way of handling life's crises as adults. Their candid voices, the foundation of any McCorkle fiction, are heard in the remaining 11 stories. In "Snipe," six-year-old Caroline realizes how vulnerable her bullying older brother is. "Chickens" features another unmasking, this one performed by the narrator, a woman on her honeymoon with perhaps the wrong man. In "Hominids," the husbands duke it out for the role of Alpha Male at a reunion, while the wives retreat to the kitchen. This is all background to the narrator's recollection of her sympathetic reaction to a model of Lucy at the science museum. McCorkle's two chief strengths are her earthiness and her command of narrative voices, and she is at the top of her game here. The stories are at once intricate and compulsively readable, redolent of the small failures and triumphs of human life. 16-city author tour.

July 1, 2001
A classy publisher of literary fiction and one of the ablest contemporary practitioners of the short story art combine to produce a superlative compendium of tales set in North Carolina. What makes Southern writers so good? McCorkle's economically worded stories are arguably the equal of the best of Eudora Welty, Truman Capote, or Flannery O'Connor. These deceptively simple animal-titled tales resonate and entertain, with people in one story migrating without warning to another story, further illuminating character and motivation. Themes explore the infidelity of spouses, the fears of childhood, and the terror of senile old age. It is hard to pick favorites from among these dozen all-too-human tales, but the unnamed animal groomer of "Dogs" will make you laugh as she narrates why she's come to prefer dogs to men. You'll also be startled along with the wife in "Snakes" when she discovers a disagreeable truth right next door, and you'll feel for the gentle souls (both animal and human) in "Monkeys" and "Turtles." McCorkle is the award-winning, best-selling author of both novels (Carolina Moon) and short stories (Final Vinyl Days). Recommended for all libraries. Jo Manning, Barry Univ. Lib., Miami Shores, FL

Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2001
This is McCorkle's third collection of short stories, following, most recently, " Final Vinyl "Days (1998). All 12 stories are set in the fictional town of Fulton, North Carolina, and are named after animals, which either loom large as central metaphors or serve as background. Much darker than is typical of McCorkle's often whimsical fiction, these stories are shot through with a sense of deep sadness that is only partially concealed by the author's dry and acerbic humor. In "Snakes," an "evolved" married couple tries to shut out a poisonous, nosey neighbor by reciting a hilarious litany of television trivia. In "Snipe," two siblings, the victims of a cruel practical joke pulled by older relatives, are able to comfort each other with small talk. The best of her work is, at once, unsettling and moving. McCorkle, author, too, of five novels, writes near-perfect dialogue and is able to create powerful emotional moods within the space of a few paragraphs. Her stories will appeal to fans of Jane Hamilton and Lee Smith.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)