Berkley Publishing Group
May 2003
When it comes to genres "short story" is the ugly sister in a fairytale. By far the most neglected of the three big literary forms, short story writers aren't even rewarded with a proper title. You've got your poets, your novelists, your…uh, short storyists? Most have that favorite poem and an all-time greatest novel read, but how many people can name their favorite short story? For many people it's hard to even name a single short story. Maybe O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi," or Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher," perhaps "The Lady & The Tiger" with it's ultimate cliffhanger ending, but most commonly if you take a survey the answer you'll hear is "That story by that author (who, coincidentally, is also a novelist)".
After reading Timothy Schaffert's latest work, "The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters," there is no doubt that Schaffert is a fantastic short story writer and the fact that he won one of the highest honors for his genre, being included on the short list for the O. Henry award, is no surprise.
May 2003
When it comes to genres "short story" is the ugly sister in a fairytale. By far the most neglected of the three big literary forms, short story writers aren't even rewarded with a proper title. You've got your poets, your novelists, your…uh, short storyists? Most have that favorite poem and an all-time greatest novel read, but how many people can name their favorite short story? For many people it's hard to even name a single short story. Maybe O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi," or Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher," perhaps "The Lady & The Tiger" with it's ultimate cliffhanger ending, but most commonly if you take a survey the answer you'll hear is "That story by that author (who, coincidentally, is also a novelist)".
After reading Timothy Schaffert's latest work, "The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters," there is no doubt that Schaffert is a fantastic short story writer and the fact that he won one of the highest honors for his genre, being included on the short list for the O. Henry award, is no surprise.
"The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters" is dark, bitterly funny, strangely sexual account of two orphaned sisters living in a antique store, desperately trying to make order of the past. A fairytale gone awry, it has everything you could ever ask for in a short story with one major problem. It's a novel.
The story takes place in dusty roads of rural Nebraska. Lily, the plump good-natured sister, and Mabel, her twiggy dark counterpart, are two sisters whose sibling rivalry involves everything from attempted boyfriend stealing, one sister moving into an abandoned school bus for privacy, to almost swallowing a wooden doll out of spite. After their father committed suicide while they were very young Mom ran off to Mexico, leaving them to grow up in their grandmother's junk shop, a grandmother who "for a long time had been nothing more than a squeak of the floorboards and a thin stick of light beneath her shut bedroom door". Grandma runs off herself in the first few pages leaving our main characters orphans, in proper Disney fashion.
The story takes place in dusty roads of rural Nebraska. Lily, the plump good-natured sister, and Mabel, her twiggy dark counterpart, are two sisters whose sibling rivalry involves everything from attempted boyfriend stealing, one sister moving into an abandoned school bus for privacy, to almost swallowing a wooden doll out of spite. After their father committed suicide while they were very young Mom ran off to Mexico, leaving them to grow up in their grandmother's junk shop, a grandmother who "for a long time had been nothing more than a squeak of the floorboards and a thin stick of light beneath her shut bedroom door". Grandma runs off herself in the first few pages leaving our main characters orphans, in proper Disney fashion.
The story, one of more words than action, follows Lily's quest with her fiancée to find her mother in Mexico, and Mabel's equally difficult quest to find herself amongst a home filled with other people's memories.
How do you sum up "The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters?" Basically it's the classic story of girl meets boy, girl marries boy, boy gets lice. Maybe it's more like girl searches for meaning to life, girl instead finds a plastic toy that was supposed to be buried in her father's coffin. Or how about girl meets boy, girl is attracted to boy, girl pretends to have eye implant of boy's dead sister to sleep with him? Okay let's start this over, because, though "The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters" deals with two rival sisters, one good and beautiful one dark and sinister, both struggling to survive the transition from puberty into some semblance of adulthood, is not a story of sappy romantic encounters, nor does it come with preachy morals nor a "happily ever after". It's a fairytale that decides somewhere along the line that maybe there isn't such a thing as good vs. evil, and maybe some answers are better left alone.
How do you sum up "The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters?" Basically it's the classic story of girl meets boy, girl marries boy, boy gets lice. Maybe it's more like girl searches for meaning to life, girl instead finds a plastic toy that was supposed to be buried in her father's coffin. Or how about girl meets boy, girl is attracted to boy, girl pretends to have eye implant of boy's dead sister to sleep with him? Okay let's start this over, because, though "The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters" deals with two rival sisters, one good and beautiful one dark and sinister, both struggling to survive the transition from puberty into some semblance of adulthood, is not a story of sappy romantic encounters, nor does it come with preachy morals nor a "happily ever after". It's a fairytale that decides somewhere along the line that maybe there isn't such a thing as good vs. evil, and maybe some answers are better left alone.
Despite its many merits, "The Phantom Limbs" never quite gets to the point of literary ecstasy. There's always that slight twinge where you never completely forget you are merely looking at ink on paper. Four or five scenes in the novel were so vivid and intensely metaphorical, that it leaves you almost wishing those were the only scenes. It was as if a naturally wonderful short story was trapped inside of a more marketable format. As Schaffert's first novel, it is commendable, yet still teetering (though an inch closer to the "good" end) on the seesaw of mediocrity.
