A Message for Mr. Lazarus
by Barbara Lambert
Cormorant Books, 2000
Reviewed by Joy Hewitt Mann
This collection runs the gamut from stories that don't
quite work, stories that work well, and stories that stand teetering on
the edge of greatness. But no story here fails; all are enjoyable, if
not all readable.
Understandably, the title story "A Message for
Mr. Lazarus," winner of The Malahat Review's novella prize,
is one of the better offerings in this collection, but not the best. It
suffers from the same malady that affects many of the stories here,
namely, the story line is confusing at times, not being sure whether it
is about the narrator, the character that the narrator is telling us
about, both, or some extraneous character such a s a wife or husband.
Often, too much background material is given, more than the
well-educated reader needs or wants.
One disconcerting feature of
Lambert's writing - a personal bias, I suppose - is her use of asides;
that is, phrases bracketed or italicized, or otherwise set apart from
the narrative, as in the first page of the title story "A Message
for Mr. Lazarus."
"And when I tell his story to myself now,
some years later (I have been confined to my bed these last months, with
little to do but run through the events of my life, which turn out to be
lamentably few), I like to imagine all of it - all of it - from his
point of view."
Lambert tells a story out of a story - first person
narrative speculating o n another character's life - a style which can
be confusing when it first happens, but a reader can get used to it
fairly quickly. It is part of Lambert's style.
Although this collection
does not deliver much variety - something this reader admires in a
writer - it is not necessarily a bad thing. If you enjo y Lambert's
style you have a plethora of enjoyment ahead. This reader, however,
finds that she gets a tad bored when all the stories in a collection
have a sameness, as is the case here.
But these are all good stories,
though the first "An Incident" falls slightly to fair.
I found it worth my while to read them, worth my while primarily because
of the two gems that hide in the shadow of the Malahat winner:
"Evolution" and "The Queen of Saxony."
Whereas the
awkward story-within-a-story format of most of the work in this
collection might be a flaw, in "The Queen of Saxony" that same
awkwardness of style is what makes the story so rewarding, for it is the
story of a woman whose mind works in awkward, nongeometric lines.
"It can't be helped. At the heart of any story such as this there
is a moment like the centre of a chocolate cream. Intelligent people
wince, climb into their Jeep Cherokees, head for exercise class. Adele
knows this too. Adele knows that everyone she knows would close the book
at this point.
"They would sneak back later, all the same. They
would creep back with their plain brown wrappers and their flashlights
just because of who she is, just because they would love to see her make
a fool of herself for once, just because they had to know what happened,
plain self-admitted prurience.
"What happened indeed? What
happened, Adele? How could you?"
I loved this story. For
most readers, I believe that one, or two stories will stand out. It is
all a matter of taste. With this collection, definitely so.
And so, I
come to "Evolution," a short story which begins with the line,
"Elephants are clouds that have been sentenced to earth." And
finally, Lambert sticks to the point, sticks to the story, with the
thoughts of Terry Gambril, a "washed-up geezer of not even
fifty" lumbering across the page. The author is happily in hiding.
"He grabs the pen at last. `My name is Terry Gambril,' he gets
down, in a wild looping hand. "He has to give a nod to that, give
credit where it is due. 'My name is Ozymandias' . . . . He can
hear his dad declaiming that, of a Sunday morning, while Terry's mother
stares out the window at the auto-body shop across the alley and lights
another cigarette. 'My name is Ozymandias. King of Kings. Look on my
Works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Proffering a plate of bacon and fried
bread."
Lambert is at her best when she sticks with one person
telling their own story, as in "Evolution." In comparison, the
other stories seem mere writer's acrobatics.
For the reader with time
and patience this is a worthwhile collection; for those who seek the
illumination of one blinding story, you may find it here. If all the
stories in this collection were "Queens" or "Evolutions"
this would be an award-worthy collection. Lambert has a way with words
that given a few years could see her up there with the big names of
Canadian literature.
"I would love to illuminate the ticking of the
clockwork of the universe, I would love to be able to make clear in the
curve of a woman's cheek, or the lines of a rock, or the whiteness of a
flower, how everything relates to every other thing . . . I'd love to
have an artist's verve . . ., or the nerve to wrap the Reichstag, the
confidence that rests on supreme technical control." -- from
"Where the Bodies are Kept."
Joy Hewitt Mann is the author of
Clinging to Water (Boheme Press, 2000), a short story collection. |
