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Parallel
Bound by circumstance and tradition, and mocked by the turnpike that bisects their farmland, folks folded into the ridges beneath Timmons Mountain sense the world is literally passing them by and look for ways to catch up: veterans of several wars seek salvation through escape; a female garbage collector reconciles death through correlation; a clinical psychologist relies on a fictional detective to manage his obsessions; a housewife finds the mystical on a mountain top; and a discontented Amish woman faces a fate she believes her duplicity has earned her.
Their tales reveal the resilience of the human spirit even as they evince the paradoxical nature of change.
Their tales reveal the resilience of the human spirit even as they evince the paradoxical nature of change.
- GenresShort Stories
278 pages, Paperback
First published October 17, 2014
395 people want to read
About the author
Sharon Erby
2 booksI've been writing forever it seems, but until recently, it was only for myself. I grew up in rural western Pennsylvania, the youngest of eight children, in a home that was full of noise and homemade bread and a shared love of the outdoors and (usually) each other. Life after college took me elsewhere, and across the years I found myself in various jobs as I married and raised four children. I indulged my passion for writing when I returned to college to become certified to teach high school English; I continued my studies at Wilkes University while teaching, and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree.
Although short fiction is my genre of choice, I also write across the genres along with a bit of critical work every now and again. I've been published in some pretty nifty journals, like Slice, Feminist Studies, The Good Men Project Magazine and Florida English; you'll find a smattering of all of this online. I now teach college-level writing (both the academic and creative varieties) and literature as an adjunct and cutivate my own gardens (literally and figuratively) on the farm where we live, in an area where unhistoric acts happen everyday.
Although short fiction is my genre of choice, I also write across the genres along with a bit of critical work every now and again. I've been published in some pretty nifty journals, like Slice, Feminist Studies, The Good Men Project Magazine and Florida English; you'll find a smattering of all of this online. I now teach college-level writing (both the academic and creative varieties) and literature as an adjunct and cutivate my own gardens (literally and figuratively) on the farm where we live, in an area where unhistoric acts happen everyday.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 14, 2014
Forthcoming in The Broadkill Review
Sharon Erby’s linked short fiction collection Parallel, from Harvard Square Editions, weaves together the lives of men and women who struggle to make ends meet in the mountains of south-central Pennsylvania. The characters of Parallel come from various backgrounds, but all of them are tied to the land, tied to the mountain, and tied to the real estate of the human heart. Erby makes good use of setting to illustrate the spiritual connection between the characters who make up the human landscape of these stories. The men and women are combat veterans, academic transplants, poor working class mothers, the Amish, and children dealing with their parents shortcomings. The characters of Parallel possess a restless anxious energy that comes from having to scrape ends together, compromising hopes and dreams to just get by. They are looking for peace, for “the still and always,” a serenity matched and reflected by the landscape of the wilderness around them.
Erby’s work belongs to a rich tradition in American fiction, telling the broad story of a place through a myriad of voices. It’s rewarding work for the reader who can follow the protagonists as they appear throughout the stories. One of the main characters is Brenda, a hard working mother, who might as well be single since her husband is more concerned about drinking than being responsible. And Brenda doesn’t take her problems lying down, she’s a fighter, willing to do whatever it takes to survive. She even finds the love she needs on the side with fellow garbage collector Eddie, who has his own demons. From the outside the reader can see that Eddie is only a tick better than her husband, but Brenda doesn’t seem to mind, or care. She’s looking out for herself so she can be a mother to her sons, and a friend to her loved ones. Erby tells the story of people, and refuses to moralize, regardless of how easy it would be to do so. Her characters are deeply flawed and hurt, but Erby resists the urge to preach, or even present a series of characters who are perfect models. Erby’s interested in the dark, dense matter of humanity, which means pain, heartache, and characters who fuck-up over and over again.
Of particular interest to Erby is the outsider. The outsider is woven into the DNA of these stories from the outset. A Vietnam vet, Martin, struggles with the loss of his leg, and then his progressing alcoholism. His leg, and his alcoholism, are enough to make him an outsider, but its when he comes home drunk one night, ears pricked for the sound of hunting on the mountains that his otherness hits home: “I’m goin’ up,” he said randomly, then, pushing away from Grace to open the door of the old truck. “This time I’m goin’!” But he never does, and you get the sense he never will, having to rely on Grace’s to get him through the night, and life. It’s symbolic of his limitations, of his leg, of how he is stuck in the past. It’s a theme which Erby plays with, exploring the limitations of Brenda, Martin’s daughter, and Brenda’s children, and the other people who live near them. Just how far can one get when you are cut off from the world? The characters live far away from high paying jobs, new industry, or well connected schools. There’s only so much you can do, regardless if you are a disfigured veteran, a pill-head, or a single, pretty Amish woman who wishes for love. And of course, Erby’s characters aren’t just isolated from the larger world, they are isolated from themselves, from their own needs and wants. In one story, Eddie, Brenda’s garbage man lover, tells her what she’s thinking about him, and about her decisions in life, trying to ease her anxiety about their affair, and her lot in life: “ you’re full of it, Mr. Edward Diffenderfer, if you think you can figure out what’s really right—any more than the rest of us morons who are just tryin’ to get through the day. But, B, ya know—it’s all about takin’ things away and findin’ out what’s left. And what’s left is what’s right.” Like most of us, these characters have to suffer through their problems before they find direction, even if it is too late.
The characters of Parallel suffer from poverty of the heart, either from want, or from giving. Erby reminds us that it isn’t money or class that fulfills us, it’s our relationship with people. Patrick the clinical psychiatrist, and his wife Clare, are the only middle class characters in the stories, and neither one is happy in the most basic sense. Both are frustrated with their own stagnancy. Patrick eventually begins to troll the Amish farm stands, and fins a glimmer of innocence, or purity, some kind of love that goes beyond what his wife Clare, or his brother, or even his children can give him, in Anna. As an outsider, he begins flirting with Anna, a single Amish woman who is more than a little curious about Patrick and passionate love, “her heart wanted second-definition love. Second-definition love would bring pleasure, too, but it was pure....So what if she would never know this sort of love?...Besides, Anna rationalized finally, too much is made of the notion of love anyway.” Patrick, the outsider, intrudes upon Anna, but not in an exploitative soap-opera way. This isn’t Witness, and Erby shows us that all it takes is a kiss, and a simple touch to upset our inner lives. Anna is much like Martin, the Vietnam vet from the opening story. Both characters respond profoundly to simple gestures of kindness and love, a touch of a hand, or finger, an invitation to dinner. And both characters remain empty, aching for something larger than the life they are living.
Parallel is full of tension, the slow boiling kind of realism that acts as a mirror to our own consciousness. These characters and these stories are about how to live a life, how to be awake in the world, and how to be connected to it. Erby doesn’t provide any answers, and her characters leave messy endings behind them in their wake. In the end the stories here parallel our own American lives, our fragile human hearts.
Sharon Erby’s linked short fiction collection Parallel, from Harvard Square Editions, weaves together the lives of men and women who struggle to make ends meet in the mountains of south-central Pennsylvania. The characters of Parallel come from various backgrounds, but all of them are tied to the land, tied to the mountain, and tied to the real estate of the human heart. Erby makes good use of setting to illustrate the spiritual connection between the characters who make up the human landscape of these stories. The men and women are combat veterans, academic transplants, poor working class mothers, the Amish, and children dealing with their parents shortcomings. The characters of Parallel possess a restless anxious energy that comes from having to scrape ends together, compromising hopes and dreams to just get by. They are looking for peace, for “the still and always,” a serenity matched and reflected by the landscape of the wilderness around them.
Erby’s work belongs to a rich tradition in American fiction, telling the broad story of a place through a myriad of voices. It’s rewarding work for the reader who can follow the protagonists as they appear throughout the stories. One of the main characters is Brenda, a hard working mother, who might as well be single since her husband is more concerned about drinking than being responsible. And Brenda doesn’t take her problems lying down, she’s a fighter, willing to do whatever it takes to survive. She even finds the love she needs on the side with fellow garbage collector Eddie, who has his own demons. From the outside the reader can see that Eddie is only a tick better than her husband, but Brenda doesn’t seem to mind, or care. She’s looking out for herself so she can be a mother to her sons, and a friend to her loved ones. Erby tells the story of people, and refuses to moralize, regardless of how easy it would be to do so. Her characters are deeply flawed and hurt, but Erby resists the urge to preach, or even present a series of characters who are perfect models. Erby’s interested in the dark, dense matter of humanity, which means pain, heartache, and characters who fuck-up over and over again.
Of particular interest to Erby is the outsider. The outsider is woven into the DNA of these stories from the outset. A Vietnam vet, Martin, struggles with the loss of his leg, and then his progressing alcoholism. His leg, and his alcoholism, are enough to make him an outsider, but its when he comes home drunk one night, ears pricked for the sound of hunting on the mountains that his otherness hits home: “I’m goin’ up,” he said randomly, then, pushing away from Grace to open the door of the old truck. “This time I’m goin’!” But he never does, and you get the sense he never will, having to rely on Grace’s to get him through the night, and life. It’s symbolic of his limitations, of his leg, of how he is stuck in the past. It’s a theme which Erby plays with, exploring the limitations of Brenda, Martin’s daughter, and Brenda’s children, and the other people who live near them. Just how far can one get when you are cut off from the world? The characters live far away from high paying jobs, new industry, or well connected schools. There’s only so much you can do, regardless if you are a disfigured veteran, a pill-head, or a single, pretty Amish woman who wishes for love. And of course, Erby’s characters aren’t just isolated from the larger world, they are isolated from themselves, from their own needs and wants. In one story, Eddie, Brenda’s garbage man lover, tells her what she’s thinking about him, and about her decisions in life, trying to ease her anxiety about their affair, and her lot in life: “ you’re full of it, Mr. Edward Diffenderfer, if you think you can figure out what’s really right—any more than the rest of us morons who are just tryin’ to get through the day. But, B, ya know—it’s all about takin’ things away and findin’ out what’s left. And what’s left is what’s right.” Like most of us, these characters have to suffer through their problems before they find direction, even if it is too late.
The characters of Parallel suffer from poverty of the heart, either from want, or from giving. Erby reminds us that it isn’t money or class that fulfills us, it’s our relationship with people. Patrick the clinical psychiatrist, and his wife Clare, are the only middle class characters in the stories, and neither one is happy in the most basic sense. Both are frustrated with their own stagnancy. Patrick eventually begins to troll the Amish farm stands, and fins a glimmer of innocence, or purity, some kind of love that goes beyond what his wife Clare, or his brother, or even his children can give him, in Anna. As an outsider, he begins flirting with Anna, a single Amish woman who is more than a little curious about Patrick and passionate love, “her heart wanted second-definition love. Second-definition love would bring pleasure, too, but it was pure....So what if she would never know this sort of love?...Besides, Anna rationalized finally, too much is made of the notion of love anyway.” Patrick, the outsider, intrudes upon Anna, but not in an exploitative soap-opera way. This isn’t Witness, and Erby shows us that all it takes is a kiss, and a simple touch to upset our inner lives. Anna is much like Martin, the Vietnam vet from the opening story. Both characters respond profoundly to simple gestures of kindness and love, a touch of a hand, or finger, an invitation to dinner. And both characters remain empty, aching for something larger than the life they are living.
Parallel is full of tension, the slow boiling kind of realism that acts as a mirror to our own consciousness. These characters and these stories are about how to live a life, how to be awake in the world, and how to be connected to it. Erby doesn’t provide any answers, and her characters leave messy endings behind them in their wake. In the end the stories here parallel our own American lives, our fragile human hearts.
January 2, 2015
Nice collection of short stories all having to do with folks living in a small area of the mountains near the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Nice idea, well executed. There are characters that keep recurring from story to story, but each story stands on its own as well. I would recommend this to anyone that enjoys short stories, or if you want a quick read between longer novels. That was the space it filled for me, and I have to say that it was nice reading an interconnected collection. I read several literary journals regularly, and even with themed issues, there is little connection between the stories. This worked out so well because of the connections, and I was always anxious to see my favorite characters from previous stories re-appear. Nice and rather quick read.
May 24, 2015
I received this book in a Goodreads giveaway.
PARALLEL seems like an unfinished project to me. There are some nice moments, but most are incomplete, missing those elements that would make them pop. There are also some sections that slipped past the editor. I insisted on finishing the book, although there were times I wondered why. Yet there were some excerpts that resonated with me. Those were just too few.
PARALLEL seems like an unfinished project to me. There are some nice moments, but most are incomplete, missing those elements that would make them pop. There are also some sections that slipped past the editor. I insisted on finishing the book, although there were times I wondered why. Yet there were some excerpts that resonated with me. Those were just too few.
May 29, 2015
This collection is unique because it brings together a cast of unlikely characters (everyone from a woman garbage collector,to a womanizing clinical psychologist, to an almost spinster Amish woman)and puts them in an equally unlikely location (the mountains of central Pennsylvania). These stories may not offer the high drama often found in alot of contemporary fiction, but they give a deep-felt and original glimpse into an overlooked segment of society.
August 14, 2014
This book is a must-read for anyone who has ever felt marginalized because of where they live.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews