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Learning to Live Indoors
`The short stories in Alison Acheson's Learning to Live Indoors deal with family relationships. Acheson, who lives in British Columbia, has previously published two young adult novels, one of which was shortlisted for several awards. But although this collection is full of domestic detail, there is nothing cozy about the stories.' ( Quill & Quire )
160 pages, Paperback
First published October 15, 1998
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About the author
Alison Acheson
16 books27 followersI live and write in the east side of Vancouver, Canada.
I write for all ages and in multiple forms, from picturebooks, MG and YA novels, to memoir and adult novels and short fiction. I have a Substack newsletter, The Unschool for Writers.
https://unschoolforwriters.substack.com/
I write for all ages and in multiple forms, from picturebooks, MG and YA novels, to memoir and adult novels and short fiction. I have a Substack newsletter, The Unschool for Writers.
https://unschoolforwriters.substack.com/
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 28, 2023
Alison Acheson’s Learning to Live Indoors is an interesting collection of short stories. Published by The Porcupine’s Quill, the book feels good in your hands. It is printed on high-quality Zephyr Antique sheets of paper that have been “folded and sewn into signatures in the traditional manner” (back cover). As soon as it arrived in the mail, I was eager to read the book, but as I began, the uniqueness of the stories immediately became apparent. They are original and hard to classify. Most of them resist the typical modified Freytag pyramid structure readers encounter. Some of the stories seem more like scenes pulsating with a rhythm appropriate to that story alone.
The stories often invite you to reread them searching for significant details that are perhaps floating, perhaps embedded firmly, perhaps jutting in suddenly like a blade of light. And they contain many excellent sentences. Here are a few samples. In “Murray Would,” we read: “He’d learned the trickery of the light voice from his mother, a woman who had struggled for years to hew life into an uncomplicated thing. There shouldn’t be ghosts between people, she always said, and if there are ghosts, they shouldn’t be named” (11). In “Gingerbread,” “I liked the feel of Nathan’s hand on my shoulder, pulling me toward the adjoining room with the great mahogany and green table, the low hanging light fixture that shadowed the high ceiling, the racks of cues, the balls bright and chunky as toys” (24). In “Learning to Live Indoors,” “Ezra seemed to want to fill his first year with many more. He crawled early, and five days later pulled himself up on the furniture and the walls—he’d straightened his legs and walked in the air since birth” (37). In “Across the Hall,” “Will he notice the dress? It hangs so, and moves too much when she walks. It used to move with her—now it sweeps around, looking for flesh” (43). In “Cutting,” “Or perhaps it was the cross clinging to her neck that made Geoff liken the two women. There was something so familiar about it: the heaviness and the tired glint of worn diamond chips” (75). In “Family Allowance,” “Shallow-rooted cottonwoods moved over our heads, and the wind brought us raindrops that were waiting in the elbows of their branches” (93). And in “Somebody’s Steed,” “In the morning the sun rose over an odd grouping on the rooftop: a circle of children gathered around a figure in white and blue, long hair waving in the wind. Hair mostly silver, a touch of red. Generous people would even say chestnut” (155).
My two favorite stories in the collection are “Second Week of October,” a fascinating account of a family dog shipped off to the SPCA only to be recovered once the family finally notices he is missing, and “Fervent Charity,” an extraordinary story about an isolated spiritual community. Here are a few of its superb sentences: “. . . she spent the morning hours there, working the [pine] cones into circles or into story-patterns like the stars” (118); “They walked until the sun was low, its thread about to snap” (122); and, “She turned, saw the fire through the open doorway, heard the crackle, of pines remembering what it was like to feel heat, remembering to open to the flame, to spit seed” (123).
Acheson’s stories are a good read. I encourage you to spend some unrushed time with them.
The stories often invite you to reread them searching for significant details that are perhaps floating, perhaps embedded firmly, perhaps jutting in suddenly like a blade of light. And they contain many excellent sentences. Here are a few samples. In “Murray Would,” we read: “He’d learned the trickery of the light voice from his mother, a woman who had struggled for years to hew life into an uncomplicated thing. There shouldn’t be ghosts between people, she always said, and if there are ghosts, they shouldn’t be named” (11). In “Gingerbread,” “I liked the feel of Nathan’s hand on my shoulder, pulling me toward the adjoining room with the great mahogany and green table, the low hanging light fixture that shadowed the high ceiling, the racks of cues, the balls bright and chunky as toys” (24). In “Learning to Live Indoors,” “Ezra seemed to want to fill his first year with many more. He crawled early, and five days later pulled himself up on the furniture and the walls—he’d straightened his legs and walked in the air since birth” (37). In “Across the Hall,” “Will he notice the dress? It hangs so, and moves too much when she walks. It used to move with her—now it sweeps around, looking for flesh” (43). In “Cutting,” “Or perhaps it was the cross clinging to her neck that made Geoff liken the two women. There was something so familiar about it: the heaviness and the tired glint of worn diamond chips” (75). In “Family Allowance,” “Shallow-rooted cottonwoods moved over our heads, and the wind brought us raindrops that were waiting in the elbows of their branches” (93). And in “Somebody’s Steed,” “In the morning the sun rose over an odd grouping on the rooftop: a circle of children gathered around a figure in white and blue, long hair waving in the wind. Hair mostly silver, a touch of red. Generous people would even say chestnut” (155).
My two favorite stories in the collection are “Second Week of October,” a fascinating account of a family dog shipped off to the SPCA only to be recovered once the family finally notices he is missing, and “Fervent Charity,” an extraordinary story about an isolated spiritual community. Here are a few of its superb sentences: “. . . she spent the morning hours there, working the [pine] cones into circles or into story-patterns like the stars” (118); “They walked until the sun was low, its thread about to snap” (122); and, “She turned, saw the fire through the open doorway, heard the crackle, of pines remembering what it was like to feel heat, remembering to open to the flame, to spit seed” (123).
Acheson’s stories are a good read. I encourage you to spend some unrushed time with them.
Displaying 1 of 1 review