Mendocino and Other Stories

by Ann Packer

With humor, wisdom and tenderness, Ann Packer offers ten short stories about women and men--wives and husbands, sisters and brothers, daughters, sons, mothers, fathers, friends, and lovers--who discover thatlife's greatest surprises may be found in that which is most familiar. In the title story, on the anniversary of their father's suicide a young woman discovers that her brother may have found a"reason for living" in the love of a good woman. In "Nerves," a young man realizes that the wife he is separated from no longer loves him but that it is his own life he misses, not her. The narrator of "My Mother's Yellow Dress" is a gay man remembering his deceased mother and their vital and troubling intimacy. In "Babies"--which wasincluded in the prestigious O. Henry anthology series --a single woman in her mid-thirties finds that everyone, including her best friend at work, is pregnant, and that their joy can only be observed, not shared. In these and six other stories, Ann Packer exhibits an unerring eye for the small ways in which people reveal themselves and for the moments in which lives may betransformed. "From the Trade Paperback edition."

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Book Club, Unfinished, Literary Fiction, American

256 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 1, 1994

About the author

In addition to her upcoming novel Some Bright Nowhere, Ann Packer is the author of three bestselling novels: The Children’s Crusade, Songs Without Words, and The Dive from Clausen’s Pier, which received the Kate Chopin Literary Award among many other prizes and honors. Her short fiction has been published in two collections — Mendocino and Other Stories and Swim Back to Me — and includes stories that appeared in The New Yorker and in the O. Henry Prize Stories anthologies. Ann’s work has been translated into over a dozen languages and published around the world.

Ann was born in Stanford, California, and grew up near Stanford University, where her parents were professors. She attended Yale University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. In 1995 she returned to the Bay Area, where she raised her children and lived for many years. Now, along with her husband, the novelist and screenwriter Rafael Yglesias, she divides her time among New York, the Bay Area, and Maine.

Reviews

[John Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Over the last 60 plus years, ever since I discovered a closet at the antique store (read: junk store) full of bags and boxes of books — hard bound, paperback, classics, comic books, trashy novels, etc. — I’ve collected books, mostly fiction and mostly hard bound. I was about age 10-12. And this closet was in the back room of an old tin Quonset building at the south end town, Fort Bragg, CA, my hometown.

The owner bought up garage sales, estates, store closings, etc, and put things out for sale on tables made of sheets of plywood and 2x4 sawhorses. My Dad loved to go there to shop for old tools: woodworking tools, mechanic’s tools, old saws and hammers. I’d tag along and just go “exploring.” I saw the place as a treasure trove of interesting and unique, but sometimes boring, too, as the old guys gathered there for coffee and “old men” gossip. I would retreat to the closet and flip through the comic books and scandalous “true crime” magazines. That’s where I discovered the Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock magazines, each a collection of short stories. I’d read voraciously, trying to finish a full story before my Dad was ready to leave.

The owner didn’t have much use for books. He couldn’t make much money selling them for 5 cents, 10 cents, a quarter, the going price back then (the mid-1950s). He made me a deal: “bring me two books you have already read and I’ll give you one new book in trade.” I bit, begging discarded books from friends and family as my currency. My first trade? “Nightmares and Geezenstacks” by Frederick Brown, a thrilling collection of science fiction short stories in the flavor of Rod Serling and Isaac Asimov. I still have that book today. It started me on a passionate journey for reading, as did my Dad’s old junk friend. Especially a passion for short stories.

So, recently I’m strolling through the online inventory of Powell’s Books, when I see the title “Mendocino.” Mendocino is about 12 miles south of Fort Bragg, my old stomping grounds, so my interest was piqued. The subtitle is “{And Other Stories}.” You’ve. Got. My. Attention! I was suppose to discover this collection of short stories set in my own back yard!

Over the years, I’ve discovered that a short story collection is going to have about 15-20 stories, 2-3 that are REALLY good, the rest mediocre filler. Regardless of the author and their inherent talent: be it Steven King, Tobias Wolff, Wallace Stegner, Eudora Welty, William Faulkner. It’s just the nature of the beast. A couple of good, the rest just okay.

Not Mendocino . . . and not Ann Packer, the author of this collection! I liked every story. Really liked every story. Packer writes with such passion. She writes as if she has intimate knowledge and insight into her characters and their psyche. And she brings you into their story and their world. These aren’t titans, celebrities or world leaders. They are just ordinary people, your friends and neighbors and family. People you know with a (secretive) story that you don’t intimately know, their own private self. Packer weaves and intertwines and reveals their stories in such an intimate and heartwarming way that you say to yourself, “Yeah! I know! How come I didn’t see that?” These stories could be your life, your thoughts, your experiences, your every day. Packer is writing about us, about you and me and the thoughts and feelings we have everyday, but pass us by, even though it’s our life. And then it’s over. There is a story inside every one of us. Packer cares enough and is observant enough to write them down. A terrific read! This book is going on my “permanent” shelf.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

An nice collection of stories by an excellent writer. The characters in the stories are at an age where their lives have already taken shape, and their careers or roles known. However there's something disappointing about it -- they have arrived but yet it's haunting, a goal so worked for, so desired, achieved and yet... feels out of tune, or out right empty.

You see that played out in the stories Mendocino, Nerves, Babies, Hightops, The Glass House, and Lightening.

Another common theme in the stories is the tight and often complex relationship between brother & sister, and the how they're dealing with the death of a parent -- which is where these stories are exceptionally well done.

The best stories in the collection are Babies & "Tillman & I".

The weakest story is Horse, which reads almost like a 1970s "After School Special" movie.

[Danie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to write like Ann Packer. I want to perfectly infuse a story with such brilliant little nuances of character and relationship. But alas... I don't write anywhere near as well as Ann Packer. Fortunately, I got to read this intimate collection of stories, many of which teased my brain after I'd finished them, challenging me to put the pieces together to reveal a greater theme and making me wonder what would become of the characters' lives beyond the page.

Some of the stories struck me more than others, but that's to be expected with shorts, right?

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't normally make a point to read short stories but I saw this collection in a used bookstore a while back and I had enjoyed the author's well known novel, The Dive from Clausen's Pier, so much that I thought it was worth a look.

I think I enjoyed this even more than the novel. I think she has a gift for writing short stories in particular. She's able to establish (for me) personal connections to characters in such a short amount of time in that you feel intimately connected to and invested in characters and experiences in just a few pages.

Short story collections are also nice for people who like to read sporadically---you can pick it up and put it down multiple times without losing a grip on the story (as I've often done with novels that I started reading and forgot about!)

Definitely worth a read.

[Liz Shirley · Rating 2 out of 5]

boring bad blah

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ann's excellent compilation of short stories - all set in Northern California, including Mendocino - consistently left me thinking about the characters, their plight, and their impact. I typically find short stories don't end well ... that we're left hanging, needing more. With Mendocino, even though the stories are a mix of first person and third person, large casts and small, I found them a delightful treat.

[Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spare, beautiful, slightly melancholy stories. Not at all what I would have expected from the author of The Dive from Clausen's Pier (which is a great read--just a very different one).

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found Ann Packer's stories enjoyable reads. Her stories, through character statements, asides, or narration, provide insights to obliquely implied issues - issues concerning life and especially relationships. There is significance in the nuance that often conveys a larger meaning to seemingly mundane comments. The stories showed, they didn't tell.

"The Glass House" has, somehow, an impressively ominous air to it. My least favorite story was the last, "Ninety."

Some insightful quotations from the stories:

"That was where they'd taken their wrong turn: into a place where you couldn't tell the difference between polite and happy..."

"Dating, I often think, is like applying for a job. You go all out in the interview, proving your intelligence, your reliability, your suitability for this particular position, and then when - if - you are offered the job, you realize that the actual work would be tedious beyond measure."

"It sometimes seems that the primary effect of actually getting married was to make the things that used to be annoying about the other person enraging now: you feel like you'll be stifling the same complaints for the rest of your life."

'"It's a lot easier being the victim." Luke says. "Isn't it?"'

"I thought we would live inside each other; but we live next to each other, in a glass house."

"She looked the way she looked just before they fought."

"They talked more these days, but about less."

"His hunting belonged in a category with former lovers and the most crushing adolescent humiliations."

"It was a beautiful, beautiful wedding, a huge, gorgeous straw on the back of a very weak camel."

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent short story collection from more than 30 years ago, glad I circled back to read it! This book has ten stories, all set in Northern California, and generally all about family and relationships - quiet stories but so interesting and well-written; I don’t think there was a dud in the bunch.

I’ve read and loved all three of Ann Packer’s novels, and two of them - The Dive From Clausen’s Pier and The Children’s Crusade - were top ten of the year books for me. So no surprise that Ann Packer’s writing is just wonderful here as well. She’s that special kind of author who can bring a character and setting to life in a 20 or 30 page short story more than some authors can do in an entire novel!

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

A once a decade author for me - The Dive From Clausen's Pier - 4 stars- 2002; Swim Back to Me - 2 stars - 2012; Mendocino - a weak 3 stars - 2020.

I was hoping for more like the title story, the best of the lot, that time from the late 80s to the mid 90s when the idea of living in Northern California sounds appealing. I didn't get it though, as Glass House was the only other one that fit the mold, and Tillman and I, set in Iowa, stands as the 2nd best tale.

The last two stories and Hightops were pointless. This is a 2.5, rounded up because ... I don't know, fond memories of reading a good novel by the author nearly half my life ago.

[Nikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

The short stories in this book are phenomenal! I only wish each story ended on a stronger note, however maybe this was intentional. For each story, you're plopped into a day in the life of different relationship dynamics. The book feels like a close friend telling you the drama she's been having with her boyfriend; your mom recounting her intricate relationship with her family; or a friend telling you her sorrow for her father's death. It's tangible and relatable. It's sad and realistic. Packer has a conversational wit in her writing as if you're speaking with your clever sister. The book was purchased on a whim and I'm glad I stumbled upon it!

[Chelsea Martinez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked these stories best:
Earth Fiancee - sister visits brother and her exacting hippie sister-in-law
Home - pom pom girl audition failure, basketball player and mom support her nevertheless
The Glass House - woman who let herself get saved by a dashing gentleman who rescues her and her baby
My Mother's Yellow Dress - memories of a passed mother who felt trapped but conspiratorial with her gay son

[Jessie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. A quick read but mostly pointless, although I liked the story about the couple with the house guest. Got really tired of the recurring theme of women wanting babies, are there not other themes to explore from the inner lives of women? This was all babies and boyfriends. Or families, but those stories were better.

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ann Packer is underrated and you need to read her.

This collection of short stories is solid and timeless and some are so perfectly developed that you forget they're short stories and not novels. She has a way of writing economically without the side effect of feeling that something has been left out. It's a rare talent of which you forget its value until you encounter it.

[Anne Caverhill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ann Packer has been described as a writer who ‘teases your brain’. She does so by taking mundane events between husbands and wives and siblings and friends...and then effortlessly weaves in stunning observations about behaviours, emotions and relationships that make us all heartbreakingly human. Of course I love love loved these short stories.

[K Holl · Rating 3 out of 5]

She is a decent writer. Characters feel real and fleshed out. Her character speciality seems to be siblings in upper middle class dysfunctional families. The underlying theme of these stories seems to be young women desiring or trying to have babies. I am not crazy about many of the endings of the stories however, feel abrupt.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable enough but I will probably not reread.

Mendocino ~ 3
Nerves ~ 3
Babies ~ 2.5
Hightops ~ 2.5
Horse ~ 3
The Glass House ~ 2.5
Lightening ~ 4
Tillman and I ~ 3
My Mother’s Yellow Dress ~ 4
Ninety ~ 4

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun and interesting stories. I wish a few of them would turn into novels.

[Jayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this book. Each short story left me wanting a complete novel .

[Ellyn Lem · Rating 4 out of 5]

To be a good short story writer you have to know where to begin and end your story in order to keep our superfluous detail and Packer has that down. I came across this collection of her early short stories in a used book store and could already see the talent that she has brought out in her novels Dive from Clausen's Pier and The Children's Crusades. Her stories remind me of some of the great writers of that form Lorrie Moore and Alice Munroe (and Maile Meloy), but in some ways, without the constant playfulness of Moore and the ultra-seriousness of Munroe, there is just more human vulnerability and compassion on display. The characters here are at crossroads in their lives. . . a woman in a new marriage who can't get over that the previous owner committed suicide in her new beautiful home, an adult son trying to piece together his parents' broken marriage from a memorable night where she sports a shocking yellow short dress, a woman from Chicago who follows her boyfriend on a hunting excursion to meet his brother and experiences culture shock. I loved these characters and felt great sympathy for most of them...while I wanted the stories to never end...that is a compliment and not a weakness.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first story, "Mendocino," was definitely the worst in the collection, and while things got a bit better thereafter, the book pretty much failed to hold my interest. Packer's observations herein don't really shed any new light on anything, which isn't necessarily what you look for in an author, but it doesn't hurt; it's also disconcerting when time after time those observations, which you know are trying to shed unique light on a situation, fall flat and come off as mundane. Several of these stories have that women-inside-her-head Lorrie Moore feel, though I'll just say that Packer can't quite rock an exclamation point the way Moore can. Not in this collection, at least. So, yes, I was disappointed. I'll check out her novels, though. It's no hard feelings.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good stories, good characters, well written. I liked that these characters were normal people. there didn't have to be quirky characters or unrealistic scenarios. But, and it's an interesting but, I found most of the stories utterly lacking in the ending category. I recently published a couple of short story collections. A number of co-workers and friends who have now read my stories for the first time complain that they are too short (which they probably are) and the endings just leave them wanting more. I felt the same way reading most of the stories in this collection in a very real way. I don't have any specific examples from the stories, but the stories frequently seemed written towards the resolution of problem X and would end before X was resolved. Very frustrating.

[Nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

Patchett is a good writer, experienced and fully capable of weaving complex novel-length storylines. Though well written, these short stories were not at all complex. They were simple, straightforward glimpses into the lives of the very real, relatively flawed, could-be-your-neighbor characters. This is not a judgement, simply a fact.

Unlike more edgy short stories, I wasn't left feeling uncomfortable or somehow at a disadvantage. This is a book you could give to your mother's friend or the secret santa coworker whose name you pulled out of a hat.

[Carolyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

An impulse led me to my bookshelves where I pulled down this book. It had a birthday card inside from 2005. The card looked like a dream I'd had the night before, so I re-read the book - a collection of finely-wrought stories all different from each other, in tone, in character - none earth-shaking or emotionally taut, not memorable either (clearly) but all with quiet perception of late-century, middle-class Americans.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like short stories. It's nice bite size reading for bed time. Plus, if one story sucks, you just go to the next one. These stories have great characters. Sometimes the stories are so relatable that they're almost painful to read. I think Ms. Mary Cunningham gave me this book, but I can't remember.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well- I've got to say that though the writing was good, I came away from most of the stories feeling empty and flat, as if I was missing the dinal chapter of a book or something. I'm quite disappointed, because I thought The Dive From Claussen's Pier well done. I couldn't relate to most of the characters.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the year of the short story on the podcast Books on the Nightstand. I decided to read a few collections, and this is my second (I think) this year. Packer's stories are set mostly in northern California where she lives and have a stong sense of place. I was not disappointed in this collection which was poignant at times, and occasionally funny.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe Ann Packer was going through some personal tribulations during the timeframe in which she composed these short stories: many of them are intimate portrayals of solitude, loneliness, and the thwarted desire for a child. This collection showcases Packer’s talent for short, poignant stories—each a melancholic gem.

[Cindy · Rating 2 out of 5]

A favorite author writing short stories...a toss up for me. But I plunged in and was disappointed. Well-written, but nothing memorable. In fact, when I read the list of stories, I was unable to recall details of them. At least with short stories, it's easy to pick up and put down. not exactly a glowing recommendation.

[Katie O'Connell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was completely drawn in to each of these stories. And I loved the way they finished - not neatly tied up, but also not some big cliffhanger. I wanted more, but could also sort of imagine what else would have happened afterwards (because I felt like I understood the characters well).