[REVIEW] Out of Peel Tree, by Laura Long

Review by Thomas Michael Duncan

Nearly one hundred years have passed since Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio introduced American readers to the novel-in-stories, but the form has yet to be embraced by a wide audience. But neither has it been rejected or abandoned altogether. Publishers anxious about selling readers on loosely connected stories have gone to some lengths to disguise such books (also called composite novels, or short story cycles) as traditionally structured novels. Jenifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, published in 2010, is the most critically acclaimed novel-in-stories, yet the cover simply labels it “a novel,” and it is often referred to vaguely as a work of fiction.

Perhaps readers resist the novel-in-stories because these books rarely feature a single protagonist, instead focusing on a specific place or group of people. Like Winesburg, Ohio features stories about a fictional, small-town Ohio family, Out of Peel Tree, the debut novel-in-stories by Laura Long, follows a family from a fictional Appalachian town. Long’s stories explore critical junctions in the lives of four generations of West Virginian women. A wife learns of her husband’s previous marriage for the first time through an obituary. An old widow captures a would-be-thief by consulting her husband’s ghost. An engaged woman has second thoughts when her wedding is postponed for her fiancé’s chemotherapy. These stories are heavily ruminative, and ripe with detailed imagery. Plot is not so much a driving force as an occasional companion to portraits of working-class life.

Long is an established poet, with two published collections to her name, and it shows in her prose, often forgoing clarity for an artistic flair. Her writing is charged with lyrical language and occasionally superfluous in detail. Take the opening line of the book: “Oriole Street curled back from Light Avenue, rose and twisted, fell, twisted again, and ended at the edge of weeds, an old grape arbor, and a ramble of wild roses.” That’s thirty words to describe a street. For some readers, this is too much, filler that could be cut to streamline the story. To more patient readers, those open to obvious symbolism, it’s a welcoming first sentence.

Long also demonstrates a concerted effort to describe the ordinary in imaginative ways, which is nice when it works, distracting when it fails. Take this sentence, for example: “The magazine splashed the floor.” Splash is a creative verb choice, but it’s also the perfect word to describe the sound an image of a fallen magazine. But, from the same story: “Curtis rubbed the paleness that stretched above his eyebrows.” Have you ever read a less natural description of a forehead? Long is trying to demonstrate how a cancer patient sees a stranger in his reflection, but the word choice here feels forced.

At times, the connections between the stories also feel forced. Events from earlier stories are mentioned later with no apparent purpose other than to remind readers that these stories are linked. Why? Would readers forget otherwise?

It begs the question, what is the point of the novel-in-stories? Classifying the book this way only burdens it with expectations for a consistent narrative, rather than the loose collage Long delivers. Perhaps William Giraldi says it best in this 2011 essay for The Rumpus: “To say you’ve fashioned a novel from stories is to say you’ve fashioned an adult by standing one child on the shoulders of another.”

That is not to say these stories are not worth reading. Out of Peel Tree is a thoughtful fiction debut from a unique voice and an important addition to the growing lot of Appalachian literature. There are some wrinkles to be ironed out, but Long has got much of the work down pat. Whether she dives back into poetry, sticks with short fiction, or attempts a traditional novel, watch our for Long’s next project.

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Thomas Michael Duncan writes fiction, fact, reviews, and the occasional bit of nonsense. His work can be found at places such as Little Fiction, Prick of the Spindle, and Necessary Fiction. He tweets @ThomasMDuncan.