THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS: STORIES, by Kelly Cherry

Wow! This is the kinda book that makes me wish I were a more eloquent, erudite sort of writer. But I’m not, and I’ve learned to be okay with that. Kelly Cherry, on the other hand, IS that kind of writer. Hence the ‘Wow.’ And I enjoyed the holy hell outa reading these stories.

When I read the name on the cover of this book I thought, Hmm, Quakers! But no, not really, although there is a Quaker wedding ceremony in the title story. But then I thought about what I know about Quaker services (which, admittedly, ain’t all that much) - how the services are often just silent meetings, where people sometimes get up to speak if the spirit moves them. There are a baker’s dozen stories here - in which various families, couples, singles - are doing the best they can, quietly living their lives - lives often marked by that kind of “quiet desperation” that Thoreau remarked on. And all the important characters live on the same block, somewhere near downtown Madison, Wisconsin, at the tail end of the twentieth century. So think of that city block as a Quaker Meeting House, and think of each of these stories as one of the congregants standing up and ‘testifying,’ or telling his story. There’s quite a collection of characters here too. There’s a nurse named Shelley, who’s just learned her twenty year-old daughter is gay, so she’s trying to deal with that, aided by her husband and ex-husband, and she’s also pondering life and death matters at her job, watching a young man die slowly and painfully from AIDS (“Not the Phil Donahue Show”). There's a bookstore owner named Guy whose business (in “the kind of city where people get their books from the library”) is going bust (“Tell Her”). There’s Conrad, a medical librarian who has recently lost both his wife and small son, still in shock, trying to put his life back together again (“Chores”). And a young, gifted and black performance artist named Jazz, who has a purple streak in her hair, a cat named Zora Neale, and who may find love with an Assistant D.A. named Manny Durkheim (“Lunachick”). There’s Larry, a fast-talking commodities trader whose wife wants a divorce, and she wants it now, which, as Larry is sadly beginning to understand, is just “How It Goes.”

And there’s Nina Bryant, the most interesting character of all, and the one who ties all of these other characters’ stories together. (Think OLIVE KITTERIDGE, only Nina’s a much nicer person, and this book came out before Strout’s.) Nina is a writer who teaches at the University. She lives with Tavy, her four year-old adopted daughter (who is also her great-niece - it’s a long story; just read it, okay?), and a little dog she’s had for nearly fourteen years (yeah, you know where that’s probably going, but try not to think about it). Nina loves Tavy, and she loves her little dog, but she is lonely. She has not had sex in “a decade,” which she ruefully admits to Palmer, a new and promising suitor. She also harbors some dark secrets from her past, some truly nasty family skeletons.

Nina shows up in about half of the stories here, but two of them, “As It Is In Heaven” and “Love in the Middle Ages” are key to understanding Nina and her particular situation. I refuse to inject any ‘spoilers’ here, because Nina’s story is meant to be one that unfolds slowly, so you’ve gotta just keep reading, okay? Trust me; it’s worth the wait. Because I have to tell you, I love Nina. She is one of the best fictional characters since Scout Finch. Where’d THAT come from? Well, probably all the hoo-haw recently about a new novel coming from Harper Lee. Really though. Nina is an absolutely fascinating character, as are her eccentric musician parents, who, after they retired, moved to England. And Nina and Tavy's visit there after her father dies, in “As It Is In Heaven,” is one of the oddest family visits you’ll ever read about, one that gives you a glimpse of a heaven worth pondering. A story profound and funny, all at the same time - which, I discovered is one of Kelly Cherry's specialties, mixing the ridiculous and the sublime.

Here’s a for-instance for ya. In “Chapters from a Dog’s Life” Nina tells of a visit from another writer friend whose youthful looks make her feel old, and she describes how, after forty -

“… your eyebrows, discovering themselves to be completely exhausted, lied down almost on the tops of your eyelids for a long snooze through the next thirty years.
Let’s face it. Once, your underwear was spanking clean. You could legitimately call it lingerie … Now you tell yourself that God would never let you get in an accident with what you've got on.
What you've got on is already an accident.”

And in the same story, her writer friend (a cat person), on observing the little dog ‘scooting’ his butt, drawls condescendingly, “How very doglike of him.” To which Nina comments -

“After she left I found myself wondering what she thinks writers do. Seems to me we’re all expressing our anal sacs too.”

I love it when an author can poke fun at herself and her profession. These hilarious moments are mixed right in with much sadder moments, like Nina’s noting her dog's advancing age, how he sleeps most of the time now, and how she loves him “because he taught me about being responsible for someone I loved that made me know I could raise a child on my own. I love Tavy better because I loved him first.”

Kelly Cherry knows how to make you think deeply about your own life, but she also knows how to make you laugh. She loves puns - good and bad - as well as riddles (“How many creative writers does it take to change a light bulb? One to change the bulb and ten to workshop it.”), and she sprinkles both lavishly throughout the book, creating comic relief, often just in time. Here’s Nina on Ronald Reagan: “We could all get killed because he thinks being president of the United States is no different from being president of the Screen Actors Guild.” Or Jazz's mother on the purple streak in her daughter's hair: “There's no need to go being the color purple on top of being black.” Some of Cherry's sentences go on and on, but they work, because she is the queen of the comma, the princess of the pregnant pause. I mean this KC don't need no Sunshine Band. This woman can WRITE!

I was torn about this book. I wanted to keep it clean and pristine looking. But I also wanted to dog-ear pages and underline particular passages and make notes. Alas, I did the latter. The book looks battle-worn and weary. Like many of its characters. But you will remember these people. They survived (or did not and went to heaven), whatever the state of their underwear. And they became friends, a “society of friends.”

I could go on and on with the jokes and profundities; Cherry's got a million of 'em. But enough. I loved this book. Made me laugh. Made me cry. Made me shake my head in wonder and admiration. My highest recommendation. ( )