Eating Naked - Stephen Dobyns
by Zia ~ January 11th, 2006. Filed under: Books.
I can’t remember the title of the Dobyns mystery I read years ago …. The Church of Dead Girls? The Choir of Dead Girls? Something … it was about the murder of four little girls who were later found in an attic, all perfectly posed in chairs and preserved by air conditioning. Or something. It was a while ago. Discomfiting, to be sure, yet somehow not as insidious as this collection of short stories, which all chronicle unhappy, unhealthy relationships. One wonders what Dobyns was going through as he wrote these, but the author bio says he’s married with kids …
The title story, Eating Naked, is the tale of a man with marital problems who hits a deer, causing a young woman to have a car accident. Her boyfriend, she tells him, is convinced he’s cheating on her and has threatened suicide, so he loads up both the deer and the woman in his truck and they go to save the young man. Who is incensed that his girlfriend has shown up with a rival. The protagnist defuses the situation and they grill the deer and eat naked. It was odd and touching, and a great story.
But it seems to me that out of every collection of shorts, there’s always one that sticks out in one’s memory, and the one that I remember has a less happy ending. A man has a brief affair with a married woman, then starts bowling with her husband. The husband thinks he has a great marriage, even though the woman sleeps around and treats him with contempt. The man plants doubt after doubt in his mind, finally urging him to set a trap — and when he does, and the husband catches her with a third man, the results are quietly devastating.
Recommend.