August 19, 2013
Sheehan’s (History Lessons for Girls) collection of 58 short stories features “histories” somewhere between flash fiction and prose poems and memoirs. Sheehan uses small moments and objects that capture the essences of larger personal histories—lives made up of motherhood, writing, love, friendships, and everything in between. In “Density,” she makes a much-put-off telephone call to her great-aunt. The smallest gesture of sisterly tenderness is depicted in “Devotion.” In “Suntan Lotion,” a teenage girl lays on the beach with her new love interest. A young writer has dinner with her mentor and marvels at a dessert chef’s ability to deliver a punchline in “Joke.” Rather than getting ensconced in the heavy drape of narrative, these short flares of memory allow the reader to enter Sheehan’s memories as they are in her mind—a jumble of moments, people, objects, and sounds as they exist before analysis and ordering.