The Secret Lives of Men
April 2013
Georgia Blain / Scribe
Georgia Blain’s short stories are brief involvements with very normal but sometimes very pained, and very confused lives.
They observe rich points of contact with sometimes difficult to name emotions. A needy, diabetic dog stands between a widower and a love that might not wait; a lowly novelist comes face to face with a mega-star writer who has no substance. ‘When total destruction knocks on your door,’ says Ellen to her daughter Evie to explain why she left her stable, happy life ten years earlier, ‘sometimes it’s very tempting to take a look.’ It’s a signature moment in the collection.
The method of these stories is to deliver a circumstance in the present that feels the weight of analeptic events: the past comes to bear on the present.
In more than one story this approach to time becomes layered when there is a sudden leap forward through many years, into a new circumstance upon which the original present of the story comes itself to weigh more heavily. In this way the stories are just as much about time and change, as they are about the gravity of the men whose secret lives they float about.
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