"Deer & Other Stories" by Susan Tepper -- BOOK REVIEW by Johnes Ruta
Susan Tepper's book of short stories "Deer & Other Stories" compels the reader forward with a sense of suspense. Even though these are not mystery tales, each story sets the stage of a situation that makes one anxious to know what will happen next. In several stories, the narrative skillfully starts out with the exposition of a panorama of characters, each who
views the circumstances from their own perspective, but then the focus gradually weaves its way into the voice and even the heart of one member of the array.
views the circumstances from their own perspective, but then the focus gradually weaves its way into the voice and even the heart of one member of the array.
"Deer" is a story of teen-age hi-jinx during the Vietnam War period, one of the youths' uncle a colonel, while the banter of sarcasm, half-hearted rebellion, and coming-of-age hormones rage and perplex one ostensible young couple. In "String" a thirty-something wife struggles to clean the home they are about to move into, struggles with her religious scruples and icons, and with her suspicions of her husband's whereabouts.
In "Remember Hardy," the authors effectively switches gender, getting inside of the husband of a middle-aged couple socializing with their house neighbors on both sides, most closely with his friendlier neighbor's alluring and startling intuitive foreign wife. The narrative provides insights to the man's emergence of his subliminal sensations, the wife's intuitive awareness, the point-of-view of an involved observer.
In "Blue Skies" the narrator finally emerges as the young gay male spending the summer with his lover who has inherited a beach house in East Hampton. A cast of young friends populate each color-coordinated bedroom: another happy and secure gay couple, young-women twins, all quietly enjoying the summer. And then suddenly, a French girl with yapping poodles arrives to sleep with his boy-friend. As the new arrangement is manifested, one feels the immanent and deepening heart-break...
The married, middle-aged psychotherapist in "Help" wrestles in his own battle between his super-ego, ego, and id, over his suppressed lust for a beautiful patient.
And in "Within You Without You" and "Elvis in the Meditation Garden" are convincing, fascinating first-hand accounts of an sexy and attractive, thirtyish young woman traveling with the Beatles in India to live in the Maharishi's commune, and again as a concert organizer helping a suddenly resurrected Elvis prepare for his "come-back" concert....
Indeed, having first heard the former of these two stories read by Susan Tepper at a poetry reading in Washington Heights, I was convinced -- perhaps still -- that this was a privileged personal memoir. Each of Tepper's narratives has a ring of reality to it, visually well-described though hovering on the edge of it, seamless and compelling story-telling !
"Deer & Other Stories" by Susan Tepper (2009, Wilderness House Press)
Reviewer: Johnes Ruta, independent curator & art theorist
Many thanks to Johnes Ruta for his captivating and indepth review of my book Deer & Other Stories. I wish I could claim that I did travel to India with the Beatles, as Johnes has suggested here. But in fact I have never met the Beatles though I'm a big fan of their music.
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