The Kind of Things Saints Do

by Laura Valeri

Overview

From the Anglo-American woman who makes a spectacle of herself trying to be Cuban in Miami to the estranged son leading his father on a hostile hike in New Mexico, Valeri's characters carry a heavy load of desire and anger. Proud, loud, and hungry for whatever comes next, each person desperately searches for an understanding that lessens his or her burden. The saints here are pure only in their anger, desperation, and desire to be loved, holy only in their quest to keep going.

These stories grow through subtle shifts—the bad becomes not so bad, the worst livable. It is the saintly moments of unexpected understanding that shape the collection: one gigolo's lover picks up another at a bus stop and they agree on his worthlessness, the love-worn man reminds the newly divorced woman of her physical power, the estranged son shelters his father from an unexpected storm.

Valeri navigates the reader through the bones and scars of those who ache with wanting something else and become a little older and a little wiser for it. The Kind of Things Saints Do is a collection of human imperfections and missed connections that grows into a kaleidoscope of aspiration and hope.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781587294310
Publisher:	University of Iowa Press
Publication date:	04/01/2005
Series:	Iowa Short Fiction Award Series , #1
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	164
File size:	253 KB

About the Author

Laura Valeri received her MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her stories have been published in Gulf Stream Magazine and the Ruben's Quarterly Review. She currently lives in south Florida.

Table of Contents

The Kind of Things Saints Do Whatever He Did, He Did Enough She’s Anonymous A Rafter in Miami Beach That Easy Kind of Life Hugo, Arthur, and Bobby Joe Turn These Stones into Bread

Editorial Reviews

The seven stories of Valeri's energetic debut collection range far and wide in their examination of the ins and outs of love and affection. In the title story, teenage Susan acts out on her suppressed attraction for her best friend, Dana, through self-mutilation and a sexual encounter with a boy Dana likes. "Whatever He Did, He Did Enough" describes the troubles of a man who rescues and falls in love with a beautiful Cuban girl, only to watch her behavior shift alarmingly after he brings her home to Miami. "She's Anonymous" offers a different angle on love, as a divorced woman in her early 30s takes up dating again and finds herself wandering in and out of a troubling affair with a damaged younger man she meets on the Internet. Writing is the subject of "A Rafter in Miami," as a Cuban hairdresser tries unsuccessfully to fulfill her prose dreams after she starts dating a prominent Miami writer. The final story is the longest and the most developed: "Turn These Stones into Bread" focuses on a father and son as they try to reconcile their various grudges during a hiking trip. Valeri rarely relies on expository prose to push her plots along, instead using dialogue and inner monologue to generate forward movement. A couple of the stories are murky and unfocused, and occasionally her prose turns melodramatic as she develops the different conflicts. But there's plenty of lively writing, which bodes well for Valeri's future, especially if she continues to explore unconventional characters and plot lines. (Oct.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

The 2002 John Simmons Short Fiction Award winner has far more misses than hits among seven tales that for the most part seem inspired by TV rather than life. The title story is simple teenage angst: Does that "feeling down between my legs" mean our knife-carrying, still-a-virgin, half-convincing bad girl narrator is really a lesbian? In "She's Anonymous," a woman in a shallow and tawdry relationship heads inevitably toward a shallow and tawdry epiphany, while "That Easy Kind of Life" is a soaper about the aborted child of an uninspiring couple (" . . . pretending not to notice that the light sheen of sweat on Max's chest was accentuating the cuts and ripples of his well-worked-out upper body") that has more in common with After-School Specials than with literature. Similarly, "Hugo, Arthur and Bobby Joe" is the disappointing but aptly named set of random pettinesses surrounding an all-too-Ally McBeal-like narrator's three boyfriends, and the final story, a long-winded father-son trip, is little more than an opportunity to demonstrate authorial proficiency at stereotypical male machismo. Too often, Valeri depicts characters who lack sophistication with vision that is itself lacking in sophistication. The one exception is the striking "Whatever he Did, he Did Enough," about a man's attempt to rescue a young Cuban dancer. The piece becomes an examination of love from its fairy-tale beginnings, on through delusion, and then to the unhappily ever after. As a treatise on jealousy and the death of romance, it is profound and sets the author alongside the likes of Mary Gaitskill. But most of the time the literary here is only a sheen-the stories often fail to achieve the little they aspire to-andas to the award: Who would want to enter only to lose to so clearly a fledgling effort? The juvenilia of a vision still in search of itself.

Kirkus Reviews