Residual Desire

Ilana Stanger-Ross, a former senior editor of TheArtBiz.com and fiction
instructor in the English Department at Temple University, is currently
a fiction writer in Toronto.

In most of the 12 stories that make up J. Jill Robinson’s fourth
collection, the characters (who include a daughter visiting her dying
father and a mother stunned by the death of her son) cannot move beyond
their pasts.

In “Déjа Vu,” Iris, passing through Calgary with her second
husband, decides to drop in on her first husband. She surprises herself
by nearly crying when her ex, Larry, opens the door, and within minutes
she is fantasizing about leaving her new husband for the security of her
former life. But when Larry offers reconciliation, she pulls away,
recognizing that “[N]o amount of magic could have cleansed the angry,
resentful, hurtful old life she had made them lead, the one with
hostility plastered hard and thick on every surface.” Robinson’s
characters are trapped, and if the stories see them reaching past the
limits they have previously set for themselves (as in the case of a
grieving mother who answers the phone for the first time since losing
her son), it isn’t so much happiness that we foresee for them as it is
some small relief, some forgiveness of themselves and others that may
make their lives a little easier.

Robinson is at her best when chronicling these minor triumphs. In the
stories that offer more dramatic conclusions, in the form of either
complete salvation or total loss, the revelations are less believable.
In “Midnight at the Oasis,” Willa, a bitter wife, falls in love with
Maidie, a bohemian woman; in “Walking on Air,” Andy loses his
mentally ill wife, Leah, to suicide. Both stories leave us with more
questions than answers. Why does the introverted and protective Willa
accept Maidie’s invitation to tea? What is the history of Leah’s
illness?

In this collection, the stories that present a subtle depiction of the
struggle for happiness in ordinary lives are more successful than those
that offer epiphany and action.