|
"Shomer...writes in a style that is intensely metaphoric, beautifully cadenced and sometimes surprising in its imaginative reach."
-New York Times Book Review "A collection of characters so engaging that the reader can hardly bear to be parted from them at the end of each story...All her stories are compelling, dense with detail, surprising in plot twist. Each of them leaves the reader wanting more." -Jacksonville Times-Union "Shomer has the rare storytelling ability to make the reader instantly feel at home with her characters and to understand their situation." -Iowa City Press-Citizen "Shomer deftly relates the calm poignancy that tragedy takes on in the context of day-to-day living, as families and friends make and break the myths helping hold people together." -Orlando Sentinel "Eleven elegant stories...remarkably versatile, seamlessly constructed, and revealing of our common life." -Kirkus Reviews "Her language is fluid, accessible and deceptively simple...layered with meaning that echoes after the last page has been turned." -Boston Globe "Perhaps what most distinguishes Imaginary Men...is the wide range of narrative voices and story settings. While many young writers seem to tell and retell the same story in different ways, Shomer takes on the voice of a muddled, middle-aged family man as convincingly as that of a teenager suffering her first heartbreak." -Chicago Tribune |
Excerpt from "Disappeared" in Imaginary Men
Leila Pinkerton and Fontane Whitley were as close to friendship as they could get, given that Leila was white, Fontane was black, and they lived in a world full of people who claimed to know what that meant. They came together in crisis, like an emergency room team. At other times, a formality neither of them had created restrained them, driving them back into their separate shells. They trusted each other hesitantly, the way you trust a relative you've heard bad things about since childhood but who has always treated you with the utmost kindness.
Fontane began weeping again. Leila put an arm around her and squeezed her shoulder. "Did you search his room?"
Fontane's eyes caught fire. "Do you think I'm an idiot? We tore the house apart, hoping for a note."
"I'm sorry. I know you did. I thought you did."
"If this is some prank of his, I'm going to kill him when he gets home." She laughed at herself; then she began to cry again.
"There was nothing missing from his room?"
"Not that I noticed." Fontane stirred and sat upright.
"Like a favorite book or toy, his sneakers?"
"I don't think so." But as she said it, Fontane stood and began walking up the stairs, and Leila followed. Leila had never seen Hiram's room, and it wasn't at all the way she would have pictured it. It was futuristic, like the inside of a spaceship. "Handsome," she said, looking around. One wall, covered with black corkboard, had posters from the video store thumbtacked all over it, and four intricate circuit boards hanging from hooks. Shelves spraypainted silver held books and magazines jammed in at all angles, including a few titles Leila had given Hiram. She believed reading kept the mind sharp, and she liked to turn a phrase herself. She'd rearrange a thought or observation in her head until she got it just right, as if she intended to write it down, though she never did. Her favorite author was Mark Twain.
"I fought the beer sign." Fontane pointed over Hiram's desk to a Miller High Life neon sign with a whale spouting a brightblue plume of water. "That was a birthday gift from Dayton." Dayton was Hiram's father. He had refused to marry Fontane when she got pregnant at seventeen and had left town two months after Hiram was born.
Leila felt Hiram's absence more here than she had downstairs. Stuffed animals, model planes, an afghan draped across the foot of the bed: without their owner, the objects seemed forlorn. She remembered sorting through her husband's clothes after he died. She had felt sad and then had fallen into a rage. Colonel Pinkerton's ties and shirts were uncooperative messengers, not the measure of the man but a pile of anonymous handmedowns. It reminded her of what happened when Claude Rains removed his suit and unwound the bandages from his hands and face. There was nothing left but his cigarette and the desperation in his voice.
"Is it O.K. if I look in here?" Leila's hand hovered at the pull of the center desk drawer.
Fontane began to rummage through the bureau. "Yes, oh yes," she said. "You can look anywhere at all."
Leila Pinkerton and Fontane Whitley were as close to friendship as they could get, given that Leila was white, Fontane was black, and they lived in a world full of people who claimed to know what that meant. They came together in crisis, like an emergency room team. At other times, a formality neither of them had created restrained them, driving them back into their separate shells. They trusted each other hesitantly, the way you trust a relative you've heard bad things about since childhood but who has always treated you with the utmost kindness.
Fontane began weeping again. Leila put an arm around her and squeezed her shoulder. "Did you search his room?"
Fontane's eyes caught fire. "Do you think I'm an idiot? We tore the house apart, hoping for a note."
"I'm sorry. I know you did. I thought you did."
"If this is some prank of his, I'm going to kill him when he gets home." She laughed at herself; then she began to cry again.
"There was nothing missing from his room?"
"Not that I noticed." Fontane stirred and sat upright.
"Like a favorite book or toy, his sneakers?"
"I don't think so." But as she said it, Fontane stood and began walking up the stairs, and Leila followed. Leila had never seen Hiram's room, and it wasn't at all the way she would have pictured it. It was futuristic, like the inside of a spaceship. "Handsome," she said, looking around. One wall, covered with black corkboard, had posters from the video store thumbtacked all over it, and four intricate circuit boards hanging from hooks. Shelves spraypainted silver held books and magazines jammed in at all angles, including a few titles Leila had given Hiram. She believed reading kept the mind sharp, and she liked to turn a phrase herself. She'd rearrange a thought or observation in her head until she got it just right, as if she intended to write it down, though she never did. Her favorite author was Mark Twain.
"I fought the beer sign." Fontane pointed over Hiram's desk to a Miller High Life neon sign with a whale spouting a brightblue plume of water. "That was a birthday gift from Dayton." Dayton was Hiram's father. He had refused to marry Fontane when she got pregnant at seventeen and had left town two months after Hiram was born.
Leila felt Hiram's absence more here than she had downstairs. Stuffed animals, model planes, an afghan draped across the foot of the bed: without their owner, the objects seemed forlorn. She remembered sorting through her husband's clothes after he died. She had felt sad and then had fallen into a rage. Colonel Pinkerton's ties and shirts were uncooperative messengers, not the measure of the man but a pile of anonymous handmedowns. It reminded her of what happened when Claude Rains removed his suit and unwound the bandages from his hands and face. There was nothing left but his cigarette and the desperation in his voice.
"Is it O.K. if I look in here?" Leila's hand hovered at the pull of the center desk drawer.
Fontane began to rummage through the bureau. "Yes, oh yes," she said. "You can look anywhere at all."