North of Ordinary

November 4, 2024
Gardiner’s first book in 20 years (after The Magellan House) is a well-crafted collection of wistful character studies, most of which explore the history and natural world of Northern Virginia. In “Tree Men,” a student goes on leave from college to work for a tree service, hoping the manual labor and exposure to the outdoors will help with his depression and anxiety. It does for a time, until he realizes he’ll eventually have to return to “that place where thinking was considered work.” The narrator of “Freak Corner,” a standout, reflects on his Arlington childhood in the 1950s, when his deaf sister was bullied by the Knox brothers, who lived nearby. The Knoxes also pick on a trans woman whose gender change is politely accepted by the narrator’s parents but brings “notoriety” to the neighborhood. Lester, the retired and feeble main character of “Survival,” walks to a graveyard formerly used for the town’s Black people, planning to visit the grave of a man he once worked with. When Lester, who is white, encounters an elderly Black man repairing a vandalized wall, their conversation yields a subtle examination of the region’s racial conflicts, past and present. There’s not much plot to speak of, but Gardiner holds the reader’s attention with his incisive prose. These reflective tales were worth the wait.

November 1, 2024
A clutch of wry coming-of-age tales, the first in 20 years from the veteran Gardiner. The 10 well-turned stories in this collection usually feature narrators looking back on awkward but meaningful moments in their youth. The narrator of "Tree Men" is a failed academic who comes into himself as an assistant for a tree service. In the title story, a man recalls an ill-advised flirtation with a hard-to-read classmate at a Christian college. In "Virgin Summer," a young man's student-exchange trip to France offers some historical and social enlightenment. "Freak Corner" looks back to 1953, as the narrator explores the history of his deaf sister, a transgender neighbor, and the neighborhood bullies who tormented them both. Gardiner's narrators are writing from a position of maturity, and some stories feature more grown-up types: "The Man From Trenton" centers on a semi-successful writer and a noisy conflict he had with a man on an Amtrak quiet car, while in "Familiars," two couples who've taken vacations together for 17 years find their friendship beginning to fray. But even in those cases, Gardiner is interested in his protagonists' past youthful foibles and how they shaped the flawed adults they became. Gardiner began publishing in the early 1970s in publications like theNew Yorker, and his prose sometimes has an overly mannered, slightly fusty feel. One man, fearing death, "wondered if he was getting the scythe man's signal," and a plot point about a viral blog post in "Familiars" feels untenable. But at his best, he has a nuanced sense of characterization and a knack for writing gracefully about stress without undercutting the tension. That talent is strongest in "Freak Corner," where the narrator's sister's misunderstood deafness and embrace of sign language slyly reveals everyone's failures to better understand themselves. Foursquare but often affecting studies in domestic anxiety.

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December 1, 2024
The characters inhabiting these 10 tales are mostly meanderers. Some of them are folksy, others are failures, and a few are fearful of truly engaging with life. Gardiner, an acclaimed novelist and short-story writer, traverses notions of locale and loneliness, wandering and wistfulness. The opening story, "Tree Men," follows a depressed college student (no better on prescription medication) who seeks improvement via manual labor, cutting trees for a year. He looks forward to "months of mental vacation" and perhaps some camaraderie, too. "Freak Corner" dissects prejudice in Middle America and features a twentyish transvestite, bullies, and a deaf teenager. The closing story, "Survival," addresses themes of memory and decay as it poignantly depicts an octogenarian's daily stroll through town to the local cemetery. Suffering from heart disease and bouts of dizziness, he remains resolute about completing his walk. Protagonists of other tales include a cultural exchange student visiting France, two couples who've shared a rented summer house for 17 consecutive years, and a eulogized woman who believed that stories are eternal (no disagreement with that sentiment).

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