{"id":48,"date":"2014-05-26T06:17:35","date_gmt":"2014-05-26T06:17:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/troyehlers.com\/blog\/?p=48"},"modified":"2014-05-26T13:57:14","modified_gmt":"2014-05-26T13:57:14","slug":"two-deserts-stories-by-julie-brickman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/troyehlers.com\/blog\/2014\/05\/26\/two-deserts-stories-by-julie-brickman\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Deserts: Stories by Julie Brickman"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two Deserts: Stories<\/strong> by Julie Brickman. As the title and cover suggests, two main characters\u2014Emma and Livia\u2014are the focus of these stories, and each is living in a desert, one literal and the other metaphorical. While this suggests a study of contrast, I found myself more impressed with the movement and energy in the story-telling. There is an enormous range of setting, topic, and conflict in these stories, and each story individually was compelling, fresh, and dynamic. \u00a0The stories engage the reader because this energy and range\u2014exemplified by the collection’s contents (below)\u2014are mirrored in the prose. \u00a0Brickman’s writing casts these story elements around the reader, ensnaring us in a web that is never predictable or linear. \u00a0The writing, like the collection and women featured therein, is bold and fearless.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Night at the Souk\u201d opens the collection with a headlong and fearless journey of Emma, a Westerner now working in the Middle East, as she seeks to melt into her surroundings and become one with these people she has studied so thoroughly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Cop, the Hooker and the Ridealong\u201d packs a punch because it weaves together several disparate, potent storylines: Livia, a psychologist who has worked for the police, is concerned that her neighbor might be violent; she recalls counseling a young sex worker who was brought into the profession by her mother; and Livia recounts her husband\u2019s diagnosis of ALS\/Lou Gehrig\u2019s disease. The movement throughout these woven storylines is evocative, gripping, and creates a nice resonance.<\/p>\n

\u201cMessage from Ayshah\u201d is a letter to Emma from the Arab daughter of Emma\u2019s employer; it\u2019s a youthful and excited letter about a young woman\u2019s admiration of this foreign business woman and her desires to see the world and break free from the constraints of her homeland\u2019s customs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Dying Husbands Dinner Club\u201d is just what the title suggests, and Livia gets together with other women for support; the story is full of black humor and bittersweet unflinching honesty, also shared in \u201cGear of a Marriage\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn Empty Quarter\u201d is about Samir\u2019s mother (Samir being Emma\u2019s colleague) as she tries to accept her son growing up, and a reflection on his being seduced into terrorism; this story is a study of many aspects of Middle Eastern culture, all within the point-of-view framework of Muslim Motherhood.<\/p>\n

\u201cSupermax\u201d speculates on Ted Kaczynski, Ramzi Yousef, and Timothy McVeigh sharing yard time together in prison, and explored the psychology of very different terrorists.<\/p>\n

\u201cEnd of Lust\u201d is a humorous (and almost pity-inspiring) poke at male chauvinism; by turns, this story is about a middle-aged man reaching emotional maturity, or a womanizer falling prey to feminism, or a story of impotence; it\u2019s both a thought-provoking look at the politics and psychology of sexual relations, and a light-hearted jab at men\u2019s libido and the world of academe.<\/p>\n

In \u201cThe Rainbow Range,\u201d Emma and tour guide Muhammad must rescue a lost tourist in the desert from the threat of quicksand.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Back of Her\u201d contrasts Livia\u2019s day-to-day struggles caring for her husband with her symbolic dreams of escape.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Lonely Priest\u201d is about a gay priest in the Alaskan wilderness struggling to reconcile his faith with his earthly desires, in the wake of his adopted son\u2019s suicide.<\/p>\n

\"Julie<\/a>

Two Deserts: Stories by Julie Brickman<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two Deserts: Stories by Julie Brickman. As the title and cover suggests, two main characters\u2014Emma and Livia\u2014are the focus of …<\/p>\n

Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-julie-brickman","tag-short-stories","tag-two-deserts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/troyehlers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/troyehlers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/troyehlers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/troyehlers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/troyehlers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/troyehlers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56,"href":"https:\/\/troyehlers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions\/56"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/troyehlers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/troyehlers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/troyehlers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}