{"id":5,"date":"2016-07-13T15:02:56","date_gmt":"2016-07-13T15:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sbpra.com\/franceswebb\/?page_id=5"},"modified":"2021-06-15T00:28:58","modified_gmt":"2021-06-15T00:28:58","slug":"come-to-a-memory-joabs-storylilas-story-by-frances-webb","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sbpra.com\/franceswebb\/","title":{"rendered":"Books by Frances Webb"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Putting Mrs Dawson Back Together<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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This collection of four stories considers emotional fragility. Sometimes fragility is out in the open. Other times it is buried or camouflaged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first of the stories is the title story, \u201cPutting Mrs Dawson Back Together.\u201dIt follows a woman who has had a complete mental collapse triggered by the imminent death of a close friend. Just as Mrs Dawson receives joyful news that she wants to share with her friend, she is afraid of disrespecting her friend\u2019s pain, and this weighs heavily on her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unable to cope with his wife\u2019s illness, Mr Dawson settles her into a mental hospital, where she encounters a snoring roommate. This forces Mrs Dawson to escape the room and hide where the nurses can\u2019t find her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story \u201cLetters\u201d follows the one-sided correspondence of a woman who thinks she is married to the husband of another woman. The letters interest the real wife because they give brief reviews of movies, which the writer says her so-called husband should see. The real wife consults the letters before heading out to the movies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cA Winter Visit,\u201d an old friend arrives unannounced, bringing her husband and two children. The friend discusses her suicide attempt, which obviously didn\u2019t succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Painter\u201d is working inside a woman\u2019s house on a ladder. While she is outside dealing with a fallen tree, she hears sobbing from inside the house. The painter says his wife just called and wants a divorce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Memoir Man: And Others in Public Places<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The small dramas that happen in public places are like mini stories that can entertain, make us
think, or touch a certain emotion. They are played out without a producer or editor, but maybe with a writer taking notes. These twenty or so stories are perhaps those notes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Memoir Man: and Others in Public Place is a collection of both short stories and poems that range from a camouflaged homeless person pushing a grocery cart carrying a typewriter, to a man walking on Fifth Avenue with a television on his head. The main characters are either slightly mentally or emotionally challenged, and happen to be out in public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bits and pieces of lives such as these are played out, with an involved narrator or without. A man sits at a table in a library peeling an egg while being watched by a woman quietly and obsessively reviewing highlights of her ancestor\u2019s life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A man on a train is peeling an egg and wondering what to do with the tiny pieces of shells lodged in the creases of his hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A woman watches and judges a woman filling her pockets with napkins at a Barnes and Noble caf\u00e9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a museum lobby, a woman notices a couple trying to check their baby along with their coats. Both long and short stories capture obsession, loneliness, nosiness, and brief moments of guilt or
compassion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s back. He looks at the kid holding his pen. He looks pained. He walks to the window. He can\u2019t sit down. He rubs his eyes and pushes his gray hair to a stick-out straight-up position. Then smooths it down. Rubs his head again. I think: Maybe he has a publisher. Maybe he is a retired professor on a mission for the Center for Advanced Learning or the Fellowship of
Spanish Believers or the Salvation Army … Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital in the British Museum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The man could be another Karl Marx and I am watching him change the course of history. It\u2019s a shame they don\u2019t supply him with an office. I think too: If that kid speaks to him, he will cry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Roamers and Wanderers <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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This mixed genre of short stories and poems set in the 1950s, \u201960s, and \u201970s have one thing in common: They show how travel opens the world to new ideas, yet expresses the universality of mankind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGetting to Verdun\u201d veers a bit to the crazy side of life, with a woman, her husband, and her father intent on granting the father\u2019s wish to reach Verdun, so he can retrace his steps made in World War I. The daughter has unresolved issues with her father and acts up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cNorway,\u201d the illusory attention from a colleague of her husband within an atmosphere of possible radiation exposure, and in totally unfamiliar surroundings, distracts a woman from confronting her fear for an imagined unborn child.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The universality of travel continues with the short story \u201cOn a Bench in the Amtrak Station,\u201d which follows a woman intently watching a mother and baby interact. She talks to herself about it, revealing how envious she is of their relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Guide and the Boy,\u201d written in the style of magic realism, deals with a tour guide trying to keep his tourists interested in the myths of Mexico. Among the tourists is a teenage boy who finds the guide boring and thus harasses him until the guide \u201closes it\u201d and becomes violent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cUlrika,\u201d an arrogant womanizer drives through the Alps off-handedly looking for a woman he vaguely remembers. He finds her, objectifies her, and she reacts in a self-destructive manner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Travel, and everything changes. It\u2019s all new surroundings, people, routine, and relationships, which can be tested, strained, rejuvenated, or even broken. Embedded ideas can suddenly become challenged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roamers and Wanderers is a collection of short stories and some poetry set in different countries or cities and written over a period of about forty years. Each is about travel and the effect the trip has on the traveler. Characters may react in negative or positive ways. In one case, memories surface, resulting in emotional turmoil. Primarily in the poems, political issues are visited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the first short story, \u201cMarkers,\u201d a newly married woman confronts the controlling behavior exhibited by her husband.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The poem \u201cTake Off\u201d reveals the universal fear of flying. In the poem \u201cNobody Knows,\u201d a woman reflects on how she appears to others \u2013 looking crazy? \u2013 in the airport as she walks back and forth looking for the ground transportation sign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cRemembering Caracas,\u201d the narrator is waiting in a Rhode Island train station and notices a provocative sentence built into the tile floor: \u201cI travel not to get someplace but travel for travel\u2019s sake.\u201d This exemplifies all the stories in this collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Short Joy for Alma Hedman<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Two cultures, embodied in Alma, an ex-nun, and Carmelo, a newly arrived young man from Puerto Rico, hit head-on in this ’80s-era story about language and obsession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Short Joy for Alma Hedman<\/em> <\/strong>begins as Alma, a troubled postulant nun, leaves her convent for an uncertain outside world. She brings with her strong religious beliefs, embodied in a handmade cross she wears around her neck. Her life collides in the big city with Carmelo, a young Puerto Rican who can barely speak English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unable to get a job in America without learning better English, Carmelo enrolls in Alma’s ESL class at a community college. Both are outsiders, and as it turns out, both have much to learn from the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alma, an ex-Episcopalian postulant, is leaving the convent for good. On the drive home, her mother tells her, “We’ll stop at Bloomies – you have no clothes I’m sure; no home, no man.” Alma responds with religious platitudes, including, “Virginity is the highest calling.” Their annoyance with each other builds until Alma tells her mother to stop the car. As her mother drives off, Alma hears her yell, “Go find a church.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alma does just that. She comes across a large church as well as a mentor, who in exchange for a job, allows her to remain until she can adjust to the outside world. She’s told about a job teaching English at a new community college, something she did at the convent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carmelo, a young Puerto Rican, comes to the city and is met by his brother, Mario, who lectures him on the need to learn English, the “right English,” so he won’t end up a thief like him. All Carmelo wants is to get a job as a diesel engine repairman and bring his girlfriend, Miguelina, to the mainland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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