Falling Backwards: Stories of Fathers and Daughters

Falling Backwards: Stories of Fathers and Daughters. Gina Frangello, Guest Editor. Asst. eds., Stacy Bierlein, Kathryn Kosmeja, Allison Parker. Foreword by Elissa Schappell. Chicago: Hourglass Books, 2004.

Thematic collections are the rage these days, probably because they provide a different approach, a specific unifying principle, and a varied sampling of writers and styles. Falling Backwards is a prime example. One way or another, each of the nineteen stories in this collection revolves around daughter-father relationships, though often they get at broader family dynamics, as well. This collection is framed by Elissa Schappell’s foreword and Gina Frangello’s “Introduction: The End of the Archetypical Father,” both of which are priceless and equal to any of the stories that follow them. Schappell previously authored the highly entertaining and excellent Use Me (2000), a “novel-in-stories” (her Mary Beth character is one of my favorites) and is involved in numerous writing and editing endeavors. Frangello is the Executive Editor of Other Voices and the author of My Sister’s Continent (Portland: Chiasmus Press, 2005), a powerful and complex novel, one of the strongest and most engaging I’ve read in the past two years.

Schappell’s and Frangello’s opening essays are worth the whole shebang. They discuss their relationship with their own fathers (and indirectly, therefore, with their mothers). “I don’t think I could write truthfully abut my father,” Schappell notes. “I wouldn’t dare. By hiding behind the blazing shield of fiction – all fiction is a lie – I was protected from my father’s wrath and the scorn of those who think such stories should go untold” (p. xvii). Frangello’s take is equally incisive. “Despite being the only daughter of a gentle man, my Father Archetype, so to speak, became the dozens of other men in my neighborhood for whom violence often substituted reason, who were jealous and misogynistic, intoxicated by various substances, loose with the family money, and casually unfaithful” (p. xxi). Well, every good story needs conflict, yes? And the very people who do atrocious (or dramatic or complex) things in real life often make for the most compelling characters.

My favorite stories in Falling Backwards: “The Other Daughter,” Antonya Nelson; “Mr. Sweetly Indecent,” Bliss Broyard; “Lone Stars,” Lan Tran; “The Girl in the Flammable Skirt,” Aimee Bender; “Everything’s Going to Be So Good,” Lisa Stolley; “Brave Girl,” Peter Ho Davis; “Myself as a Delicious Peach,” Heather Sellers; and “Falling Backwards,” Dan Chaon. But all the stories offer something interesting. “Lone Stars” is perfect as a teaching tool, workable for history or writing classes in particular, not to mention gender studies. It provides ideal entry into Vietnam, Vietnamese culture, the Vietnam War, and the conflict between cultural assimilation and cultural pride. It’s as simple and direct as Bobbie Ann Mason’s “Shiloh,” another highly teachable story. Like Mason’s work, I would not be surprised to see some of these engaging, well-written stories collected in Falling Backwards turn up in college readers. Indeed, Falling Backwards is a useful and entertaining reader in its own right.

Hourglass Books specializes in short fiction collections and is soliciting thematic stories for upcoming volumes.

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