Review
Darling Wendy and Other Stories by Melissa Crandall
Seventh Circle Press, 2008
Reviewed by Janelle Elyse Kihlstrom
Melissa Crandall has a knack for re-imagining popular lore, and in Darling Wendy, her eight-story collection from Seventh Circle Press, she applies it to a wide range of subjects: Peter Pan, in the title story; the inverse-werewolf legend of the were-man; and the urban legend that Marilyn Monroe faked her own death.
“Transformation” is the title of the collection's only (admittedly unconventional) love story and is also, as a motif, the one persistent thread that runs through all these stories, even the few without supernatural elements, like “Brother's Keeper,” about a pragmatic woman who manages a farm to which she has no legal claim.
The collection opens with “And to All a Good Night,” an environmentally dystopic tale of a world without snow and the demise of its last living witness, who has, of course, become an international celebrity.
Despite the global-warming warning implicit in that premise, there's no didactic tone to Crandall's fiction, and, despite plot developments that enact what could be described as feminist revenge fantasies in the title story and in “Brother's Keeper,” she takes no pains to spare the shallow, freeloading young wife in “Centaur” from the sharp focus of her lens and elicits sympathy instead for her dutiful, dreamer, nature-boy husband.
There are moments of beauty (for example, in the final scene of “Transformation”) as well as irony in these stories, and Crandall is particularly skilled at creating suspense, best evidenced in “Dreams on Racks,” about a diabolical scene in an old cult sci-fi series that wields power on the other side of the screen.
Some of the most compelling of these stories could easily bear further development, such as “Moonwalk,” about a were-man ostracized by his pack, which is only a page and a half long but contains some of the collection's starkest and most vivid scenes.
The title and final story is definitely the gem here, though, the most psychologically nuanced and the best showcase for Crandall's honed skills for imaginative plot construction (her strongest suit) working in concert with lyric description.
A grown Wendy feels maternally protective, yet simultaneously envious, now that Pan's attention has shifted to her young daughter, and Crandall offers a charged scene between the two former lovers: “The whisper of bare feet on carpet and the sudden near smell of newleavesdewstarlightoceandarkearthmagic made her squeeze her eyes shut as his hand fit along the curve of her shoulder with gentle familiarity. 'Don't be frightened. I have a surprise for you.'”
Pan himself, fixated in childhood but re-imagined here as physically mature, is a morally ambiguous force of nature, blissfully unaware of the harm he causes.
Crandall evokes Wendy's ambivalence so convincingly that, when she eventually takes flight, the reader is tempted to applaud, but, her grown-up voice cautions, perhaps not this time.
There is more information about this publication on the author's website, http://melissacrandall.com
