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A review by juliechristinejohnson
If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This by Robin Black
3.0
Three and a Half Stars
A blind daughter whose perception is far keener than her father realizes; a wife who hides the evidence of a mild stroke behind a turquoise scarf; the new girl at school who seems to float above everyone’s low opinion of her, like a faerie in white tights and black-patent Mary Janes; a painter trying to capture what little life remains in a fading man . . . Robin Black presents a tableau of sensitive characters existing in perhaps mundane circumstances—marriage, parenthood, school—but finding the extraordinary in life’s ordinary.
Although this collection of ten short stories appeared in 2010, I came to know of Robin Black only in 2014, through her first novel, Life Drawing. I found her writing so superb, her approach to a mature marriage extraordinary and haunting, that I’ve been eager to read If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This since. I can’t be as enthusiastic here—not every story resonated, and her writing does not have the same spark and vibrancy as I found in Life Drawing, but it’s not a fair scale of judgment. These stories were written over a period of several years, perhaps as a writer’s apprenticeship, though there is a thread of domesticity that weaves them together thematically.
The first and last stories, and one in the middle, are my favorites. The Guide is a deftly handled glimpse of tenderness and tragedy as a father hands over the care of his teenaged daughter to a guide dog, reliving the guilt and anger of the long-ago accident that robbed her of her sight. Nearly grown and ready to leave home, the girl is independent and strong, and sees far more of the world than her father realizes, including that her parent’s marriage is a sham. In The History of the World another accident strands an aging divorcee in Italy and she finds beauty in brief moments of anonymity with a kind waitress, as she waits for the real world to close in around her. Harriet Elliott is the most surprising of the collection. Two young girls collide, one in a coddled bubble of fatherly love, spinning out tales of kidnapping and revenge, the other living in hippie squalor, watching her father pack up his things to carry on with his life elsewhere. There is something deliciously creepy about Harriet Elliott that elevates this story from the dense emotional depths of the others.
Robin Black’s writing is elegant, if not almost too composed, like drinking a Chablis that’s a tad too chilled. There were times, such as in A Country Where You Once Lived, where a father sees his grown daughter and ex-wife after a long estrangement, that I wanted more from the characters than mere observation or passive engagement; or Pine, where a widow watches a friend, her daughter, and an ex-lover as if from behind a misted-over window. The solemnity and dignity of behavior drove a sort of melancholy that made their emotional dilemmas difficult to empathize with.
For all that, if you are a reader of short stories, this is a collection I highly recommend.
A blind daughter whose perception is far keener than her father realizes; a wife who hides the evidence of a mild stroke behind a turquoise scarf; the new girl at school who seems to float above everyone’s low opinion of her, like a faerie in white tights and black-patent Mary Janes; a painter trying to capture what little life remains in a fading man . . . Robin Black presents a tableau of sensitive characters existing in perhaps mundane circumstances—marriage, parenthood, school—but finding the extraordinary in life’s ordinary.
Although this collection of ten short stories appeared in 2010, I came to know of Robin Black only in 2014, through her first novel, Life Drawing. I found her writing so superb, her approach to a mature marriage extraordinary and haunting, that I’ve been eager to read If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This since. I can’t be as enthusiastic here—not every story resonated, and her writing does not have the same spark and vibrancy as I found in Life Drawing, but it’s not a fair scale of judgment. These stories were written over a period of several years, perhaps as a writer’s apprenticeship, though there is a thread of domesticity that weaves them together thematically.
The first and last stories, and one in the middle, are my favorites. The Guide is a deftly handled glimpse of tenderness and tragedy as a father hands over the care of his teenaged daughter to a guide dog, reliving the guilt and anger of the long-ago accident that robbed her of her sight. Nearly grown and ready to leave home, the girl is independent and strong, and sees far more of the world than her father realizes, including that her parent’s marriage is a sham. In The History of the World another accident strands an aging divorcee in Italy and she finds beauty in brief moments of anonymity with a kind waitress, as she waits for the real world to close in around her. Harriet Elliott is the most surprising of the collection. Two young girls collide, one in a coddled bubble of fatherly love, spinning out tales of kidnapping and revenge, the other living in hippie squalor, watching her father pack up his things to carry on with his life elsewhere. There is something deliciously creepy about Harriet Elliott that elevates this story from the dense emotional depths of the others.
Robin Black’s writing is elegant, if not almost too composed, like drinking a Chablis that’s a tad too chilled. There were times, such as in A Country Where You Once Lived, where a father sees his grown daughter and ex-wife after a long estrangement, that I wanted more from the characters than mere observation or passive engagement; or Pine, where a widow watches a friend, her daughter, and an ex-lover as if from behind a misted-over window. The solemnity and dignity of behavior drove a sort of melancholy that made their emotional dilemmas difficult to empathize with.
For all that, if you are a reader of short stories, this is a collection I highly recommend.