A review by davidwright
Wide Eyed by Trinie Dalton

4.0

Recently I wrote this column for NoveList titled Wondrous Strange, all about these emerging and emerged surrealists and fabulists such as Kelly Link and Aimee Bender. I forgot to mention Trinie Dalton in this connection, whose short story collection Wide Eyed has been one of my favorite books in this not-a-genre. (My journey to this book was one of those wonderfully oblique paths, via Matthew Stokoe’s ultra-bleak noir High Life - a tremendous read, and my second favorite book involving ill-gotten human kidneys - which was published under Akashic Press’ Little House on the Bowery imprint, which also features Dalton’s totally different sort of book). Like Kelly Link only more so, Dalton beats the membrane between the fantastic and the real to airy thinness, inviting the reader in with a charming, ingenuous low-key candor. A story might start with suburban kids messing around, choreographing dance routines to Fleetwood Mac and Juice Newton, but somehow wind up discussing stepfathers, lobsters, and spermatozoa with Mick Jagger. Then there’s the story that begins with this great line: “My face is not exactly like two dogs humping, but it is just as fascinating and embarrassing.” Dalton keeps one eye on nature; there are a lot of animals here – mosquitoes and manatee, cats, crabs, and Chewbacca, or at least the kid who is Chewbacca in a childhood Star Wars fantasy. Sometimes nature returns the favor, like the hummingbird that gives her a mean look and something approximating a Billy Idol sneer. There are odd epistles between a disheartened woman and one of Santa’s elves, creepy dudes, slumber parties that go wrong, and large expanses of Nintendo Burgertime. Dalton’s territory seems to be between childhood and what comes after, a place where magic and wonder and banality and hurt are inextricably bound up with the logic of dreams, drugs, and dreary afternoons. I sure hope she writes more soon.