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http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/books/20120803-battleborn-by-claire-vaye-watkins-is-a-remarkable-debut-of-short-stories.ece
‘Battleborn,’ by Claire Vaye Watkins, is a 'remarkable debut' of short stories
By JENNY SHANK Special Contributor
Published: 03 August 2012 01:53 PM
Nevada shapes each of the characters in Claire Vaye Watkins’ assured debut collection of stories, Battleborn.
The state’s permissiveness influences some characters, as with the working girls at the Cherry Patch Ranch brothel in “The Past Perfect, The Past Continuous, The Simple Past,” or the young women growing up in the lurid glow of Las Vegas in “Rondine al Nido.” For others, the effect is physical, down to their very cells, poisoned from silver mine tailings and nuclear-test blasts (“Ghosts, Cowboys”).
Watkins writes in a poised, confident voice — or voices, rather. She writes many of the stories in the first-person perspectives of a wide range of narrators, from women in their 20s, like the author, to middle-aged contemporary men (“The Last Thing We Need”), to a teenage boy in 1849 turned pioneer and gold prospector in “The Diggings,” one of the most moving and engrossing stories in the collection.
Watkins also handles a variety of structures with a deft touch, including an epistolary story, the haunting “The Last Thing We Need,” which appeared in Best of the West 2011. Over several months, Thomas Grey writes increasingly urgent letters to Duane Moser, the man whose name is printed on the bottles of prescription pills Grey found in “the debris left over from an auto accident,” which also included a “sealed Ziploc bag of letters signed M” and photos of a ’66 Chevy Chevelle. At first Grey seeks to learn whether Moser survived the accident, but as his letters go unanswered, they become confessional, building in urgency when Grey describes his long-ago shooting of a man who drove a Chevelle.
Another structurally innovative story is “Ghosts, Cowboys,” which succinctly swirls through some events in the history of Nevada and California as they relate to the family of the narrator, beginning with the founding of Reno in 1859 and coming to rest on the peculiar incident in 1968 when Charlie Manson and his followers began to live at the Spahn ranch in California, a former set for Hollywood Westerns. Although several of the characters in the story are fictional, most of the odd details are not.
Watkins finds the history of Nevada and of the West to be a gold mine of story ideas and aptly incorporates the landscape as metaphor. One character stands “stiff and awkward as a Joshua tree,” while another seduces with remarks about the desert: “I told him of the heavy earth scent after a desert rain, three or four times a year. That it smelled like the breathing of every thankful desert plant, every plot of soil, every unfound scrap of silver.”
The handful of stories in Battleborn that focus on the love lives of contemporary women in their 20s feel the slightest — perhaps only because they are included among stronger work. When you’ve just been moved by the tale of a young man struggling for survival on his trek west and working himself half to death in the California gold fields (“The Diggings”), his brother literally driven crazy by unrequited love for his sweetheart who won’t write, it’s hard to care as much about the half-interested flirtation and feelings of vague dissatisfaction displayed by a trio of friends out to drink and laugh at the ironic amusements in “Virginia City.” But when Watkins raises the stakes, she can hold the reader in the thrall of suspense and mystery.
The narrator in “The Diggings” remarks, “The mind is a mine. So often we revisit its winding, unsound caverns when we ought to stay out.” Here’s hoping Watkins will continue to delve into Nevada’s unsound caverns and emerge with such worthy plunder.
Jenny Shank’s first novel, The Ringer, is a finalist for the High Plains Book Award in fiction.
Battleborn
Claire Vaye Watkins
(Riverhead, $25.95)
‘Battleborn,’ by Claire Vaye Watkins, is a 'remarkable debut' of short stories
By JENNY SHANK Special Contributor
Published: 03 August 2012 01:53 PM
Nevada shapes each of the characters in Claire Vaye Watkins’ assured debut collection of stories, Battleborn.
The state’s permissiveness influences some characters, as with the working girls at the Cherry Patch Ranch brothel in “The Past Perfect, The Past Continuous, The Simple Past,” or the young women growing up in the lurid glow of Las Vegas in “Rondine al Nido.” For others, the effect is physical, down to their very cells, poisoned from silver mine tailings and nuclear-test blasts (“Ghosts, Cowboys”).
Watkins writes in a poised, confident voice — or voices, rather. She writes many of the stories in the first-person perspectives of a wide range of narrators, from women in their 20s, like the author, to middle-aged contemporary men (“The Last Thing We Need”), to a teenage boy in 1849 turned pioneer and gold prospector in “The Diggings,” one of the most moving and engrossing stories in the collection.
Watkins also handles a variety of structures with a deft touch, including an epistolary story, the haunting “The Last Thing We Need,” which appeared in Best of the West 2011. Over several months, Thomas Grey writes increasingly urgent letters to Duane Moser, the man whose name is printed on the bottles of prescription pills Grey found in “the debris left over from an auto accident,” which also included a “sealed Ziploc bag of letters signed M” and photos of a ’66 Chevy Chevelle. At first Grey seeks to learn whether Moser survived the accident, but as his letters go unanswered, they become confessional, building in urgency when Grey describes his long-ago shooting of a man who drove a Chevelle.
Another structurally innovative story is “Ghosts, Cowboys,” which succinctly swirls through some events in the history of Nevada and California as they relate to the family of the narrator, beginning with the founding of Reno in 1859 and coming to rest on the peculiar incident in 1968 when Charlie Manson and his followers began to live at the Spahn ranch in California, a former set for Hollywood Westerns. Although several of the characters in the story are fictional, most of the odd details are not.
Watkins finds the history of Nevada and of the West to be a gold mine of story ideas and aptly incorporates the landscape as metaphor. One character stands “stiff and awkward as a Joshua tree,” while another seduces with remarks about the desert: “I told him of the heavy earth scent after a desert rain, three or four times a year. That it smelled like the breathing of every thankful desert plant, every plot of soil, every unfound scrap of silver.”
The handful of stories in Battleborn that focus on the love lives of contemporary women in their 20s feel the slightest — perhaps only because they are included among stronger work. When you’ve just been moved by the tale of a young man struggling for survival on his trek west and working himself half to death in the California gold fields (“The Diggings”), his brother literally driven crazy by unrequited love for his sweetheart who won’t write, it’s hard to care as much about the half-interested flirtation and feelings of vague dissatisfaction displayed by a trio of friends out to drink and laugh at the ironic amusements in “Virginia City.” But when Watkins raises the stakes, she can hold the reader in the thrall of suspense and mystery.
The narrator in “The Diggings” remarks, “The mind is a mine. So often we revisit its winding, unsound caverns when we ought to stay out.” Here’s hoping Watkins will continue to delve into Nevada’s unsound caverns and emerge with such worthy plunder.
Jenny Shank’s first novel, The Ringer, is a finalist for the High Plains Book Award in fiction.
Battleborn
Claire Vaye Watkins
(Riverhead, $25.95)
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book was mentioned in [a:Roxane Gay|3360355|Roxane Gay|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1407278304p2/3360355.jpg]'s [b:Bad Feminist: Essays|18813642|Bad Feminist Essays|Roxane Gay|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1421292744s/18813642.jpg|26563816], in the essay entitled "Not Here to Make Friends". Gay talks about unlikeable women in novels, and mentions that this short story collection contains a number of "seemingly unlikeable women." I didn't find most of the women unlikeable, but rather struggling for connection in a world that has not been kind to them. Set in the American West, these tales marry the harsh geography with the stories that seem to come out of it. The gold rush, brothels, Vegas, and babies, wanted and unwanted underpin these stories of people trying to enter in to or maintain relationships.
Recommended.
Recommended.
One of the reviews on the back cover of Battleborn compares Watkins' writing to Joan Didion's, which in my limited knowledge of each other's work is a fairly reasonable claim. I loved the permanently desolate, hot, dry locations of Watkins' stories and the way the landscape played a role in each. The only hiccup and why it took me so long to finish was the 40-odd page story that took place during the Gold Rush, which I just couldn't get into until it was too late and the forcefulness of the ending was less than impactful.
Took awhile to read this, because between the deeply lyrical and engrossing prose, and the utter heart-breaking truths some of these stories told, I had to put it down to process more than once. I feel like these stories don't carry the tag, or burden, of 'western writing' which is good; yet, the spaces and psychology of the West are so deeply woven into the narrative. Definitely interested in seeing the rest of Watkins' work.
every story in battleborn is breathtaking. need to go to the desert asap.
challenging
funny
reflective
sad
medium-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes