The First Hurt
Issue #28
By Rachel Sherman
By Ling Ma
Published: June 1st, 2006 | 12:00am
Like most contemporary minimalists, Rachel Sherman is another writer who reads as though she also attended the school of Mr. Raymond Carver. Unlike many of her peers (certain exceptions being Amy Hempel and underrated Irish writer Anne Enright), Sherman probably would’ve graduated summa cum laude, which is to say that she pulls off a certain kind of stylish minimalism really well. Carver, being a writer who discloses so much through an absence of words, is credited as a master at conveying loss.
Sherman’s stories examine a specific type of loss: that of childhood or idealistic innocence. Her scenarios often involve inexplicable interactions between adults and children. In one of the most flabbergasting and funny pieces, a teenage girl sends and receives letters from an overseas sergeant seemingly inflicted with multiple personality disorder — he corresponds in a voice that alternates between himself and someone called “The Reaper.” Then there’s “The Neutered Bulldog,” narrated by a student whose married female teacher enthralls in confiding her sexual exploits, including dalliances with another student. Among the most poignant is “Two Stories; Single Family; Scenic View,” which portrays the fracturing relationship of a married California couple after the birth of twins with some undefined genetic disease.
The character details are compulsively engrossing: a husband who works in sales at an air-conditioning company, or a 10-year-old who names her Barbies after Greek gods. These, along with an eye for intimate and absurd moments of tension are the main draws here. At times, however, the surgically sharp prose is so crystalline that it becomes brittle and risks collapsing in on the more complex tones of the story altogether. The First Hurt occasionally suffers from limited emotional range, too often defaulting to an identical sense of suburban malaise and apocalyptic apprehension. Nevertheless, Sherman’s portrayals of characters fumbling vaguely through the enormous, incoherent world are largely original, and their pleasures and pains are both chilling and heartbreaking.
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ABOUT THIS BOOK
The First Hurt
(Open City Books)
By Rachel Sherman
160 pages
$14
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