She Treads Softly: North of Ordinary

Friday, January 10, 2025

North of Ordinary

North of Ordinary by John Rolfe Gardiner
1/14/25; 224 pages
Bellevue Literary Press

North of Ordinary by John Rolfe Gardiner is an exceptionally well-written, very highly recommended collection of ten short stories. The introduction is written by Christopher Benfey and the illustrations are by Maria Nicklin.

All the stories in this collection are character studies of a variety of characters across a span of different years. The insightful writing handles the failures and struggles of his characters in a thoughtful, profound manner, revealing moments in their individual lives with discernment. As with any short story collection some stories will resonate with different readers more than others, but as a whole this is an exquisite collection that most readers will greatly appreciate.

The stories include:

Tree Men: a college student takes time off and works for a tree service.

North of Ordinary: a man remembers a flirtation with a female classmate at a strict Christian college

Freak Corner: the narrator reflects on what his deaf sister and a transgender neighbor experienced at the hands of the neighborhood bullies, the Knox brothers, in the 1950s.

Their Grandfather's Clock: a grandfather along with his younger second wife visit his daughter and her family.

Virgin Summer: a young man on a student-exchange trip to France is taken as a last minute exchange of host families to a villa and experiences some historical and social enlightenment.

The Man from Trenton: a writer with his wife on an Amtrak quiet car are beset with a loud man on speakerphone and a confrontation ensues.

The Voice of the Valley: the postmortem tale of an ambitious and wily women who bought a tiny radio station.

Familiars: two couples who’ve taken vacations at a North Carolina beach house together for 17 years find their friendship begins to wear thin.

In the Time of Magic: a man who is a university's returning scholar after a five year gap shares his story with another older student.

Survival: Lester, a frail elderly man, recounts the story of each house he passes as he walks to a graveyard.

Gardiner is truly a master maker of sentences. Thanks to Bellevue Literary Press for providing me with an advance reader's copy via LibraryThing. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.