Review: Busch is masterful in 'Don't Tell Anyone'

"Don't Tell Anyone"
by Frederick Busch
Knopf
Fiction
309 pages

In this story: Characters and relationships Distance RELATED STORIES, SITES

By Joshua Kuritzky
Special to CNN Interactive

(CNN) -- The best short stories describe brief encounters, slivers of lives, and overheard conversations. They are exercises in skill and restraint, often providing the weight of a novel in something that can be read in one sitting. Frederick Busch, in "Don't Tell Anyone," his new short story collection, demonstrates this skill.

Although the stories in this collection do not always share the same subjects, many of them share the same theme and general mood -- one of lost relationships and people grown apart -- that gives the collection the feeling of having been collected. All these stories are here for a reason.

The stories share similar themes. Many of them are about people "passing through": parents visiting their children on their way to somewhere else, children visiting parents because they think it is right. And there is always something wrong -- someone is troubled, or two people are no longer on speaking terms, or one person is having trouble figuring out another person.

When these people meet, they have the types of conversations where language is thrown about with as much ease as deep ideas and allegations; where a brother's use of the word "Daddy" in place of "Pop" suggests more than a mere misuse of a nickname, but rather a sign that he's gone sentimental and soft.

These are the conversations overheard in the restaurant; this is what those people over there are talking about.

Busch, a very prolific writer, is comfortable in many forms and genres of fiction, from the suspenseful ("Girls") to the historical ("The Night Inspector"). In this collection he presents simple stories of characters and relationships.

The difficulty in describing a collection like this is the same found in describing a well-constructed record or meal -- the power of the whole is only appreciated when the individual parts, and the contrasts between them, are experienced together. There is something about the rush of characters, the troubled conversations, the feeling of unease one gets when reading of the unease of others, that makes "Don't Tell Anyone" feel whole in a way short story collections don't often do.

Although some of the stories bleed together with their similarities, there are others that stand out: "Bob's Your Uncle," "Vespers," and the closing novella, "A Handbook for Spies," among them. They are, each in their own way, perfect examples of the short story form -- stunning in their brevity and rhythm, but so moving that one misses the characters when they are gone.

This is especially true of "Vespers." It is quite short, and also quite simple: Myrna has come to New York with her boyfriend, a television news anchor, who is looking for a job. Ira, her brother, invites them to dinner, but first they stop in the "old neighborhood" where they find, in one of those ain't-the-world-small moments, that Myrna and Ira's childhood home is now occupied by a Hasidic Jew named Heschie who knows Ira's boyfriend, Bert Wragg (what a name!), from Minnesota.

"Vespers" ends with a game of dodge-ball in an empty gymnasium. Narrated in Myrna's wistful and nostalgic voice, the story illuminates something deep and unnameable about our memories and the way in which they change as we change.

What makes "Don't Tell Anyone" so successful is Busch's ability to isolate and distill feelings like this. Whether it is the distance between children and parents, or the difficulties of being husband and wife, there is a story here for everyone -- one that, like "Vespers," will awe with its insight and familiarity, proving that a talented writer needs little more than fifteen pages to his job.

Many of the stories in "Don't Tell Anyone" lend themselves to college lit-class discussions and dissections. The recurring themes of betrayal, the use of the "old neighborhood" in "Vespers," the wording of the title -- there is plenty here to examine.

But the strength of these stories lies in their ability to withstand and reward these sorts of dissections, while, at the same time, quietly and sometimes brutally dissecting you.

Excerpt: 'The Night Inspector'

Bold Type interview: Frederick Busch
Britannica.com: Frederick Busch
Alfred A. Knopf (Random House)

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.