Book Review: Small Places is raw and bleak, yet incredibly hopeful
Small Places left me pondering the hardest moments in my life. Even in the downright crappiest of times, there was light — there was tenderness, there was warmth and heart-felt emotions. In the smallest of spaces, between the big things that happen, both good or bad, there is joy, smiles, goosebumps, and connections between things, places and people.
Tiffany Allan’s debut collection is made up of 20 short stories. Each one is beautifully written in its simplicity, and all stories focus on the mundane moments that happen in our everyday lives. Like three sisters bonding in a car ride to the abortion clinic, a sandwich bar artist who gobbles down oxycontin to dull life’s ache, trying not to laugh at a funeral, waiting for a pregnancy test in the desert, or a bunch of bored teenagers watching the body of a car burn inside a bonfire. It’s the perfect marriage between the depressing and the hopeful, the awkward and the at-ease, and the beautiful and the ugly.
It’s hard to choose a favorite story because I loved them all. But I’d have to say that “Missing” would be close to it, if only for the first two sentences.
“On Sunday Shane came to visit for family dinner and I was face down on the lawn after eating everything in the medicine cupboard. Instead of telling our parents, he draped me over the back fence to puke it out.”
This is a story about the loss of an older sibling, and the impact that has when you’ve assumed they will always be there to look out for you. It’s unsettling, raw, and tragic but at the same time, incredibly hopeful as well. It made me think about my own siblings. As the youngest, I have always been protected by them. The thought of losing my siblings makes me feel lost, like something has swept my feet up from under me. That’s the power of this story. The unnamed narrator’s everyday experience of continuing on without her brother Shane is sad but so heartfelt, it’s comforting.
Short story collections can sometimes feel disconnected; lone stories shoved together. Small Places is as far from that as imaginable. Tiffany Allan uses the connections between her characters to show intimacy, vulnerability, sadness and joy, in all-too-real settings.
It’s not often that we get to read about the ordinary, everyday person from a small, inconsequential town — they’re boring, poor, have nothing of worth to share, or they’re not wealthy, good looking or famous — why would we bother? But Allan shows that those stricken by poverty or loss, or those trying to make it in the world under difficult circumstances have a voice that deserves to be heard. In the hardest of lives, or in the bleakest of towns, there is always some form of beauty in its telling.
Small Places left me feeling sad and happy. It’s not your usual combination of emotions but that’s the thing, this collection of short stories manages to do both equally well and refreshingly so. It made me realize that even in the most mundane of tasks, the most traumatic experiences I have encountered, there is that little spark of light, that promise of connection that will pull you out onto the other side.
Want more recommendations like this one? Check out the Narrative Muse matchmaker and discover new stories by (and about) intersectional women and gender diverse creators.
