Angela Pneuman

I am not a big short story person but I am trying to read more of them. This was a good collection about families in Kentucky. Several of the stories had an unpleasant twist - a home-done tonsillectomy, for starters, but I thought the ones that didn't were stronger. I liked the way the stories were open-ended - nothing came to a neat conclusion. Pneuman really nails the mother-daughter relationship and her portraits of emotionally needy parents are cringingly first rate.

Note: turtles and cucumbers are harmed in this book.… (meer)

I find books, both fiction and nonfiction, about the effect of religion on people's lives to be fascinating, and I've read several.

This one isn't about some crazy, snake-handling patriarch who takes “spare the rod” to an extreme, thank goodness. But it is about a crazy patriarch, or more importantly, his daughter. Charmaine is suffering the usual teenage growing pains, quite literally, but also is trying to follow her father's religious examples. But it is she and her mom, Phoebe, who have to deal with everyday life. And that is not always easy.

“My mother and I get along better with a room or two between us.”

While this was a good story, it didn't really draw me in as I had hoped. I liked the characterization. I especially like that a physically challenged child named Cecil Goode was not especially likable, did not fit into that stereotype of the long-suffering but saintly handicapped child. He was, actually, rather creepy. At least, his behavior was.

There was another rather creepy and disturbing part, something about photos, that I could have lived without, although they were an integral part of the story.

Even though the book didn't grab me as I'd hoped, that last ten or so pages almost make up for that. The ending was lyrical and quite lovely.

I was given an advanced copy of this book for review. The quote, the first line of the book, may have changed in the published edition.… (meer)

Home Remedies, by Angela Pneuman, offers eight stories that revolve around a unifying theme: the struggle of girls and young women raised in fundamentalist Christian families to resolve the tension between their upbringing and the values of contemporary society. Despite their brevity, many of the stories have an almost novelistic depth, a quality best illustrated by "The Bell Ringer," the story of a troubled young woman's descent into madness as she mans a Salvation Army bucket in the depths of a Minnesota winter.

Not all of Pneuman's stories offer such unremitting bleakness. "All Saints Day" is the often hilarious tale of two sisters' efforts to enliven a Biblical costume party at the church that's auditioning their father for its pulpit. Others, such as "The Beachcomber," portray the sexual awakening of young girls in sometimes startling, but sympathetic terms.

Pneuman's view of fundamentalist religion is frank but not unfair. It will be revealing to see her apply her talents to other subject matter as her career unfolds.… (meer)