“Charactered Pieces” by Caleb J. Ross, reviewed by Lynn Alexander. “Charactered Pieces” is the second publication of the new Outsider Writers Press. It follows David Blaine’s poetry chapbook “Antisocial” as their second release.
Ross delivers exactly what you have come to expect from him: smart layers of fiction with thematically related elements. We see attention to strange details…and we see sick things that on occasion seem nudged into the foreground from where they stood, poised in the periphery. Perhaps Ross does this to add depth to the characters, rendering them alongside their context.
“Charactered Pieces” refer to flawed diamonds, a marketing ploy developed by the character of Lori who is herself a “charactered piece” and as such, seems unable to win the approval of her mother.
Ross moves on to “My Family’s Rule”, where concealment is part of the game of pushing people to decipher what we want and judging them accordingly. Trying to please the father, the offspring involved want to purchase proper presents, as opposed to presents that signify something negative in his eyes as in the case of the shotglasses: “white trash” presents.
Again, we have the dynamic of parent and child, the child unable to get it right, parent unable to budge.What do our choices say about who we are, and how much of that is wrapped up in the desire to be respected?
What we begin to see is not a pattern of intolerance so much as a pattern of protection, a “for your own good” kind of scrutiny. These are parents who want to bring an understanding of how the world really works to their children, and their years and experience have taught them that the world can be unkind- particularly in the face of our flaws.
These are parents who, in their own ways, mean well. They want to spare the kids:
I turn quick to the living room; ensure Aaron is still occupied with
the television. “Why didn’t you tell me at the time?”
“Don’t ever tell me again that I don’t protect you from bad things. I
do. But this one, you wanted. You’ll never get the image of a falling man
out of your head. Welcome to fatherhood.”
This is when I remember why I admire Ross as a writer. This is when he is in the game, in these kinds of moments, when he shows himself to be a writer with chops.
In this little exchange between a father and his son, he is really exploring the hidden side of parenting: the worries that aren’t shared, the truth, the things spared.
The next story is downright touching, another father and son- and again a father who wants to step up to the plate:
“A guy goes his entire life blaming everyone else for his problems, then a blank slate drops from between a pair of legs and the only thing he cares about is not being a point of blame himself. He stops smoking. He stops yelling. He curbs his drugs and almost stops swinging those fucking fists of his.”
I won’t say what happens, but like the mothers Ross describes from Pompei, the mothers who try to shield their babies from ash- we again see the parent who tries to do the right thing when there isn’t always a right thing. Like the mother who seeks new starts in her vacation planning, who grieves but tries to get out from under it- we see regular people who are trying to do what they can.
The pairing of innocence with tragedy and the parental dilemma forms- at least to me- the subtext of the “Charactered Pieces” stories. Thinking back to what I have read, Ross is at his best here. This book is a true credit to him, and to the fledgling Outsider Writers Press.
With Charactered Pieces, Caleb J. Ross presents a varied world of familial discord, one where a dead fetus evokes more compassion than its mother (“Charactered Pieces”); where two brothers offer the destruction of a family legacy as a birthday gift for their aging father (“My Family’s Rule”); where one brother’s love of Holocaust documentaries pushes his family through the aftermath of his assumed suicide (“The Camp”). Charactered Pieces peels away the superficial armor of public life to reveal the flaws beneath and treats those perceived weaknesses not as hidden sources of pain but as reasons to celebrate life.
Order from Outsider Writers here.
