Antonya Nelson's stories do everything Right

The men and women of Antonya Nelson's stories can do nothing right. As Hannah, the mother in Nothing Right's titular story, observes, "The problem with falling out of your life was that occasionally you got busted for doing absolutely nothing wrong. Doing nothing whatsoever – nothing wrong, yet nothing right, either."

Nothing Right is an expedition through a nation of suburbia – through towns neither too small nor too big that basically feel the same whether in Kansas, Texas or Arizona. "Wichita was just that size, big enough for lesbians and psychoanalysis, small enough for impractical, coincidental cross-pollination," quips the narrator of "Kansas." It's a line that could fit into almost any of the book's 11 stories.

Suburbia's a ubiquitous backdrop in Nothing Right, but Nelson doesn't bother poking holes in such an obvious target. Condescending descriptions of homogenous architecture and tired observations about strip malls or gas stations – clichés that saturate pop culture from films such as American Beauty to Jonathan Franzen's otherwise literate fiction – are thankfully absent here. Instead, Nelson focuses on the people living in these neighborhoods, rather than simply skewering the ironies and contradictions of their surroundings.

Antonya Nelson

Free. 8 p.m. Wed., April 14. Emory University, Cannon Chapel Sanctuary, 515 Kilgo Circle. 404-727-4683. www.creativewriting.emory.edu.

Continue Reading "Antonya Nelson’s stories do everything Right"

(Photo Courtesy Bloomsbury USA)