Kinder R. M. - Sweet Angel Band & Other Stories

Kinder R. M. - Sweet Angel Band & Other Stories - R. M. Kinder

Most of the women in these 15 stories lead lives of quiet desperation. Like Cora, a recurring character, they seem to invite loneliness, to bear a desolate wistfulness for a past they never experienced. Winner of the 1991 Willa Cather Prize for Fiction, Kinder writes of her native Missouri with painfully little attention to detail or geography, opting instead for an all-too-literary exploration of inner landscapes as manifest in physical symbols: canker sores, toothaches, long red hair, pale skin, bad knees. In "Painting," a facile correlation is drawn between Cora's indecision over painting her kitchen and her hesitancy in killing her blind, old dog. Cora visits her sick, aging mother in "Cora's Room" and is repulsed by the old woman's obsessive, pathetic attempts to connect by cooking. There is a muted violence permeating these stories, an ironically smug anguish that begs for expression. Often engaging, they are generally leaden downers.