Description:
Paris, Niagara Falls, Tokyo, Rochester, Norfolk, Istanbul: Where She Went's table of contents reads like an itinerary for a nervous breakdown. The mother and daughter narrators of these interlinked stories cover a lot of ground, but they never seem to get particularly far. A quote from the Elizabeth Bishop poem "Questions of Travel" sets the stage: "Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?/Where should we be today?" Marion's travels are as a "company wife," packing and unpacking the same boxes in what comes to seem like the same house reproduced all over the globe. Marrying young to a man she scarcely knows, she's determined that her daughter will enjoy all the freedoms life has to offer, including and especially travel: "You must keep me abreast of everything, darling.... This is our world tour." And Rebecca does, in a sense. The stories in the book's latter half revolve around a series of postcards, highly fictionalized snapshots of her travels that make it seem she's living out her mother's dream. Much like her mother, however, Rebecca voyages far and wide but gets nowhere. These are subtle, understated stories, domestic dioramas couched in luminous prose. Of the book's two halves, it's Marion's stories that are the more compelling, combining vivid evocations of place and time with a firm sense of character. Rebecca's stories feel less grounded--which is, presumably, the point. Still, they make for occasionally disorienting reading, with long stretches of stunning imagery in seeming free fall. But it's hard not to find yourself beguiled by Kate Walbert's prose, with its richly textured surfaces and sinuous rhythms. As a debut collection, Where She Went promises great things for where she will go.
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