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Seven Times Seven
There are seven well-constructed short
stories in Richard Russo’s latest collection, The Whore’s
Child and Other Stories. It’s hard to select a favorite, since there are
all different, and all good. Read one each night for a week, and smile and
reflect after each one about how well Russo selects characters, plot and
tension with such precision.
Here’s an excerpt from the title story:
“In the
convent, Sister Ursula’s first submission began, I was known as the
whore’s child.
Nice opening, I wrote in the margin, as if to imply that her choice
had been a purely artistic one. It wasn’t, of course. She was simply starting
with what was for her the beginning of her torment. She was writing – and would
continue to write – a memoir. By mid-semester I would give up asking her to
invent things.
Her first installment weighed in at a robust twenty-five pages, which
detailed the suffering of a young girl taken to live in a Belgian convent
school where the treatment of the children was determined by the social and
financial status of the parents who had abandoned them there. As a charity
case and the daughter of a prostitute, young Sister Ursula (for there could
be no doubt that she was the first-person narrator) found herself at the very
bottom of the ecclesiastical food chain. What little wealth she possessed –
some pens and paper her father had purchased for her the day before they left
the city, along with a pretty new dress – was taken from her, and she was
informed that henceforth she would have no use for such pitiful possessions. Her
needs – food, a uniform and a single pair of shoes – would be provided for
her, though she would doubtless prove unworthy to receive them. The shoes she
was given were two sizes too small, an accident Sister Ursula imagined, until
she was asked if she might exchange them for the shows of a younger girl that
were too sizes too large, only to be scorned for her impertinence. So before
long she developed the tortured gait of a cripple, which was much imitated by
other children, who immediately perceived in her a suitable object for their
cruelest derision.
The mockery of her classmates was something Sister Ursula quickly
accommodated, by shunning their companionship. In time she grew accustomed to
being referred to as ‘the whore’s child,’ and she hoped that the children
would eventually tire of calling her this is she could manage to conceal how
deeply it wounded her. During periods of recreation in the convent courtyard
she perfected the art of becoming invisible, avoiding all games and contests
when, she knew, even those on her own team would turn on her. What she was
not prepared for was the cruelty she suffered at the hands of the nuns, who
seemed to derive nearly as much satisfaction from tormenting her as their
charges – beginning with her request to exchange shoes. She had not merely
been told that this was not permitted, but was given a horrible explanation
as to why this was so. The chafing of the too small shoes had caused her
heels to bleed into her coarse white socks and then into the shoes
themselves. Only a wicked child, Sister Veronique explained, would foul the
shoes she’d been given with her blood, then beg to exchange them for the
shoes of an innocent child. Did she think it fair, the old nun wondered out
loud, that another child, one who had not only a virtuous mother but also a
father, be asked to wear the polluted shoes of a whore’s child?”
Russo uses this masterful language,
description, and character development within the structured limitations of a
short story, to provide readers with great pleasure. Enjoy reading The Whore’s
Child and Other Stories.
Steve Hopkins, July 10, 2002
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ã 2002 Hopkins and Company, LLC
The
recommendation rating for this book appeared in the August 2002
issue of Executive
Times
For
Reprint Permission, Contact:
Hopkins
& Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302
Phone: 708-466-4650 • Fax: 708-386-8687
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