Widow: Stories
We first meet the widow in consultation with an oafish gynecologist and instantly tune into her rapier intelligence, discipline, drollery, and grief. She is too young to be widowed, and intimations of medical malpractice associated with her husband’s death are embedded in each of her stories, until, at last, the terrible truth is unveiled. But Latiolais judiciously separates the widow’s tales from the other concise yet loaded stories about women and longing, wives and husbands, and the body deprived. A master of banter, Latiolais is happily bawdy and gorgeously sensual. She is also archly imaginative and psychologically astute. In Boys, a woman is amused and stirred by the male performers in a Vegas strip club. Pink begins with a museum collection of teacups and dives into our very origins. An oyster knife makes a match in Gut, a hilarious love story. The humor and habits that hold couples together, the odd contracts we make with ourselves, loneliness, the social taboo against grief––all take potent form in Latiolais’ 17 intricate stories, finely patterned miniatures spiked with the unexpected. --Donna Seaman