I Want To Show You More
Prizewinning Quatro’s highly anticipated and deeply intriguing first book, a subtly metamorphosing short story collection, shimmers with touches of Flannery O’Connor and George Saunders. Her bifurcated setting, Lookout Mountain on the border of Georgia and Tennessee, gives rise to inquiries into the opacity and intimacy of marriage, social hypocrisy, and the divide between what is verifiably real and what we imagine. Jocelyn, a recurring character, is struggling with the consequences of virtual adultery. Do romantic e-mails and phone sex constitute an actual affair? In one spooky story, her lover’s corpse occupies her marriage bed. Quatro examines complex questions of heritage and tyranny in a stealthily devastating tale about a marathon traversing a Civil War battlefield in which runners must carry statues, many of them erotic. In another haunting tale, 89-year-old Eva, whose son was killed in Vietnam, walks along a highway to mail a letter protesting the Iraq War to President George W. Bush. Cancer, addictions, the curious dismantling of a church, and the birth of a cult also fuel compelling moral dilemmas that yoke bizarreness with authenticity. --Donna Seaman