Foley's Luck: Stories
An existential sadness pervades this affecting first collection of interlinked stories, which chronicle a man's attempts to take control of his life and his defeat at destiny's firm hands. We meet Dan Foley as a youngster accompanying his undertaker father "on removal," during which he learns that death can reveal terrible secrets. In his subsequent misadventures, some inherently more dramatic than others, he grows up to become a Florida architect and the father of two children, yet still feels distant from his own experience. In "Foley Returns" a criminal cousin reaches across the years to remind Dan that the "old routes of comfort" and the "soothing geography" of family relations can simply disappear. But lessons always come too late, and he persists in trying to manipulate his fate. "Foley's Motto" shows him attempting to adhere to such vague maxims as "love something" and "expect nothing," only to find that destiny has another idea--in this instance, divorce. Chiarella, whose work has appeared in the New Yorker , sets forth these hard truths in unvarnished, seemingly artless prose that assumes transcendent power.Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.