Family Dysfunction
The overarching theme which unifies the collection as a whole is domestic dysfunction. These are all domestic dramas in which the family unit is well past the point of being broken and in most cases seems to be nearing or whizzing right by the point of no return. The central issue at work in the deterioration of each particular family may be related to addiction, abuse, affairs or something else entirely, but the point is that parent unit has been ripped apart and the consequences of this breakage at the top are the myriad emotional traumas that filter down to the children.
Daddy Issues
Make no mistake: the mothers in these relationships are not spared the blame or presented as perfect idealized version of motherhood free from any blame. That said, however, a theme that is persistent and prevalent as a result of not just the narrative within the story, but the specific authorial choice of who is the storyteller presenting the narrative is one bound up within a repetition of fathers being abuse, absent, estranged, or just distant. Most of the stories are presented through the perspective of not just a child, but a daughter and most of relationships these daughters have with their fathers are complicated to say the least.
For example, the outburst of physical violence in the title story by the narrator’s father is directed toward her brother, not herself, but it is through this sudden explosion of unrealized potential for brutality exercised against his own child that the daughter’s view toward her father is forever and irrevocably altered. “Alchemy” brings the theme of “daddy issues” to its outermost dark edges of extremity in its tale of actual incestuous sexual abuse and the contribution made to the problem by a wife and mother either genuinely oblivious or willing herself to be so.
Lost in Transition
Some of the stories are “real-time” narratives describing being in the moment that becomes a turning point in their lives. Others are recollections of those turning points by a narrator looking backward. Either way, the common threat is that these are characters who find themselves reaching a pivotal point in their lives that demand some sort of transition in the circumstances of their life. “Alchemy” tells about the moment in which the abused daughter finally confesses the truth to a friend and the decision to finally get away. In “Dispatch” there are actually two significant turning point moments: the first when a wife discovers her husband is still in love with a woman from his past and then when that woman is killed in a traffic accident. “Four Days in Oregon” covers the span of time in which the wife in a trouble marriage makes the decision to transition over into life with her lover by moving away from her daughters who will stay with their father.
