Review of My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead
From Chekhov to Munro, Jeffrey Eugenides Explores the Love Story
May 22, 2009
Jeffrey Eugenides, author of Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides, is the editor of this interesting selection of twenty-six short love stories. Focusing mainly on American and Canadian fiction, he explores the many ways in which love impacts upon our lives.
Catullus and the Modern Love Story
According to Eugenides, the Latin poet Catullus created the format of the modern love story. He was the first to write about love in a personal, rather than general way. Love is an earthy experience, rooted in everyday reality. My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead is based on his experience of falling in love with Clodia, an older married woman who eventually slept with his friend Rufus. Catullus' work focuses on an actual love affair, in comparison to the more abstract work of other poets of the time. The reader/listener is taken through all the familiar emotions of a difficult love affair.
Natasha by David Bezmozgis
The feeling of longing is central to the love story and runs through every example in this collection. Natasha, taken from David Bezmozgis' highly regarded first collection of the same name, tells the story of teenage erotic awakening through the eyes of the dislocated, almost spectre-like narrator Mark Berman. Though not a virgin, his first in depth experience is with his damaged fourteen year old cousin Natasha, who has experienced the sex industry. Though their relationship is varied and experimental, there is a lack of intimacy. At the end of the story, Mark's vulnerability is in direct contrast to her more perfunctory, detached attitude and the reader feels his sadness.
Chekhov's The Lady with the Little Dog
Chekhov created the modern short story and this example is one of his best known on the subject of love. A chance affair on holiday takes over Gurov and Anna Sergeevna, who find not only their lives but their selves changed forever by the experience. They meet in Yalta, a place known for casual encounters, which only highlights the unexpected control that love can wield over our lives. By the end both know that "the most complicated and difficult part [is] only just beginning." (pg 47)
Lorrie Moore's How to be Another Woman
This story is taken from Moore's first collection, Self Help, which parodies the personal improvement manuals of popular psychology, and experiments with second person narration. This style creates an intimate relationship between the narrator and the reader, based on shared understanding. Charlene tells us how becoming a married man's 'other woman' has indeed turned her into 'another woman.' She has become the cliche of a mistress, waiting for her man and obsessing over the style of his wife's clothes. Even if the reader has not had this experience, she can imagine how easy it would be to become this stereotype.
The Bear Came Over the Mountain by Alice Munro
This story is perhaps the most incredible in the collection. It centres on a couple, Fiona and Grant, who have spent their lives together. Fiona develops alzheimers and must go into a care home where she gradually falls in love with Aubrey, another resident there. Grant must come to terms with his wife forgetting him, and eventually makes a selfless decision. His actions go beyond the everyday and approach what the Ancient Greeks called 'Agape' - transcendent love that approaches the divine.
Sources
Jeffrey Eugenides (Editor), My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead (HarperPress, 2008)
