Stories from the Tube

The title of Matthew Sharpe's first collection, Stories from the Tube, is the reader's first hint about what to expect. The short excerpts from commercials prefacing each of the 10 stories that follow act as brief plot synopses. "Tide," for example, begins with a snippet from a laundry detergent ad: "A mother and her small daughter open the trunk of the car to find the daughter's leotard has a red, wet stain on it":

Daughter: And the ballet's tomorrow!
Mother: Honey we'll get it out.
Mother, Voice-over: ...So I crossed my fingers and threw it in.

Sure enough, the narrative that follows features an identical incident, this time at the heart of a prickly mother-daughter tale involving ballet, menstruation, and that terrifying moment in a parent's life when she realizes her child has a mind of her own. "In the Snowy Kingdom" is prefaced by two lines from a deodorant commercial in which a married couple is dressing for a fundraiser at which the wife will speak. When the man flirtatiously suggests he wouldn't mind if they were the only two people at the event, his wife replies: "Then you better bring your checkbook." The sentiment is later echoed by Tara, whose husband, Dan, becomes seriously, mysteriously paralyzed during her speech at a fundraiser.

Half the fun in reading Matthew Sharpe's stories is trying to figure out how the advertisement will tie into the story that follows it. The other half, of course, is in following the elusive strands he weaves through these off-kilter tales of single mothers, unhappy lovers, bridesmaids that never get to be maid of honor, and other slightly sad-sack characters who live at the convergence of the surreal and the mundane. --Alix Wilber