Bonneville Stories
Mark Doyon
Pocol Press, Clifton, VA
144 pp. $12.95
At first, one is
tempted to classify the stories in Mark Doyon's collection Bonneville Stories
as quirky, but upon reflection and full consideration of the material therein,
the word “real” seems more appropriate. While the characters often display
quirky habits and qualities, there is little doubt that these are the same
run-of-the-mill people you would see every day if you walked through Bonneville
in the Shenandoah Valley (or through any of the thousands of smaller towns
across the nation). There's the disgraced ex-mayor, who returns to the area to
start an after-hours speakeasy, only to be confronted by a stoic victim of his
failed fireworks policy; there's the local boy swallowed by a sinkhole,
eventually emerging to great notoriety, only to be forgotten and consumed by the
greater morasses of adulthood and compulsive use of credit; there's a girl who
loses her father to an errant radio-controlled model plane, and grows up to
become violently obsessed with the unfairness of video poker machines; there's
the 28-year-old male who stagnates in slothful passive retreat from reality (via
early retirement in a senior citizens home), until a lurid video arrives that
speaks of the value of action; and there are many others here, in various stages
of epiphany or misfortune: a bible salesman killed by one of his own deluxe
editions; a gardener who learns to divert his carnal instincts into a pure
attentiveness to azaleas. Funny, heart-wrenching, pathetic. Doyon's characters
breathe and muddle and gasp and sing in the hell that modern-day life can
be to the unwary soul. Some roast in their own juices over a self-made inferno;
some recognize the need for action in that crossroad moment and wriggle free;
others, capable and deserving perhaps, get skewered by the fork of a
questionable providence. There are no guarantees in Bonneville.
Doyon's skills as a
storyteller are well-developed, and his text is marked by a clean incisive prose
that shows little sign of affectation or device. There may be a tad more
exposition than one would find in standard plot-oriented fiction, but the
characterizations are so deft and germane that one flows over it without a blink
or reservation. If the characters are quirky, it is because they have sprung
from that quirky petri dish we call “life”— no further clarification
needed.
Our only quibble with
the collection is that the first story and the last story are really two parts
of one story. It probably would have been better had they indicated this in some
more concrete way (same title perhaps, parts 1 and 2?) since it leaves the
unschooled reader with the impression that Doyon does not round his stories to a
satisfactory completion. He most assuredly does.
Perhaps the ruling
theme in Bonneville Stories is one of desperation. Some of the Shenandoah
locals make a brief sojourn through or past desperation, becoming more whole in
the process, while others reside there, becoming monoliths stuck in a nearly
existential paralysis of indecision and/or self-absorption. If Doyon has a moral
point it's perhaps that, while there are no promises in this sphere, to stand
still is to court the thunderbolt.
BV is a brisk,
fascinating read, and we recommend it without
reservation.
- CAW
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