The Deadly Swarm and Other Stories by LaVerne Harrell Clark (review)

186 Western American Literature female college professor jolted into perception of the social meaning of her aging when she’s stood up by a student she tries to date. The stories in this book exemplify a trend in recent women’s literature noted by feminist critics such as Rachel Blau DuPlessis and others—a trend in which women writers try to “unwrite” the culturally prescribed “marriage/ suicide/madness” narrative solutions. Joan Shaw’s work would be of interest not only to these women’sstudies specialists, but to a wider audience as well. JANIS HELBERT Pacific Palisades, California The Deadly Swarm and Other Stories. By LaVerne Harrell Clark. (New York: Hermes Press, 1985. 136 pages, $5.00.) LaVerne Harrell Clark has the voice of a seasoned story-teller, an oral historian with a natural southwestern drawl. She pulls out each character’s valise and reveals the “old letters, cheap books and newspaper clippings inside,” building significance out of bits of tiny detail, flashes of fact and event mixed with memory. The language here is flavorful and satisfying, and the sense of vision is undeniable. Clark’s haunting photographs, which illustrate this book, hint at the nature of that vision. Descriptions seem to solidify out of the waters of some primordial darkroom: Down a lane of sand and wind and scrubby grass, this grey house stands, and several who grew there, while the chinaberry tree grew old, do live there still, and some dwell there . .. away. There are times when the author tries to pack too much into a small space and the narrative trips over itself, as in the title story “The Deadly Swarm.” But as we move through the collection we feel the writing finding its pace. Clark seems most comfortable with longer stories, where she can stretch out and let the convolutions of history happen more naturally. In this sense the final novella, “Once Again On All Souls’,” proves to be the most complete and satisfying piece. A tale of old lovers living in their GMC camper in various Safeway parking lots, it is also a study of spirits, of matching souls and unmatching lives. Nature and family and community and God swirl thick and heavy in The Deadly Swarm, forming a soup of ancient mysteries and unrealized dreams, of region and home-place, of memory that clings and clings. This is an exemplary first book of fiction. It has that cohesion of intent and method, that sense of authorial vision, which makes a book significant and memorable. STEVEN BRADY Tucson, Arizona ...