We're in Trouble (review)

The title story in Christopher Coake's debut book, We're in Trouble, exemplifies some of this writer's many strengths. "We're in Trouble" is told in three parts, each introducing new and unrelated characters: two new lovers in bed who decide to tell each other "the most vivid thing" they can remember; a lesbian couple who are considering adopting a child; and, finally, an old man dying of stomach cancer attempting to reconcile himself and his wife to his fast-approaching death. The three narrative strands never connect beyond the level of the concept suggested in the title, and though this sounds like the makings of a problematic piece of workshop fiction, the result is breathtaking, terrifying and deeply moving. Each story in this collection, even this fragmented opening piece, is driven by a powerful, relentless plot that pulls readers in with crisp language and then carries them quite literally to the edge, as in the first section of "We're in Trouble," when a little boy is playing catch with his dog:

"Then I gave the ball a stronger toss, and it bounced too close to the edge, and I saw I'd messed up; it was going to fall off, Gale was too far away to get to it. But he went for it anyway. The ball went over the edge, and he didn't slow down—he was too keyed up, I'd gotten him too excited. I shouted out, No, trying to get him to stop, but he didn't until he was just at the edge. Then he realized where he was, and he skidded in the dirt and went sideways, and then his back paws went off the edge of the cliff, and he was stuck there, hanging on his front paws and his elbows, trying to push himself up over the edge."

The long stories in this book (none are shorter than thirty pages; the longest is sixty-eight), which tend to be more linear in structure than "We're in Trouble," are punctuated with riveting scenes: there's a terrifying scene in a public bathroom in the wonderful "Cross Country," a story of a father who has taken his eight-year-old son from his mother and is headed west. And in "A Single Awe," there's a stunning description of a car accident: "In front of the Cherokee's headlights Dana could barely see the tracks the other car had left, approaching the hairpin. They led straight ahead—too straight. She understood: the car hadn't turned. Ahead on the back was a broken section of guardrail, and above it, just visible, was a black window where the pine branches had been shaken naked of snow." In "Abandon," the longest of the stories, there's the gradual accretion of fear when a couple is stuck in a small cabin in the middle of a freak October blizzard.

The stories in this collection offer glimpses into the unwanted but unforgettable sorrows, regrets and terrors of the characters' lives. Tempering the darkness of Coake's vision is a Chekovian evenhandedness. The stories, through unaffected sentences and a deep authorial empathy with all the characters involved, feel complete, yet also seem to be continually opening into dizzying ambiguity and possibility. Even as the characters are pushed toward unhappy endings, there is, through the richness of the worlds created, always hope for some other, better life.

It is difficult and, of course, unnecessary in a collection as strong as this to choose one as the best, but the final story, "All Through the House," deserves special mention. This novella-length work, first published in The Gettysburg Review and reprinted in Best American Mystery Stories 2004, moves from the opening section, "Now," narrated in a detached omniscient narrative voice—"Here is an empty meadow, circled by bare autumn woods"—back in time, first to 1987, then to 1985, to 1975, to 1970 and, finally...