“Fragile Objects: Short Stories” by Katy Carl. Wiseblood Books. (Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, 2023). 318 pp., $15.00.
In the opening story of this collection — which lends its title to the whole — the reader is introduced to Bub, a young boy reluctantly dragged off by his father to “help” his elderly grandmother.
Through Bub’s eyes, the reader is invited to pay close attention to the shrinking world of his grandmother’s house in rural Florida, filled to the brim with glass ornaments and porcelain knickknacks, as well as to the contentious relationship between his father and grandmother. With masterful command of setting and character, Carl teases out the dysfunctions of this family relationship and the traumas that continue to impact its multiple generations — and when the tension breaks out into an argument, shows how that dysfunction leaves more than just glass shattered in its wake. This is precisely the driving philosophy behind each of the stories in this debut collection: that the most fragile objects around us are, in fact, the people we encounter in our lives.
Throughout the 11 stories that follow, Carl does not spare the reader the consequences of failing to handle our fellow human beings with the care they deserve. In what one might consider the tradition of Flannery O’Connor — it should probably not surprise the reader that “Fragile Objects” is published by Wiseblood Books — Carl makes use of the grotesque, the offensive, the absurd and the searingly painful to prove her point. This book is not for the fainthearted: here there are wretched priests whose sins scandalize their flocks, miserable fathers who fail their children, lusts that give way to violence, and the inheritance of ugly family legacies; here, too, the more banal (but no less traumatic) evils of suburban glory-seeking, of making idols of ideologies, of racism, poverty and petty cruelty. If content warnings can be applied to books, then this collection earns every one of them.
Yet, there is gentleness here too, and grace, and moments of striking human triumph accomplished by ordinary people. Parents (and grandparents) choose life and love for their children. A priest provides hope to a young woman whose only wish is to be left alone. A young man (whose melodramatic approach to conversion will make many adult Catholics cringe with self-recognition) nevertheless sets his sights on the one thing that matters. And in the collection’s final story, a family’s love for each other becomes a symbol of life-giving resistance against the all-too-real inequalities and dehumanizing tendencies of our society. After reading so many unflinching portrayals of all the ways we fallen humans get it wrong, one nearly shouts with startled joy at seeing someone get it right.
Thoroughly modern, brutally honest and vividly illustrative of the value of Catholic personalism in a world that so often treats people as things, “Fragile Objects” is a worthwhile read for any Catholic hungry for substantial storytelling — provided, of course, that they have a strong stomach.
Reichert is publications administrative coordinator at The Catholic Spirit. She can be reached at reichert@archspm.org.
