If you never thought to burn down your father’s house, or to murder him in his sleep—included here as a free psychic bonus—Michael Gills’ collection of 11 stories, accurately labeled “short,” may not be for you. If you were so fortunate as to grow up in a perfectly balanced family, where a child’s need for some scrap of autonomy never conflicted with an adult’s need to be in control, you may not savor the white hot volatility that characterizes the Harvells, Stepwells, or Rockersons transactions. Yet you may still be able to  appreciate the subtle precision with which Gills erects the edifices in your mind that house their stories, so that no matter how many times he repeats himself you want to hear more, and so continue to turn the page, or, when there are no more pages to turn here, seek out “Why I Lie,” “The Death of Bonnie and Clyde” or “The Go Love Quartet” for more.

Complaints have been registered abroad that today’s fiction places too much stress on sophisticated, stylish prose, and not enough on good old-fashioned story-telling. It’s not entirely wrong, but perhaps someone’s not looking in all the right places. Gills grew up in Arkansas and teaches writing at the University of Utah; his stories are set in a rural locale, Southern mostly, and are backstopped by the Old Testament, while his separate culture fits comfortably up against Utah’s dominant local mindset. Hunting, fishing, and river running are just similar enough to hunting, horseback riding, and ranching to be recognized by a Western audience, and trucking is trucking wherever there are roads. Yet there is enough cultural contrast to allow these adventures and episodes to feel fresh. When Joey Harvell recalls, “Floating down the Green, as I often do, four days rafting from Flaming Gorge to Swallow Canyon, slaying calf-length browns on golden rapalas” it’s more than just shimmering prose: it’s a window into a parallel world. When the gravity that holds families together for generations cracks under the centrifugal force of ambition, a buried truth sprouts up somewhere at a safe distance.

The storytelling is full of details, not like some minimalist art that fails to elevate itself above the theoretical. The results are facts, not assertions. Gills credits the remarkable verisimilitude that marks his vignettes to observation of what he calls the Seven Directions: above and below, to left and right, before and behind, and finally within. He has suggested that after the six exterior points-of-view are properly addressed, what takes shape in the audience will seem real and true.

The universe of Gills’ 11 stories does feel real, but it also inexplicably incomplete. It’s ironic that at an historical hour when most readers of fiction are women, and we can rejoice that a long-neglected half—more than half—of the world is finally giving itself a voice, a major talent like Michael Gills creates a world of men who admire women physically, but rarely get to know them. Even when he sketches a successful couple or limns a father’s adoration of his daughter, SHE is likely to be elsewhere: on the fringe of a conversation, glimpsed over by the pool with friends, or known to be visiting on the other edge of the continent, thereby perplexing the inevitably male protagonist who was sure she’d want to join him here instead.

There’s a good reason why this matters. Consider “Swimmer,” set on Cape Blanco, on the Oregon coast, on the occasion of a return visit by Joey Harvell, his wife Renee, and their daughter Lara, 13 years after they had found refuge there in the aftermath of Joey’s mother’s death. They had found peace then, in a place that, as the westernmost point in Oregon, was the farthest point on the continent from the Natural State: the popular nickname of Arkansas. Years later, it’s not legally possible to return to the point. A shipwreck, followed by the crash of a rescue helicopter and the apparent death of the title character, has closed it in the interest of safety. The campgrounds around the State Park are overrun by the 30,000 guests of a music festival. In the midst of a moving meditation on who rescues the rescuers, the family has tough choices to make. In other moments, Gills takes readers into the midst of some of the subtlest and most complex matters a family will endure, including the longest story in the book, about a road trip Joey takes with his abusive father that tries to answer the question, “How could you love such a person,” but here they barely touch the cozy surface. Is it too much to ask for an equal insight into the ways a man, his wife, and their teenage daughter find to navigate their challenges?

Here’s hoping for an answer.

Burning Down My Father’s House
Michael Gills
Texas Review Press
2023
128 pp.

Geoff Wichert

Geoff Wichert objects to the term critic. He would rather be thought of as a advocate on behalf of those he writes about.