The Prisoner Pear: Stories from the Lake

By Elissa Minor Rust

Book Overview

The twelve stories in The Prisoner Pear: Stories from the Lake take place in an affluent suburb of Portland, Oregon, but they could be taken from any number of similar enclaves across the United States. These stories infuse stark reality with occasional hints of magical realism to explore what the American dream means to twenty-first-century suburbanites. In a city where the homecoming queen still makes the front page of the weekly newspaper, ducks caught in storm drains and stolen campaign signs make up the bulk of the paper's crime reports. The community's hidden complexities, however, rival those of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio.

Each of the stories begins with an entry from the newspaper's police blotter. Elissa Minor Rust fills in the background to these small, odd events-a headless parakeet found in a mailbox, a nude jogger, an alarmingly deathlike discarded teddy bear. Her stories, both humorous and disturbing, probe beneath the clear, hard surface of a community into the murky depths beneath.

The lake at the center of town is a constant in the lives of this town's people, and it reappears throughout the book as a symbol of wealth and power, of love and loss. The Prisoner Pear offers a rare look inside the heart of suburban America. Reading these stories is, as one character observes, "like seeing the town from the inside out, as if the lake was its heart and the rest merely its bones and skin."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0804010781
• ISBN13: 9780804010788
• Release Date: November 2005
• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

imaginative and insightful

Elissa has crafted an imaginative and insightful book. She's a gifted writer. I loved the characters in The Prisoner Pear and thought the short story format was terrific. You can just pick up the book and have a satisfying read in minutes. The police blotter is a terrific thread to hold the stories together. I look forward to her next work.

an atmosphere of quiet dread

Although the epigraph for each story is an item from the local police blotter, the stories in this book are moody, evocative, and based more in relationships than action. Some have a touch of magical realism. They remind me of stories by Peter Cameron, or Lorrie Moore without the hilarity. Most of the narrators seem to be observing, from a distance and without total comprehension, even when it's their own lives they're observing. I enjoyed the delicate balance and good writing, and the local color (I live in Portland), but there's no story in the book that I would rush out and make my friends read right away.

Even If You Don't Usually Read Short Stories

I don't read a lot of short stories, but this book grabbed me from the first page. Each story takes place in the Portland suburb of Lake Oswego and is prefaced with an entry from the local police blotter. The stories span a wide variety of relationships and conditions, but the glue that holds it all together is Elissa Rust's excellent writing. Her use of detail transports you to the scene without ever weighing down the prose. This book is a delight to the senses. In particular, I enjoyed Iris and Megan Imagine Alternatives which is about two teenage girls who meet in an eating disorder clinic and Moon Over Water which is equal parts beautiful and haunting.