Review: A Guide to Being Born: Stories

A Guide to Being Born: Stories by Ramona Ausubel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I am getting way too far behind on my reviews, so I'm going a bit out of order on these. On the blog, you'll notice I've started tagging reviews with months - those are the month the book/story was read, to better keep track. I read "A Guide to Being Born: Stories" immediately after reading "Find Me," by Laura Van Den Berg (review forthcoming), and the two share a lot of immediately striking similarities. (I'm hoping this review will make the other one easier; I have a lot of feelings and no proper words to explain them for "Find Me.")

This was an impulse read, something I found on the library shelf when I was ostensibly there just to pick up some long-planned reads that came in from on hold. This happens a lot to me. It's like going shopping on an empty stomach, only I'm always hungry for more books. It was a quick read, too; I finished it in one sitting.

As the title indicates, it's a book of short stories, many following the theme of birth, life, and death. It shares with "Find Me" a kind of deliberately disaffected, dark curiosity about birth and motherhood that suggests someone trying desperately not to reveal their obsession. In one story, a pregnant woman's husband wakes to find he has empty drawers in his chest. He fills them with significant odds and ends to feel like he contains something important, too. In another, a young woman who finds herself accidentally pregnant can't believe she's actually having a human baby, and instead imagines her child will be any of a variety of animals. The stories oscillate between pointedly oblique - directing your thoughts exactly to one specific place without ever saying it outright - and commandingly, heartwrenchingly plain, laying out exactly the meaning as they grasp your heart by the collar and shove it up against a wall. That is to say, the collection attempts that dichotomy, but often falls short of the emotional strength needed.

The thematic concern with life is emphasized by stories about death and not living life well. One of the stories most vivid in my memory takes place on a boat. Everyone on the boat is a grandmother, and none of them know how they got there. There are many kinds of grandmothers, but all of them are on this boat, and some, in desperation, choose to jump off. Another is about a young girl who plays catch with the ghost of a Civil War soldier. The young girl lives alone in the woods with her mother and grandmother. She thinks she knows a lot about how she was born, but much of it is a lie.

These stories are sweet pastries, easy to consume quickly but perhaps better to chew on slowly, doled out one by one. There's no plot to be found in any of these stories. As with much stereotypical high-literature short fiction, they are mundane slices of life (in this case, mundane turned fantastical). If that's not your thing, this isn't for you, but the collection certainly made for a pleasant evening.

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