Imagine a Woman and Other Tales - Hardcover

In his previous works, both fiction ( Rituals of Surgery ) and nonfiction ( Taking the World in for Repairs ) surgeon Selzer has proved a perceptive observer of the psychological pressures caused by illness and of a physician's response to the stresses of his profession. The six stories here deal only tangentially with medicine; though the characters range from a woman dying of AIDS to the widow of a man whose heart was donated at his death, it is their emotional health on which Selzer focuses. In most of these tales, his characters' bodies and minds are in a fevered state, investing them with a heightened emotional vulnerability and a sensitivity verging on the supernatural. The two most successful stories, "Imagine a Woman" and "Poe's Light-house" are related in journal form, in precise, evocative language. Even when his plots are a bit overwrought, Selzer holds the reader mesmerized with descriptions in minute detail: a peat bog with its flora and fauna, and of a man drowning in its embrace ("Lindow Man"); a cave in which "the whole ceiling began to billow like a tent," from a fluttering horde of bats that sweeps past a woman seeking her autistic son who has taken refuge there ("Pipistrel"). His description of a festering dump, as "an endless evacuation of the waste of a city" grasps the imagination as Selzer fictionalizes a true incident involving a Brazilian scavenger poisoned by radioactive medical waste, creating a parable of the tragic dichotomy between the high-minded ideals of science and the ignorance resulting from poverty. In widening his range of subject, Selzer proves himself a truly talented practitioner of the storyteller's art.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The six stories in this collection range from bizarrely poignant to wistful and disturbing. In "Whither Thou Goest," a widow tries to come to terms with the loss of her husband by seeking out the reassuring rhythm of his transplanted heart. "Pipistrel" is the oddly absorbing story of an autistic boy whose unusual abilities lead him to a tragic metamorphosis. The final story, "Imagine a Woman," is conveyed through the journal of a woman dying from AIDS who spends her last year in a small French village exploring new wellsprings of being. The writing here is Selzer at his most inventive and entertaining. "Imagine a Woman" is an especially fine and moving story and is yet another example of Selzer's mastery of the short story genre. Highly recommended.
- Francis Poole, Univ. of Delaware Lib., Newark
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.