| Four themes and motifs tie the stories in Beautiful House together: the Midwest, small towns, the dysfunctional family, and the emotional/physical collapse of home. More specifically, the twelve stories are broken down into three separate clusters, each containing four stories. In Part I, teenagers still firmly enmeshed in dysfunctional families struggle for independence in coming-of-age stories. Part II's narrators venture off on their own, seeking mates, fortunes, or belonging; in this section, I further explore the difficulties of escaping small town life. The narrators in Part III---older, married, even parents---inhabit worlds in a state of collapse. To conclude the collection, I've placed a story which circles back to the first story's setting: small town Minnesota, Wakina County.;Overall, Beautiful House balances the shaky difference between house and home; five stories actually revolve around a house as their central focus. In "Beautiful House," the title story from Part I, a once-majestic Victorian house almost mocks the narrator---home visiting for Christmas---with its idiosyncrasies and flaws. The walls begin to split open like cuts, the basement walls implode with old age, the wallpaper curls and tears. And yet, the narrator continues to seek comfort and solace in the old house; it represents history, familiarity, escape from the larger world. Additionally, the narrator's mother has placed a dollhouse in the narrator's old bedroom, which causes her further anguish over the orderly, perfect, and well-tended family home that it represents---one that hers can never be. This dollhouse becomes a miniature motif and symbol of what characters strive for in Beautiful House.;What I hope to touch upon in this collection of fiction is some truth about the strength and durability of family love and to lend some voice to the poor and the underprivileged, the parents who try and the children who do the best they can. The work, in essence, is about place, about family, and about the inexorable grip that both these things have on us. |
