M. E. Proctor’s latest book, Family and Other Ailments, is a collection of family-centered noir and fantasy stories perhaps best described as “speculative crime-fiction.” Inventive stories like “Key Ring,” in which a group of adolescents work up the courage to challenge the village eccentric about his unnaturally oversized key ring, or “Black and Tan,” in which a couple struggling with infertility adopt a puppy from a kennel that later doesn’t seem to exist, are reminiscent of the darker fiction of Ray Bradbury (think “Zero Hour” or “The Veldt”) as well as Bradbury’s disarming, “aw shucks” charm about porch swings and berry picking that sets readers up for the sucker punch (Proctor is clearly a fan of blackberries and berry picking, too, not to mention sucker punches–there are more than a few here!)
Proctor uses language that is sparce, precise, and also lyrical, an approach that especially shines in her hard-boiled crime fiction, a genre Proctor says taught her “the value of a well-chosen word, a short sentence, a piece of visual exposition.” The stories “Bag Limit,” about a family with a history of extra-judicial solutions to problems who take the long way round to punishing those who transgress against them, and “Texas Two-Step,” about brothers who rely on each other–for anything–without having to ask, are both crackling examples of noirish economy.
Originally from Belgium, Proctor is a Texan transplant who captures the sultry speech patterns and sunsets of her adopted home with delightful insight. One of my favorite stories in the collection is “The Hour of the Bat,” about a young woman torn between ambition and duty and trying to find a compromise to satisfy both. It reminded me in tone of the movie “Bus Stop,” and it has such a thoroughly Texan feel to it, you won’t need the mention of the state at the end to know where you were all along. Proctor is clearly an astute observer as well as storyteller, and she gets setting just right.
One of the joys of a collection like Family and Other Ailments that mixes stories of different genres is not knowing at the beginning of each tale what the “rules” of the new world are–are we in for a straight Philip Marlowe-style private eye case or will the house being watched end up looking back? In Proctor’s deft hands, the details arrive in due time.
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onegoodknot 