Between Here and the Yellow Sea

Nic Pizzalatto's "Between Here and the Yellow Sea" is an exquisite piece of literary fiction.

these stories are aching and filled not so much with longing PER SE as empty space, and characters moving through it, experiencing what comes with needing/wanting something seemingly unattainable. his characters, for the moments they're on the page, ring of truth and the human condition-which seems to be that of fleeting, yet deep, desire. what's even MORE amazing about pizzolatto's writing is his ability to nurture the depths of his characters' spirits in the space of maybe 20 pages per story. he hits hard, deep, and fast, and paints scenes that will last in your memory for long after you close the book.

Pizzolatto has compiled a series of short stories that are inspired and fresh, a mix of the disaffected, reaching between past and present in search of lost connections, fathers and sons, sons and mothers, young people searching for identity from the detritus of often chaotic childhoods. There is a contrast between the expectations of youth and the disillusionment of lives hard-lived, parents who have abandoned, inappropriate role models, the easy physical attractions of young love. Each protagonist addresses a personal crisis, craving identity in a too often unfriendly world. Some are misfits, others merely sorting through limited choices and family issues. In "Ghost Birds", a young BASE diver seeks to reconcile the present with the fears of the past: "What we think is a gesture of freedom... is a symptom of our cage." In another ("Amy's Watch"), a young woman is trapped in an impossible conundrum, fighting the ghost of her sister for the affections of a man who has loved them both: "She would have liked to tell [her sister] of the inheritance of haunted men she left in her wake." This prose contains a particular clarity that is refreshing, the characters well defined, particularly their interior lives, the author attending to the inner dialog as well as the obvious, subtle emotional layers that render these people visual and familiar. The title story reveals the theme of the collection: "You have to limit your longings." In search of the missing, distraction is commonplace, sobbing inappropriately at a sad movie, betrayed by our own demons while attempting the face of normalcy. Ultimately, "an answer isn't the same as a solution". Mining the intricate territory of the interior, the author's characters are riddled with ambiguities and vague yearnings, desiring change, but surrounded by dysfunctional role models, rudderless and inept at finding solutions. Each carefully wrought story contains layers of revelations, the themes universal, isolation, loneliness, abandonment, fear and confusion. And each retains a core of insight, small vignettes of everyday people caught in the complexities of life and circumstances out of their control. Luan Gaines/ 2006.