cover image My Sister Disappears: Stories and a Novella

My Sister Disappears: Stories and a Novella

Lee M. Byrd. Southern Methodist University Press, $22.5 (200pp) ISBN 978-0-87074-351-1

Byrd has a plain style that lays bare the quirks inherent in family relationships. Unfortunately, her debut collection suffers from a lack of variety. In one tale, two boys are badly burned by a fire set accidentally by a friend. While the brothers are in the hospital, their father promises them an elaborate camping trip when they recover. When they depart, they encounter a man who asks too many questions about the mask one child must wear to protect his healing skin. This story is skillful and moving, but another set in a burn victims' ward treads the same ground--a child's mother fears what others will think of him--without adding new insights. Similarly, on first being introduced, Emily is compelling--a promising 13-year-old girl about to attend her eighth-grade prom but who begins to teeter at the edge of madness as she and her best friend write out a script for Emily, nervously facing her first date. A novella and second story on Emily's empty later life, her conflicts with her mother and her father's inability to accept that he is dying of bone cancer lack the lucidity of those moments when Emily has her first glimpse of adulthood and turns back in fear. (Dec.)