cover image Toy Guns

Toy Guns

Lisa Norris. Helicon Nine Editions, $12.95 (143pp) ISBN 978-1-884235-31-3

Peculiar and terrible moments darken everyday places and events in this debut stick-'em-up collection of 10 short stories exploring America's eternal fascination with and fatal attraction to guns. Throughout Norris's disturbing book, winner of the 1999 Willa Cather Fiction Prize, there is an element not so much of surprise as of curiosity. What has happened? What will happen next? ""Interior Country"" is a raw shocker with the feel of a true-crime narrative. Cory has traveled a rocky road with the men in her life, but after she meets armed and dangerous Roxanne, a woman who judges all men as deserving the death penalty, Cory is not quite so prepared to pass sentence. Roxanne wants to go out in a blaze of glory, and it's Cory's job to bear witness. In ""American Primitive,"" a little girl with an abusive father enjoys solitary visits to a small chapel in a military compound: ""She liked going into the building alone. She always opened the door slowly, afraid she might interrupt someone who was praying, but most of the time the chapel was empty except for a feeling.... It was like being scared and happy at the same time."" Norris's characters all know what it is to view the underside of things, and violence is always imminent. One cannot ignore the repeated military base settings, evocative of men at war and in control. Though criticism of brutality is implicit in Norris's tales, a strong hint of male bashing limits the general appeal of her otherwise fine writing. (Nov.)