Fabrication: Essays on Making Things and Making Meaning

Who hasn't held some strange object, like a paper clip or a breath mint, and wondered how it came to be shaped, shipped and merchandised? Neville, short story writer and essayist, acts on that curiosity by embarking on a series of factory tours, some planned and others impromptu, to observe the manufacture of all sorts of objects, including globes, caskets, cookies, glass, dolls and even gyroscopes. Her inclination toward fiction and personal essay lend context and a literary flavor, as she describes her sometimes melancholy thoughts and feelings while watching a doll-factory worker write ""baby"" on each plastic head, or hearing a tobacco auctioneer sigh about a recently lost dog. Sometimes her propensity to wax philosophical works against her, making some passages too lavish for the material. For example, in the chapter about coffins, the spare, clear prose that works well through much of the tour gives way to dreaminess: ""I think about the people I love so desperately. I think about their living eyes. Like kindling. Bless the life inside of them. Like kindling."" But most of the time, the work truly shines. Readers who appreciate long riffs on meaning and family will be happy to gaze out at these factory floors from their armchairs. (Mar.)