This Is That: Stories

A collection of short stories centered on the complications of love and the disorientation of grief. “A poignant assortment of stylistically daring stories.”

Susan Taylor Chehak isn’t cowed by the notion of tackling the most exigent existential issues in this assemblage of 16 tales, all but one previously published, mostly in literary magazines such as The Minnesota Review. Many of them confront the pain of loss. For example... in “Helium,” Maudie’s spiritual desolation after the death of her husband reduces her to finding companionship in an artificial boy fashioned from balloons. As is characteristic of Chehak’s writing, the story manages to seamlessly weave despair with morbidly outlandish humor, as characters use the latter as a means to negotiate the former. The author seems keen on flouting conventions; the story structures aren’t always linear, and many of them feel more like quick, impressionistic portraits of emotional states than they do literary chronicles of events. Chehak’s prose offers an impressive variety of styles, ranging from long, cascading sentences to linguistic parsimony, from short snapshots to longer, more plot-driven narratives. She has a talent for packing a lifetime of retrospection into one or two sentences. Most of the pieces in this book are driven by character, and even the unnamed figures in them are powerfully drawn, if enigmatic. The author also sensitively juxtaposes personal anxiety with its global iteration. A poignant assortment of stylistically daring stories. — Kirkus Reviews