Sweet Land Stories [Paperback]

In "A House on the Plains," Aunt Dora is a scam artist who packs up her family, leaves (escapes, really) Chicago, and moves to the country. Once there, the scheming and scamming begin anew, displaying Doctorow's fascination with and uncanny understanding of the darker, seedier side of human nature.

This theme persists in "Baby Wilson," but is tinged with a compassion that has become the hallmark of many of Doctorow's questionable characters. Karen, who is not right of mind, kidnaps a baby; the deed is malicious, but the desire for a child is not. In fact, it's innocent and pure. One can't help but feel sympathy for both her and her beau, who makes every effort to protect her and do the right thing by her.

"Jolene: A Life" is a study of a life spiraling downward, and at the center is a young lady who appears incapable of regaining some semblance of control, by no fault of her own. Her tale is heroically tragic.

Doctorow gives us an odd slice of life in "Walter John Harmon" --- cult, commune life, that is. Harmon, a former mechanic in a small Kansas town, preaches the goal of Seventh Attainment. In what won't be a surprising plot event, Harmon absconds with the community's wealth; but what might surprise you is the community's unwavering and blind devotion to what he preached, even after he's gone.

And finally, "Child, Dead, In the Rose Garden" is a powerful mystery packed into a slim few pages. A body, a detective, a deception.

Doctorow is at his best in SWEET LAND STORIES, tales about people in all their raw humanity.(...).

While the stories in SWEET LAND STORIES are well written, they're all trite and clichéd. They're mildly entertaining, but not one of them offers us a fresh insight or original look at the world and the characterization is both stock and paper-thin. There's not one character, male or female, who's is truly believable.

The plots are just as thin as the characters. They are so sketchy, they read more like outlines than actual stories and they're all cliché. Every one of these stories represents material we've seen done before and done quite a bit better as well.

Another thing I found disappointing about SWEET LAND STORIES was the fact that they are almost entirely narrative. Doctorow certainly has the ability to create convincing characters and dialogue, to give us stories with complex themes and a fresh look at old problems. As I read the stories in SWEET LAND STORIES, I had to ask myself over and over: What happened?

The stories contained in SWEET LAND STORIES are quintessential American stories and the characters are quintessential Americans, but in a bad way. Doctorow seems intent on hitting the reader over the head again and again with the fact that America is a "sweet land" and that his very flawed characters have the ability, in America, at least, of moving on, of transforming themselves, of reinventing their lives. I might have believed it had the characters and the stories had any depth, but as it is, they're so shallow I simply couldn't buy their ability to do much at all.

Sadly, the stories in SWEET LAND STORIES are all surface and no depth. SWEET LAND STORIES is an extremely disappointing collection from one of America's premier authors. Recommended only for those who want to keep up on everything Doctorow writes.