in review: Joy

Joy
by Erin McGraw
Publication Date: March 5, 2019
Publisher: Counterpoint

Erin McGraw’s latest collection, Joy, is a mosaic of 52 short stories that seamlessly and humorously capture the multifaceted bits of everyday life. McGraw’s slice-of-life drop-ins of Americans living within their own bubbles distill the essence of people who act with internal logic yet appear borderline absurd to those around them.

If one were to be in public—at a park, a mall, or a supermarket—the characters within Joy are those whom one may not think twice about. Alternatively, sometimes the stories are exactly what one may assume of passersby, but reveal complex narratives as to why they are the way they are. The magical element McGraw accomplishes is showing the candid, everyday underbellies of their personalities, experiences, and discussions.

The stories are sometimes, simply put, hilarious. McGraw writes wittily about the odd bits of “people who have no earthly reason to be as happy as they are.” Sometimes those people annoy, offend, or humor others around them. The social nuance that takes place in Joy circumnavigates the moments that, at face value, pass as asinine out-to-lunch conversations. Take, for instance, “Friendship,” a back-and-forth dialogue between two friends who discuss being married and unmarried and the men they used to date, from cokeheads with bad breath to husbands that dream about other women. McGraw writes in a way that doesn’t make this conversation simple girl talk, but touches on the dynamics of friendship, marriage, and relationships that didn’t work out.

Elsewhere, McGraw’s flash fiction carries a heaviness that is so consuming it’s difficult to believe a few pages can create such a visceral impact. “Soup (1),”  “Soup (2),”  and “Soup (3)”—three connected short stories, each from the perspective of one of three main characters—discuss cancer, death, and the connections people make around a dying person’s life. In “Edits,” McGraw splices the narrative of an unnamed character with disabilities living an adult life and the narrative of her lovable childhood self, as documented in her mother’s books. In addition to her unnamed disabilities, the narrator struggles with disappointed fans not seeing the same little girl written about in her mother’s stories. “Every moment of the day was devoted to the life I would have... and my mother isn’t here to make it sparkle,” the narrator shares. The story startles when, “without warning, her hip pinged and her legs give way and she’s on the floor. Now she’s face down on the linoleum, the breath banged right out of her.” McGraw does not shy away from writing about heavy subjects.

Joy combines stories of everyday life, sorrow, and laughter in a way that is so easily digestible, it’s easy to convince yourself to read just one more before going about your day. Ultimately, Joy is literary people-watching: The collection allows readers to laugh at people that can easily be described as hoots and nutcases, while also bringing to light the hoots and nutcases we can be ourselves.

—Naya Clark