The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Simply Separate People, by Lynn Crawford
reviewed by Brian Evenson

Lynn Crawford. Simply Separate People. Black Square/Hammer, 2002. 183 pp. Paper: $14.00.

Lynn Crawford is the sort of writer who is very difficult to pin down; each book feels at once entirely hers but at the same time not like the others. Her first book was a collection of odd, sometimes oblique stories that were compared to the early fiction of John Hawkes. Her second, Blow, was a sort of surreal fairy-tale about the people who live at the base of the imaginary Mount Anf. Her latest, the novel Simply Separate People, exchanges the overt strangeness of these first two for a quieter, realistic, yet nevertheless quirky story. The book is narrated by four women, their voices alternating, as they reveal themselves and others. At first seemingly disconnected strangers, it soon becomes clear that all are tied together in unexpected ways. Physh, who narrates the most sections, is a woman who has lost her family in an accident. She and her boyfriend DR (who has also lost his family) are trying to reach a point of stability. Physh takes a dogsitting job, which leads her to meet a woman running a gas station whom she refers to as Pumper, to a seamstress, and finally to a woman who runs a preschool. Each has her story, each has her quirks and obsessions. Crawford carefully balances the intensity and oddness of their private lives with a good portion of humor. Pumper’s boyfriend, for instance, stops sleeping with her, instead taking midnight walks where he has pseudosexual experiences with a tree. What is remarkable is Crawford’s ability to integrate the outlandish with a complex narrative structure in such a way as to create a work that appeals both on the level of story and aesthetically. Simply Separate People is Crawford’s most ambitious and most fully realized book. Taken together with her earlier books, it shows her to be a varied and consummate writer.