The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Nightwork by Christine Schutt
William Tester

Christine Schutt. Nightwork. Knopf, 1996. 129 pp. $20.00.

Buzzing with the hothouse sexual latency of a Sally Mann or Jock Sturgess nude, the stories in Christine Schutt’s debut collection inhabit a dangerous space between incest, fear, and desire. Many of Schutt’s seventeen stories revolve around couples coupling—and the anticipation or threat of coupling between figures in a family. Everyone wants something here: daughter covets father, and mother her son. In “You Drive” the collection leads off with such a transgressive enticement: “She brought him what she had promised, and they did it in his car, on the top floor of the car park . . . and she said, or thought she said, ‘I like your skin,’ when what she really liked was the color of her father’s skin. . . . ”
Though incest verges on becoming a stock situation in recent fiction, these are not conventional tales of familial lust and abuse. The dreamlike and poetically rendered stories in Nightwork resist a casual reader’s attempt to shape out intentional plot or design. Throughout the collection, meaning is pleasurably associative and indirect. These stories rely upon memory and meandering thought, and nothing much usually happens. “Good Night, Sweetheart” deliciously recalls a woman’s sexual dread while on a date with an elderly man. In “Daywork” two sisters simply banter while emptying the attic of their infirm mother’s belongings. “What Have You Been Doing” follows how a kiss between a mother and son evolves like expanding pearls in a necklace into an overtly Oedipal liaison—a burning central gem at the story’s end. Schutt discards plot mechanics; almost every story explores some overintimacy of characters, relatives locked in the old transactional systems of family, though without the normal moral order of values, familial or otherwise.
The reward for reading Nightwork lies in the wonderful line-by-line sensuality of Schutt’s language and in the intensity of each worked line. Often her stories contain leaps of prose which thrill like virtuoso moments in dance. Onomatopoeic words and neologisms ornament this work. A shoe doesn’t slip on and off but shucks against a heel. Debris beneath a table becomes “bread crusts and withered peas always more, and furred with such a dust that I think they come alive at night and breed.” Though the stories in Nightwork are brief, you may want to take your time with them and read each piece with deliberation and slowness. [William Tester]


Interview with Founder Board of Directors Funders Submission Guidelines Dalkey Archive Full Catalog Current and Forthcoming Titles Recent Titles Review of Contemporary Fiction Special Library Offer Special Backlist Sale Stores & Wholesalers Academics Libraries Reviewers Context Casebooks Author Interviews Links Dalkey Archive News Events Newsletter

The Review of Contemporary Fiction Nightwork by Christine Schutt William Tester Christine Schutt. Nightwork. Knopf, 1996. 129 pp. $20.00. Buzzing with the hothouse sexual latency of a Sally Mann or Jock Sturgess nude, the stories in Christine Schutt’s debut collection inhabit a dangerous space between incest, fear, and desire. Many of Schutt’s seventeen stories revolve around couples coupling—and the anticipation or threat of coupling between figures in a family. Everyone wants something here: daughter covets father, and mother her son. In “You Drive” the collection leads off with such a transgressive enticement: “She brought him what she had promised, and they did it in his car, on the top floor of the car park . . . and she said, or thought she said, ‘I like your skin,’ when what she really liked was the color of her father’s skin. . . . ” Though incest verges on becoming a stock situation in recent fiction, these are not conventional tales of familial lust and abuse. The dreamlike and poetically rendered stories in Nightwork resist a casual reader’s attempt to shape out intentional plot or design. Throughout the collection, meaning is pleasurably associative and indirect. These stories rely upon memory and meandering thought, and nothing much usually happens. “Good Night, Sweetheart” deliciously recalls a woman’s sexual dread while on a date with an elderly man. In “Daywork” two sisters simply banter while emptying the attic of their infirm mother’s belongings. “What Have You Been Doing” follows how a kiss between a mother and son evolves like expanding pearls in a necklace into an overtly Oedipal liaison—a burning central gem at the story’s end. Schutt discards plot mechanics; almost every story explores some overintimacy of characters, relatives locked in the old transactional systems of family, though without the normal moral order of values, familial or otherwise. The reward for reading Nightwork lies in the wonderful line-by-line sensuality of Schutt’s language and in the intensity of each worked line. Often her stories contain leaps of prose which thrill like virtuoso moments in dance. Onomatopoeic words and neologisms ornament this work. A shoe doesn’t slip on and off but shucks against a heel. Debris beneath a table becomes “bread crusts and withered peas always more, and furred with such a dust that I think they come alive at night and breed.” Though the stories in Nightwork are brief, you may want to take your time with them and read each piece with deliberation and slowness. [William Tester]

Search the full text of our books: