The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Blood and Milk by Sharon Solwitz
Jeanne Claire van Ryzin

Sharon Solwitz. Blood and Milk. Sarabande, 1997. 236 pp. Paper: $13.95.

A rendezvous with the “sense of unresolvable ambiguity of practically everything” is the cornerstone experience for the characters of Sharon Solwitz’s first collection of short stories, Blood and Milk. Simultaneously sensitive, complex, and darkly comedic, these stories lunge into the labyrinth of relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, extended families, lovers, friends, Jews and non-Jews. Solwitz’s characters often find themselves backed into extreme moments of conflict and confusion in which dramatic and often absurd action seems their only recourse. The result is a boldly honest statement about how we behave and who we are: about the incongruities, discrepancies, and inconsistencies of human behavior. “I am neither saint nor self-protector. My ego refuses either to die or prevail,” proclaims the narrator of “Mercy,” the chronicle of a rape victim examining her continuously complex and unresolved emotions some fifteen years after the crime.
Rendered in exacting and implosive detail, Solwitz’s tales feature characters who exist in some state of emotional extreme, such as Dvora, a schizophrenia-prone Jewish Israeli woman who insists that her husband take a job in Baghdad, only to have her recklessly confrontational behavior eventually drive her mad and endanger the life of her infant son. And in “Milk,” Debra is the mother of infant twin boys whose songwriter husband’s waffling interest in their children fuels her determination to maintain her family. Taking a job as a stripper in club called Les Girls, Debra’s rage against men eventually escalates to a boiling point which prompts her to act out in an almost farcical manner.
Both lyric and forceful, Solwitz’s stories employ a precise sense of character and voice to capture vividly that so-common, unfulfilled human wish—to find “a place where there is no contradiction.” [Jeanne Claire van Ryzin]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Blood and Milk by Sharon Solwitz Jeanne Claire van Ryzin Sharon Solwitz. Blood and Milk. Sarabande, 1997. 236 pp. Paper: $13.95. A rendezvous with the “sense of unresolvable ambiguity of practically everything” is the cornerstone experience for the characters of Sharon Solwitz’s first collection of short stories, Blood and Milk. Simultaneously sensitive, complex, and darkly comedic, these stories lunge into the labyrinth of relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, extended families, lovers, friends, Jews and non-Jews. Solwitz’s characters often find themselves backed into extreme moments of conflict and confusion in which dramatic and often absurd action seems their only recourse. The result is a boldly honest statement about how we behave and who we are: about the incongruities, discrepancies, and inconsistencies of human behavior. “I am neither saint nor self-protector. My ego refuses either to die or prevail,” proclaims the narrator of “Mercy,” the chronicle of a rape victim examining her continuously complex and unresolved emotions some fifteen years after the crime. Rendered in exacting and implosive detail, Solwitz’s tales feature characters who exist in some state of emotional extreme, such as Dvora, a schizophrenia-prone Jewish Israeli woman who insists that her husband take a job in Baghdad, only to have her recklessly confrontational behavior eventually drive her mad and endanger the life of her infant son. And in “Milk,” Debra is the mother of infant twin boys whose songwriter husband’s waffling interest in their children fuels her determination to maintain her family. Taking a job as a stripper in club called Les Girls, Debra’s rage against men eventually escalates to a boiling point which prompts her to act out in an almost farcical manner. Both lyric and forceful, Solwitz’s stories employ a precise sense of character and voice to capture vividly that so-common, unfulfilled human wish—to find “a place where there is no contradiction.” [Jeanne Claire van Ryzin]

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