Paddock’s Pick: Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger

Editor’s note:  Anita Paddock’s review of books we should read are scheduled to appear on the second and fourth Friday of each month. Enjoy.

review by Anita Paddock
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What a joy it is to have a good book going! I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: I feel sorry for folks who don’t like to read.

I’ve really been hitting the jackpot with good finds lately. This latest book by Lee Smith, “Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger,” is a collection of new stories and those that have been published before in lit magazines. An accomplished writer of twelve novels and three short story collections, Smith is from the Appalachian mountains of southwestern Virginia, and she knows the subjects and locale she writes about. Her writing voice sings the songs of Appalachia, and her descriptions and dialogue are pitch perfect, without sounding like someone on Hee Haw.

Her daddy owned a dime store in Grundy, Va., a small coal mining town 10 miles from the Kentucky border. It was there that her writing education began. She’d watch and listen to the shoppers, always paying close attention to how they talked and dressed and what they said. She wrote her first story when she was nine, and it was about Jane Russell and Adlai Stevenson taking a trip out west to become Mormons. (Now that’s some creative thinking.)

There are 14 stories in this book, and I was charmed by all of them. I especially like reading short story collections because I can finish one before I go to bed, whereas with a great novel, I’ll want to finish the book, sleep be damned. All of these stories fit the description of a good short story: It can be read in an hour and remembered for a lifetime.

One of the charmers, “Toastmaster,” is about an 11-year-old boy, Jeffrey, small for his age, who goes to a convention in Key West with his mother and one of her friends. The boy is the narrator of the story, and he frequently uses words (he puts the words in parentheses) he’s learned in vocabulary building and spelling class. While at a restaurant filled with various convention attendees, Jeffrey eavesdrops on a large group of men who are drinking and laughing and having a grand time. Each man stands and tells a funny joke.

Here’s one example: “They took a poll of American woman, and they asked, “Would you have an affair with Bill Clinton? And 70 percent said, ‘Never Again.’”

Before long, all the customers are listening to the men. Jeffrey realizes that these men and having fun — they’re in the prime of their life. He wishes for that kind of life because so far his life is lonesome with no father in the picture, and he’s also bullied by two mean boys. Jeffrey joins in with the joke telling, to his mother’s astonishment, and tells a one-liner: “A dyslexic horse walks into a Bra…” The laughter rises like a roar as the men jump up from their table and whistle and clap and cheer for Jeffrey, who used to be invisible.

When the night is over, and everyone is leaving, Jeffrey asks the men what convention they are attending. “We’re toastmasters from Cincinnati!”

When Jeffrey gets home to Washington, D.C. , he goes to the library and checks out joke books, every kind of joke books his librarian can find for him. He practices telling them in front of the bathroom mirror and works up routines. He enters his school’s talent show. On the way to the auditorium, he meets the two bullies but he disarms them with a mean joke, even meaner than them. “Why did Helen Keller have a burn on the right side of her face? … She answered the iron. Why did Helen Keller have a burn on the left side of her face? … They called back.”

He wins second place in the talent show and is hugged by the (voluptuous) Miss Hanratty so hard that he sees stars in front of his eyes, a (harbinger) of things to come. Each story will grab you. You’ll know these people Lee Smith writes about. They’re your cousins, your uncles, your next-door neighbors, your parents in a nursing home. You may even see yourself. I was there.

•••
If you were a little boy who wanted some joke books, you might be lucky enough to have Miss Robin at the Main Library help you. Robin Benham is the youth services director for the Fort Smith Public Library, and she is the person who suggested I read this book.

Robin is the mother of two boys, Ben and Mason Kirksey, who are both grown now. When they were little, their favorite books were “The Biggest Bear, “White Dynamite and Curly Kid,” and all of the Mercer Mayer books.

“Because they were my boys’ favorite, they were mine as well,” she says.

Robin taught kindergarten for a number of years before she got her masters degree to teach Library-Media at Alma Primary School.

“For the past three years I’ve had the opportunity to share my love of books in the public library setting, “she says. “Our story times are full of music, books, fingerplays, and noise.  Lots of noise, but it’s a good noise.”

Another good noise Robin is hearing is that of wedding bells. She is engaged to Fort Smith’s City Director Dennis Kelly, and they plan to be married in a couple of weeks. And guess what? He first saw her in the library. Romantic, eh?