Short stories make you long for more
Ehrhardt pens plots, characters that keep the readers guessing

By ELLISON G. WEIST

The Portland Tribune, Jul 3, 2007



In nearly every one of Pia Z. Ehrhardt's short stories, the women end up with the short end of the stick.

But thanks to Ehrhardt's gift for telling a story, even the most hypersensitive feminist won't bat an eye. They'll be too caught up in the characters and the plots in this debut collection, many of which unfold and flourish over the course of less than eight pages.

The best example of Ehrhardt's mesmerizing brevity is "The Man," a seven-page story that is both brilliant and sickening.

On the face of it, it is the story of a kidnapped woman who is tortured, raped and left for dead. But in spare, heart-rending prose it manages to focus on the relationship the victim hopes to cultivate with the young man who rescued her.

"The doctors had told her that morning that she'd be going home in a few days," Ehrhardt writes. "Lillian didn't know how to thank Doss. A proper thank-you would also be a good-bye and she didn't want to let Doss go. His daily visits were like her morphine."

Offbeat, often dysfunctional family situations abound in several of the stories.

"Running the Room" features a young married woman covering for her middle-age mother who is having an affair.

In "Tell Me in Italian," both the female narrator and her aging father are involved in adulterous relationships, but the father's appears to offer more hope for a future.

His daughter is left worrying about her married lover noting, "I want him to think about me while he sleeps, tossing, turning, and hope he and his small wife aren't tucked in, tight as snow peas."

Not all of Ehrhardt's characters are sympathetic, and that's a good thing.

Often her characters annoy us, like the celebrity-quoting woman in "Intermediate Goals" who starts her story by announcing why she left her husband: "I didn't leave him for another man. I left him for the next man, whom I will be sure to know better, who will know me better, whom I soon hope to meet."

By the end of her tale, we thank God she's not our sister, mother or wife but, boy howdy, it was fun reading about her.

In less than 170 pages Ehrhardt conveys pathos, humor, joy, anger and longing. This collection of short stories marks the author as a talented up-and-comer.

Labels: Birdsong