To start this review off on a bit of a tangent, I’ve never been a huge fan of the short story genre, and my opinions on most short story collections that I’ve read over the years have typically been very mixed. Personally, I’ve often times had a very hard time getting invested in the lives of the characters in a short story or the plot of short stories. When it comes to short stories, I’ve always felt like the story either ends before I’ve had a chance to truly get into the story, or the story ends right when I’m starting to care about the characters or what’s happening in the story. Obviously the short story genre is popular with other people, and I know that some people prefer to read a story that they can typically read from start to finish in one sitting. However, I personally prefer a story that’s several hundred pages long, because it gives the writer a chance to really flesh out and develop both the characters and the story itself.
When I was in college, as an English major at UNL, I had to take quite a few classes where we had to read a lot of short stories. I had one professor for two different classes, the first was an advanced fiction writing class, and the other was a capstone course that English majors at UNL were required to take. My professor was a big fan of the short story genre and the short-short story genre when it came to the curriculum for those two classes. This was something that often frustrated me given my mixed feelings regarding the short story genre. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not talking about this as a way of bashing her or anybody else out there who’s a fan of the genre.
To be perfectly honest, the first short story collection that I ever not only truly liked, but truly loved was Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. The teacher that I mentioned assigned Olive Kitteridge for the students in her advanced fiction writing class to read. A big part of why I love Olive Kitteridge so much is because I really think the style and structure that Elizabeth Strout used for the book as a whole solved my biggest complaints regarding the genre by writing each story so they would be able to stand on their own, but all of the stories in the book are still connected with the titular Olive Kitteridge serving as a common thread in each story. Strout wrote that book in such a way that while the stories may have ended, the reader would still be able to get a glimpse of what happened to the characters from one story in the stories that followed. When I was reading Olive Kitteridge, I finally found myself really being able to get into each story, because I knew that there was a chance that I would see the characters that I was reading about again in at least one of the stories that followed, so I never felt cheated once I had finished reading a story in Olive Kitteridge.
Before I get into talking about my thoughts on the first story in “Ground Fault”, I’d like to mention that I discovered The Wonder Garden when I was looking around in the “New Fiction” section at Barnes & Noble one day. It was initially both the title and the picture on the cover of the book that caught my attention, so I stopped and read the plot description on the inside flap of the book. After reading the plot description for The Wonder Garden, I was immediately intrigued by the premise of book, and it also reminded me a lot of the aforementioned Olive Kitteridge, so I decided to buy it.
Aside from simply being really excited to read The Wonder Garden, I decided to start reading the book now, because as I said in my review of Tied by Emma Chase (My thoughts on Tied), I really need to take a break from the Tangled series before I read the short story “Holy Frigging Matrimony”. All of that being said; here are my thoughts on the first story in The Wonder Garden, “Ground Fault”.
Right off the bat, I have to say that I absolutely loved “Ground Fault”, and I thought that it was a great start to the book. When I was reading “Ground Fault”, I found myself feeling completely invested and interested in John, the character the story focuses on, and the story itself after just reading the first three pages. One thing that I’ve come to realize about short stories over the years is that for better or worse, a short story is often times simply a slice or glimpse into a person’s or in some cases, people’s lives. I’ve also realized that most short stories will feel like they end suddenly and often times on a rather uneventful note.
“Ground Fault” is definitely what I would consider to be just a slice of John’s life. John is a home inspector, and the story is basically following him as he carries out an inspection of a house that a young married couple is in the process of buying. One thing that I feel like Lauren Acampora really excelled at when it comes to this story is really developing and fleshing John out as a character as he’s inspecting the house. That really surprised me, because ordinarily I would probably think that a writer couldn’t possibly adequately develop a character in a short story when the character is doing something that a lot of people would probably think is rather mundane.
Personally, I thought that Acampora did a great job of establishing that while John does a good job of paying attention to details when it comes to his work, that trait hasn’t carried over into his personal life. His wife, Diana, has filed for divorce, and to add some sprinkles to his shit sundae, his teenage daughter, Bethany, has decided to go live with her mother. It’s established that John did try to make an effort to convince Bethany to live with him. However, he apparently decided that any attempts to change Bethany’s mind about her decision were probably pointless and stopped trying to convince her to stay with him.
Another thing that I particularly liked about “Ground Fault” is that it’s established that John’s favorite thing about his job is looking at the maintenance history stickers on the oil tanks and water heaters in the houses that he inspects. Honestly, that seemed kind of stupid to me when I first read that part, but then I started thinking about what I like about my job. I work in a grocery store, and while I like the people I work with for the most part, my favorite thing about my job is the fact that employees can get meals from the kitchen that makes home-style food or the Chinese express at a discounted price.
Because the grocery store I work at mostly strives to be known for providing excellent customer services rather than trying to have prices that are lower than their competitors, my family rarely shopped at the grocery store I work at when I was growing up. My mom always did the majority of the grocery shopping, and she’s always been the type of person who tries to get things at a low or reasonable price. Back when I was kid, the main reason I ever went to the grocery store that I work at now was to get Chinese food with my dad. Since I’ve always been a huge fan of the store’s Chinese food, I was pretty excited about the Chinese express’ employee meal deal when I started working there. The fact that that’s my favorite thing about my job might sound stupid to some people, but I can definitely relate to John in the sense that my favorite thing about my job is pretty simple, if not mundane.
Despite the fact that the couple who was buying the house that John was inspecting were essentially peripheral characters in the story, I found myself being very intrigued by them and speculating quite a bit about what their back story is. I don’t know if it was Acampora’s intention for the reader to spend a lot of time thinking about the couple, but I definitely did. First off, unless I missed it, neither the husband’s or the wife’s name was mentioned in the story, and that really intrigued me. Based on the way the couple’s behavior was described in the story, I got the distinct impression that despite the fact that they were expecting a baby, they didn’t seem like they were entirely happy together.
I couldn’t help but think that perhaps the husband wasn’t entirely happy or excited about the fact that he and his wife were expecting a baby or about the prospect of moving to the suburbs. Maybe the husband was considering the idea of leaving his wife, but then he and his wife found out that they were going to have a baby, leading him to feel like he was trapped in the marriage that he had wanted to get out of. The wife’s reaction to John asking them if they knew whether they were having a boy or a girl only reinforced my speculations that things weren’t all rainbows, unicorns and Skittles in their marriage. Her behavior left me wondering if she might have doubts about her husband’s love for her and his commitment to their marriage. If it was indeed Acampora’s intention to give the reader the impression that the husband wasn’t entirely happy in the marriage, perhaps the wife’s behavior in the story was meant to show that she’s picked up on her husband’s dissatisfaction with their marriage. That being said, I suppose it’s entirely possible that I’m reading too much into things when it comes to the couple’s behavior in the story. The reason that I mentioned that is because it was simply something that I’ve thought about a lot in regards to my thoughts on “Ground Fault”.
The story itself ends on a rather uneventful note. “Ground Fault” basically ends with John finishing his inspection of the house and going home for the day. Ordinarily, the fact that a story like “Ground Fault” ends without John or any of the other characters undergoing some kind of arc or character development, and the fact that the story itself ends on such an uneventful note would probably leave me feeling dissatisfied, but I personally loved this story. When it comes to “Ground Fault”, Lauren Acampora definitely succeeded in getting me invested in both the characters and the story very quickly, which is something that very few people who write short stories have been able to do over the years. Acampora should definitely be commended for that.
“Ground Fault” is definitely a very simple, yet engaging story that I really loved. It was definitely a great way to open The Wonder Garden. Since The Wonder Garden is a book of short stories, I’ll probably jump back and forth between reading and reviewing each of the stories in the book and reviewing more chapters of Fifty Shades of Grey. However, reading “Ground Fault” got me really excited to read and review the second story in The Wonder Garden, which is “The Wonder Garden”.
That being said, my final score for “Ground Fault” is 9 out of 10.
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