Buried emotion

Lynch’s tales of lonely souls often feel too removed

February 14, 2010|Max Winter, Globe Correspondent

Thomas Lynch’s earlier books, such as “The Undertaking’’ and “Bodies in Motion and at Rest,’’ grew out of his work as an undertaker and funeral home director. They were rich in human detail and, despite their austere subject, moved with considerable animation. The qualities that elevated and steered his nonfiction - clarity, a love of small, personal details, humor - don’t jell as nicely in his first collection of fiction, “Apparition and Late Fictions.’’

The five stories grouped here are all about lonely individuals in the Midwest; these men and women wrestle with life histories touched by murder, adultery, and unfulfilled desire, which are sometimes moving, sometimes cold. Lynch gives us insights into characters’ needs, sadnesses, and small pleasures, but too often he operates at too great a remove, making the book read occasionally like fictional reportage, albeit beautifully written.

This is not to say that the characters in these stories are uninteresting. Lynch’s clear investment in those he writes about gives breadth to his portraiture. The stories with the closest ties to Lynch’s profession are the most convincing. The names of caskets or minutiae of embalming techniques endow these tales with confidence. Martin, the embalmer in “Bloodsport,’’ wrestles with an uncomfortable memory 20 years after the fact; he developed feelings for a young woman after her father died only to end up embalming her five years later when she was murdered by her boyfriend. Though Martin has always taken comfort in “dealing only with the parts,’’ working only with the body after death and not with living people, this distance offers little psychic safety.

The casket salesman of “Hunter’s Moon’’ similarly reels from the loss of various women in his life; although he helps to bury people for a living, they have risen through his memory, making any physical burials meaningless. Though the theme here is delivered somewhat heavy-handedly, the story retains an appealing simplicity, a morbid fable.