MID-AIR: TWO NOVELLAS
Fate is explored in the fall and rise of two twentieth-century American families.
Victoria Shorr’s remarkable gift for depicting the inner lives of complex characters shines in two powerful explorations of family, ambition, class, and status.
In “Great Uncle Edward,” a family gathers for dinner. At ninety-three, Great Uncle Edward commands the table in his three-piece suit; Cousin Russell attended both Harvard and Yale but is now reduced to selling off the family books; sisters Betty and Molly are caught between ghosts of a storied past and creeping destitution. These lives are signposts along the downward spiral of an old aristocracy. “Cleveland Auto Wrecking” introduces Sam White, an immigrant from eastern Europe. He cannot read but has a gift for math and an instinct for the value of junk. We follow his clan through the Depression to the postwar boom in the West, where their fortunes soar, creating new tests of loyalty.
Taken together, these two novellas might be the reverse images of the American dream in the twentieth century. They ask to what degree, in the face of such powerful forces as love, death, and social constraints, do any of us have control over our own lives.
Critics re Mid-Air:
Mid-Air” is yet another inventive excavation of the past, this one in the form of two novellas whose themes are family and class, one an account of patrician decline and the other a tale of rags to riches. Each is a minor masterpiece, and both gain resonance in juxtaposition with each other. Together they form a witty and moving portrait of American life going back a half-century or more....Ms. Shorr excels at capturing the arc of a relationship as well as of a life....Above all, both these fine novellas unfurl the kind of complicated family tapestries that every generation ends up weaving from money and love.
— Wall Street Journal
In their section on Historical Fiction, Alida Becker praises Shorr's “eye for telling detail as she unreels the families’ varied experiences. And then there’s her insightful acknowledgment that those experiences are transformed as they sink in to the past, that their subtle shadings will inevitably be lost.”
New York Times
Intergenerational jarring rules both “Great Uncle Edward,” the more genteel and sallow of the fine fictions Shorr presents here, and “Cleveland Auto Wrecking,” its more-developed, slightly sunnier sequel. The first examines a moneyed family on its way down, the second an immigrant clan on entrepreneurial ascent. Both are beautifully written, their characters almost too full-bodied for the demanding, disciplined novella form.
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“Shorr proves herself a literary mimic of the first order with these two pitch-perfect stories. . . . The author cleverly juxtaposes how one aspect of American society falls as another rises, and both novellas have a novellike density of detail and depth of characterization. Together, they offer rich rewards.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“In style and substance, Shorr summons the works of Anne Tyler as she rejoices in her characters’ day-to-day experiences, dropping pearls of insight into crystalline vignettes. Her characters are more recognizable than remote, their struggles more mundane than mighty, evoking sympathy while challenging assumptions. The novella format can be a thorny one to embrace, either too short or too long. In Shorr’s hands, it is just right.”
—Booklist, starred review
“Shorr’s prose is fluid and supple. . . . [H]er insights are so keen, and her storytelling so
elegant and natural. . . . [T]his book is a quiet accomplishment.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Victoria Shorr is a conjurer of the highest order, artfully creating apposite tales of
family ruin and family success in her wry, insightful, and elegant prose.”
—Lily Tuck, author of Sisters
“The two novellas in Victoria Shorr’s book Mid-Air are intimate portraits of inclusion and exclusion,
as well as the dangers implicit in nostalgia. Rich with an acerbic skepticism and abetted by
the unexpected detail that renders something humorous, Shorr writes with a tolerance of
ambiguity that is provocative as well as enlightening.”
—Susanna Moore, author of Miss Aluminum