Lessons In Another Language: A Novella and Stories
Not since Alice Munro's The Beggar Maid has there been a book which so articulately reveals the complex emotional spectrum of children caught in the adult world.
The novella and four stories in Lessons in Another Language give voice to adolescent protagonists who inhabit rich emotional and sensual worlds as they navigate the wreckage created by the adults meant to be caring for them.
In "Daily Life of the Pioneers" two misguided parents send their children to an austere summer camp designed to mimic the lives of the "pioneer children...your diet will be raw vegetables which are very tasty and very healthy." "Why?" asks one of the children, a question that resonates through Staffel's stories as they present the often-naïve ways we adults project our lives and anxieties onto our children.
Charlotte, newly arrived at a southern college, wanders into town and is seduced by a thirty-something guy with a car because "the way he looked at her made her feel like maybe she wasn't the only refugee. Like maybe he knew her same troubles."
Lessons in Another Language weaves evocative narratives of abandonment and confusion, of hope betrayed more often than fulfilled.
Nathan Bogmore, the protagonist of the opening story, "The Linguist," is literally learning a new language, studying French verbs in the country, where his artist mother has dragged the family on a "working vacation." Likewise, all of Staffel's characters find themselves getting "lessons in another language," the language of adulthood, of danger and opportunity. Circumstances—an enforced relocation, a trip home, the arrival of new neighbors and with them a new best friend—veer these characters towards a trouble they're one step behind understanding. In the mind of Sam Sperry, the contemplative voice at the center of the tour-de-force novella, "Natives and Strangers," "It was a big, complicated mess, and the only messes Sam had experience with were the simple ones that got cleaned up with angry voices, a slap on the face, or a sink full of dish soap."
Staffel's noir stories are exquisite, gripping observations of lives humbled by the power of the rural land that surrounds them, of people haunted by the enormity of their longings. Their lessons and the language they teach us offer a new and compelling translation of what it means to be a family in the modern world.
Praise for Lessons In Another Language
"I found myself in Detroit, just a 40-minute flight away from Milwaukee, on an airplane that would not take off. We weren't allowed off the plane for several hours, and while on the plane, we weren't allowed any electronic distractions. But thank God, because that meant I not only got to read your beautiful new book, Lessons In Another Language,but I got to read it the way everyone should, in one great, giddy gulp. I was just amazed—every story was so sure-footed." Liam Callanan
"I had the delicious experience of reading Lessons In Another Language cover-to-cover on a long day spent in planes and airports and enjoyed it utterly in every way—so well-written, haunting, compelling, suspenseful—so many well-drawn characters, the younger point-of-view I so often miss in books—perfect. May this book find many friends! BRAVO. Favorites: Daily Life of the Pioneers, the Linguist—but actually—every one of them." Naomi Shihab Nye
"I didn't just read this book. It was one of the rare ones that could be savored. The flow of prose unwinding transparent and tensile as spider silk, lightness catching the light." Stuart Dybek
"Megan Staffel does rural and urban, adolescence and adulthood, tough and tender, story and novella, with equal felicity and grace. The range of this collection—emotional and formal—is as astonishing as her rich and tender evocation of what it is to be alive. This is a book with a vigilant spirit, built to linger and bloom." Michael Parker