There is a certain psychology attached to book reading. The number of pages and the size of the type are factors that can make a book either daunting or appealing.
Amazons and Other Stories, a first work of fiction by Richard Dyer, falls into the latter category.
The blurb on the dust jacket tells the reader very little about the author other than a couple of bare facts. He is a composer and writer who was born in Eastern Europe and has lived in New York.
An appealing book by a mysterious writer
A Google search offers no enlightenment. There are several entries from different sources – all with the same meager information about the man. There are also other people of the same name who at first glance could easily be mistaken for the author, but one was born in the UK and the other in the US, neither of which is in Eastern Europe.
The book is divided into two parts. Each is a page turner. I can’t remember when I last read a book that I was so reluctant to put down. Some of it seems autobiographical and is written in the first person.'
Even that which is written in the third person hints at personal experience.
Before perusing the book, the reader learns from the dust jacket that the book is based on the writer’s reminiscences of women in his life: “From a fantasy of three women who become the avengers of Central Park at its darkest moment to the personal recollections of a childhood in Europe and the women he loved, Richard Dyer weaves a tale of romance and hope out of difficult and violent times, real and imagined.”
In only one case does he reveal what actually happened to her but leaves the reader to formulate his or her own ideas about what may have been the past or future of the others.
In some parts of this slim volume, it is difficult to tell what is fact and what is fantasy.
Dyer is a minimalist. His sentences are short. His descriptions are brief. He is a master of verbal economy. There’s more than a handful of separate stories in less than a hundred pages of text.
The print is large with wide spaces between the lines. It’s an easy read in more ways than one.
The first section deals with a number of women who have been raped. Among the protagonists are Lindy, a no-nonsense nurse, and her friends, Renee and Jenny:
It was already dark when they entered Central Park. “I would never come here alone,” said Renee, edging closer to Lindy. Lindy ruffled Renee’s light hair. “You’d better not.” “Me neither,” said Jenny. they wore black balaclavas and black sweatsuits. Lindy was holding a large doctor’s bag made out of cloth, from which the handle of a baseball bat protruded. “Lindy, what’s in the bag?” Jenny asked. “I’ll tell you later,” she said.
It goes beyond the realm of “Me Too,” yet conveys the emotional kaleidescope of rape victims in a manner that suggests that someone in the writer’s family may have been the target of a rapist. In the narrative, Dyer gives no inkling whether the stories are based on fact. He also creates a somewhat improbable but not impossible situation. He leaves it to the reader to fill in the gaps in the scenarios.
The second section of the book appears to be autobiographical, aided by the inclusion of a couple of sentences in French, which if the reader ponders on the book as a whole, seems to be related to Dyer’s childhood.
If it is, it presents Dyer’s personal journey from total assimilation to his recapturing a sense of Jewish identity, and then taking it further to religious observance.
Yet none of these episodes in his or his character’s life is fully rounded out. Here again, it is left to the reader to fill in the gaps.
It’s almost a kind of partnership between writer and reader. If the work is indeed autobiographical, albeit written in the genre of fiction, it is obvious that Dyer is wary of revealing too much about himself.
There is, for instance, the impression that he is a child Holocaust survivor, but beyond vague reminiscences about his mother and his sister, there is no clue about his childhood – where he was born and what happened to him.
Eastern Europe is, after all, home to several countries in which people speak different languages and have varied cultural traditions. He could be from anywhere. This suggests that the omissions are deliberate.
The reader is left wondering how the first-person hero of the book got to America. Did his grandparents take him there? Did they raise him? And if so, why is he so secretive about this?
Perhaps he’ll supply some of the answers in his next book – if there is one.■
- Amazons and Other Stories
- Richard Dyer
- Archway Publishing, 2023
- 97 pages; $16.99