John McIlroy is a retired corporate lawyer and law instructor who had his career in several different states, but these stories are not murder mysteries or legal thrillers. In fact, only a couple have to do with courtrooms and judges. Retired and now living in coastal Carolina, MacIlroy has set these 18 stories in Massachusetts, Mississippi, Georgia, and a great many other places. Let me begin by assuring readers that these are realistic stories in the best traditional, readable sense. There is no metafiction, fantasy, science fiction, surrealism, alternate universes, magical realism. Occasionally a character has a nightmare or delusion, but just the kind we all have.
Also, these stories are not didactic or preachy at all. A good many recent novels have focused on important cultural and social issues such as domestic abuse, immigration, and various kinds of injustice. However worthy they may be, there is also room in the literary landscape for small stories about individual lives. In a time when most fiction is by and for women, the narrators and most characters in these stories are men. In a satisfyingly old-fashioned way, in the course of each story the character learns something about himself or his world and undergoes a personally important moment.
There is no war story, per se, but several illustrate some after-effects of America’s many wars. “Three Buses Waiting” tells of the day in 1967 the young narrator took his army physical. During the Vietnam war, that was a day to remember. The prizewinning story “Duke’s,” as in mayonnaise, refers to the Iraq War. A vet who lost his best friend there eats his pastrami with mayo, not mustard, in remembrance of his lost comrade.
The narrator of “The Custodian” tells how his elementary school janitor, a WWII vet, was scrupulous about the school American flag. Handle with care; never let it touch the ground. In the war, he was wounded in the knee, ending his hopes of playing professional baseball. The custodian was a devoted Brooklyn Dodgers fan, listening to games in his shop, until they moved to Los Angeles. Now, they were dead to him. Some acts of treason can never be forgiven.
Miraculously, this is not the only story about baseball. In “McAllister’s Asterisk,” we learn of an obese, nearly washed-up minor league first baseman, Pudge McAllister, who can still hit. He becomes a celebrity by signing a contract with a Rhode Island team, the Poquamscutt Harbor Chowda Bowls, a contract which explicitly excuses him from fielding ground balls, because he is too fat to bend over for them. It is outrageous, disgraceful and very funny.
And there is a wonderful “Paper Chase” kind of story in which a first-year law student responds so poorly in class the professor prophesies: “With answers like that, you will never own your own home,” a rebuke that becomes legend.
