RUIN, Short Stories

by Cara Hoffman

PM Press
(www.pmpress.org)
2022, 107 pages, $25.95

ISBN 9-781-62963-931-4

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RUIN is an existential collection of stories about, at times, the hopelessness of living in a time of chaotic change. The title story is about James Day, an ideal subject of a painting, a myth, an irresistible model, somebody at once real to a woman, yet out of reach. She’s trying to determine if she is in love with day, but perhaps love is just a fleeting thought. In “Childhood,” Beauty Rose is an old, old woman: or is she imagined as a child and treated so? She recalls lifetimes of memory, yet she sees herself as “Daddy’s little girl,” but Rose knows him as her son-in-law. She knows she was once a journalist and a researcher, and recalls those days vividly. What is time? What creates memory? In “They,” what is survival like from a mouse’s perspective? What are their hopes, dreams and reactions to their fate?