Stella Maris and Other Key West Stories
by Michael Carroll
Turtle Point Press. 288 pages, $17.
THIS NEW COLLECTION of short stories by Michael Carroll, Stella Maris and Other Key West Stories, features many generic conventions of the summer beach read. There’s the glamorous setting with emphasis on landscapes where “canals were like twisted ways of water and mangrove.” Many of the characters travel throughout the world, rent out bungalows, and live lives of leisure. The narrator in “The Leisure Classless” describes himself as “an accomplished guest” who “can expense what I want to … and rent a car and see the harbor, the nature preserves, go to restaurants.” There are sensual descriptions of the human body and exuberant celebrations of various sexual acts, as when Carroll explores the thrill of two men enjoying each other’s bodies while being watched by a voyeur in the opening story, “Sugar and Gold.” Dale, one of the story’s characters, finishes rimming a young man which “had given him wood, not a lot but enough sap to make the branch grow.”
But there’s something deeper at work in Carroll’s lyrical prose. This is not a standard beach read, after all. Carroll takes the conventions of the summer novel and twists them inside out, revealing a world of privilege and exclusion while also satirizing a certain strain of gay life that after the 2016 election feels comically out of touch in a world of uncertainty and turmoil.
The specter of Donald Trump haunts a majority of these stories. In one tale, a dinner party is thrown “by a rich older couple who are fun and liberal and worried about America.” The couple’s supposed anxiety about social media and negativity and the state of the union is ironically undercut by their extreme wealth and the beauty of their beachfront property, where “the Atlantic meets the Gulf of Mexico.” Their anxieties are not serious but performative. Before the dinner party, a character meets an older couple from Ohio and is reminded of his mother, who “was going to make America great again.” He realizes that divisions have always been a part of American life, but then “the faux-billionaire asshole had come in swinging the wrecking ball” and deepened the divide. He then interrogates his past racist transgressions and laments how his former prejudices restricted his chances of finding love. In Carroll’s world, the rubes from flyover country, the out-of-touch straight liberals, the gay men adjacent to wealth all coexist where “the grave of America was still fresh.” Since Carroll holds everyone accountable, the story achieves a remarkable nuance and attempts to make sense of what’s happening in America.
Politics is one of the key features of Carroll’s writing, but he never loses sight of his characters’ humanity. His compassion is on display in the title story, which explores the complex and often symbiotic relationship between gay men and straight women. In the story, Dale is married to Karen. Within the confines of this heterosexual union, Karen pushes Dale to explore his true desires. The protection Dale finds from Karen is even more resonant after her death. “He was alone, without a partner to process this with, his buddy, co-conspirator.” Carroll’s writing sidesteps clichés and easy answers, opting for nuance and freshness. His world is fluid, exciting, and never predictable. Let the exotic locales draw you in. Stay for Carroll’s singular voice.
Dan Calhoun is the author of Safe Sex, a collection of short stories.
