‘Lessons from a Nude Man’ by Donna Besel

Reviewed by melanie brannagan frederiksen

Donna Besel begins her debut collection of short stories, Lessons from a Nude Man, in a memorable and risky way. The narrator of the title story confides, “I hadn’t seen a penis in ten years.” It’s an audacious sentence – and a sharp, funny, sad, and artful one – but its perfection lies in the way it sets up the title story and the way it sets up the collection.

Opening, then, with that unforgettable sentence, “Lessons from a Nude Man” begins with the anticipated arrival of Chris, a naturist – “Evangelical – like a Jehovah’s Witness – totally convinced of his choices” – from Saskatchewan, to the narrator’s bed and breakfast. His presence brings the narrator’s discomfort in her home and in her community into focus. She’s hyper-aware not only of Chris’ nudity but primarily of other people’s potential judgements. Her judgements and desires accumulate and shift throughout the story, contributing to her palpable sense of discomfort: “It felt like someone had sliced me open,” she observes when Chris gets up to leave: “How did this strange intimacy develop? I didn’t know this guy, but I want to lay him down on my expensive mattress and explain. About my life.”

Besel stages this collision between discomfort and desire for connection throughout the collection. In “Ditched,” Adam reckons with his guilt that he isn’t a better father to his two-year-old son:

Then he thought about Devon’s birthday. And how much he sucked at being a father [. . . .] Devon’s birth had not altered his life. Adam had continued at university, got a degree in political science, and then went into journalism. His first job as a reporter took him to Biscuit Lake. He’d regretted moving so far north, but figured it didn’t matter.

For all his regret and for all his self-loathing, Adam can’t seem to shake his self-righteousness: “Adam could not think about Devon without doubting his choices. What could I have done differently? Asked her to marry me? She’s the one who refused to get an abortion. She’s the one who didn’t give a shit about finishing her degree.”

Adam’s anger and self-righteous defensiveness defines the perspective of the story. It seems stagnant and it limits our view of something that’s happening on the edges of his thoughts. In the background of his reflections about fatherhood and what has brought him to Biscuit Lake are two instances when Adam encounters Mark. After the second of these, during which he refrains from giving Mark “some adult advice, to set him on a different path,” Adam descends into a rage: “A sudden impulse to boot the fenders and smash the headlights of the red truck seized Adam. But he stopped himself. Mark did not welcome or want his anger. He had attached himself to Doug, in ways Adam could never understand.” There’s a suggestion here, a hint of something, a possible opening to something that has little to do with Mark and Doug and everything to do with Adam. It’s a risky and, ultimately, effective choice on Besel’s part to leave that potential insight unplumbed.

Each of the stories in the collection is strong on its own merits, and some – most notably “Lessons from a Nude Man,” “Breaking Through,” and “The English Cousin” – are breathtaking. Besel is particularly attuned to the way her narrators think and to the interplay between thought and event. This strength is particularly evident in “Breaking Through.” Having received the news that her uncle has fallen through the ice, Annette sees a buck fall through the ice from her window. What she has been told and what she is seeing collide and fuse: “Annette wound and unwound the cord of her phone. Wound and unwound strands of hair. For an instant, she became so bewildered, she could not remember which situation she wanted to discuss, the deer or her uncle.”

The final story, “The English Cousin,” builds on the strengths of the previous stories, and it is by far the best story in the collection. Krista, Emily, and Maggie come alive with pitch-perfect dialogue:

“How Canadian! Losing one’s virginity in a log cabin.” Emily hooted.

Krista closed her eyes and mumbled, “Well, I wasn’t. Not exactly… a virgin.”

Her cousin hadn’t heard. She was still laughing.

Then Emily turned as far around as she could, careful not to unbalance the narrow craft, and sang, “Tell me more! Tell me more!“

Maggie yelped and covered her ears. “Are you two trying to make me puke? First Julie Andrews and now Olivia Newton John. Have you ever been mellow?”

Although their banter is light-hearted, even here, in Krista’s halting revelation that she wasn’t exactly a virgin, Besel captures the undertone of something serious. “The English Cousin” does take its power, in part, from the subject matter: Krista has been sexually abused; Emily is nearly raped; the girls are kicked out of the house. Most of the power of this story, though, comes from the sure way Besel writes it.

As she does with the first sentence of the book, Besel balances audacity and forthrightness, hilarity and sadness, strength and vulnerability:

She could feel sweat on her face and arm pits, dripping down her spine. The pressure on her chest kept her from taking a full breath. Something inside her had been smashed, broken, torn forever. She considered going to the bathroom to throw up, or scream, but did not want to leave the others for a minute [. . . .] Finally, she could tell someone. She had waited for this night a long time.

As I read the end of the story, I came undone.

Hagios | 232 pages | $18.95 | paper | ISBN #  978-1926710303