With emotional depth and arrestingly beautiful prose, this collection of linked stories examines the ways in which those who’ve been orphaned–literally or metaphorically–are supported or let down as they try to make their way forward. Even if they have family or have come under the care of supposedly supportive people or institutions (for example, doctors, teachers, schools, and other institutions), these orphans may fail to thrive. But every now and then, guardian figures try to make a difference in their lives, or so it seems. Yet those efforts are never uncomplicated.
Some of the stories in the collection have a surreal or fairytale-like nature. One of the most haunting tales of this type is “The Dwindling,” narrated by a girl who has entered the afterlife and what seems to be an orphanage for dead children. She can’t remember her name, so the man who runs the home, a Dr. Querque, calls her Monday (for the day she arrived and/or the day she died?–the answer is uncertain). Though the orphanage is the opposite of cheerful, Querque and the seeming co-manager of the home, Lunette Bicky, seem determined to offer structure and comforts for the children: sessions with Querque that are more unsettling than therapeutic, chores, doses of a Happy Elixir that never appear to take effect, and spells in front of Happy Lights, which never seem to offer relief from the home’s pervading darkness. In some ways, Querque and Lunette might be seen as guardians for the orphaned children, yet everything about them and the home seems to have sinister undertones. Consider the orphanage’s slogan, which is included on leaflets the children are made to distribute: DR. QUERQUE’S HOME FOR DWINDLERS. WE’LL FINISH THEM OFF SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO.
As for the children, there are certain aches that not even the most kind and able guardians could soothe, such as Monday’s endless longing for her mother, whom she’s left behind in the world of the living. This sense of loss is an especially powerful thread running through the story, and it’s apparent in poetic in passages like this one, in which Monday begins by comparing her mother to Helen of Troy:
One break with the rules-based order of the home is the serial mischief of one of Monday’s fellow orphans, Fobb. In his acts of rebellion, there seems to be hope of an escape for himself and Monday.
Four stories in the collection center on Zinnia Zompa, the protagonist of Josefowicz’s darkly funny novella L’Air du Temps (1985), which I also reviewed. In the novella, Zinnia is a young teen who is coming of age amid various dysfunctions in her family and the larger community. The Zinnia stories in Guardians & Saints immerse us in later challenges in her life, from having to deal with acute mental illness in her family to trying her best to be a guardian/caretaker herself, both as a mother and a high school chemistry teacher. As a teenager, especially (a time of life represented in the story “Dance Hall Days”), Zinnia seems metaphorically orphaned, her mother and sister, Zenobia, struggling with mental-health crises and her father tending to regard his family with indifference, at best. At one point in the story, he’s described as “home at five, enraged by six, snoring before the television by seven, and gone in a puff of exhaust at dawn.”
The central crisis of the story is a suicide attempt by Zenobia, which lands her in a locked ward of a local hospital and lands the entire Zompa clan in family therapy. The therapy seems less than helpful for Zinnia: “I was tired of hearing all the ways in which I was not just like my sister.” Instead of reassuring Zinnia, this message seems to be a reminder that no matter what she does or how she acts, her identity will be tied to her sister’s.
Though the family therapist is well intentioned, Zinnia forms a closer connection to another clinician at the hospital: Dr. Teller, who stepped in immediately after Zenobia’s suicide attempt. Dr. Teller truly seems to care about Zinnia, and later, she enters solo therapy with him. Zinnia observes of the sessions: “We settle into each other’s company, and in those moments, I become someone else. Someone better.” Over time, the two of them build what seems to be a friendship, and what feels like possibly something more. But Zinnia is only sixteen, and she seems to sense trouble when Dr. Teller looks at her intently at the end of the story: “Something flashed in his eyes, like a school of fish turning in a shaft of light. … A creature in the shadows, watching, evaluating.” Although Dr. Teller is ostensibly a guardian figure, this feels like a moment where Zinnia is left to look out for herself, just as she’s had to do for much of her young life.
“I, Zinnia,” a story set when Zinnia is an adult, focuses on a time when she must look after her mother, who is now frail both physically and mentally. Although their relationship (and Zinnia’s relationship with her sister, Zenobia) continues to be fraught, we see Zinnia’s mother from a more sympathetic perspective. We learn about her life before she was married or a mother, back when she taught social studies at a local school and roomed with two young women whose dramatic romantic exploits become an entertaining thread through the story. The mother’s recollections of this melodrama seem to also offer opportunities for a closer bond between herself and Zinnia.
To my mind, the most moving aspect of the story is the mother’s fascination with the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl, who sailed from South America to Polynesia on a balsa wood raft named Kon-Tiki. In her teaching days, she’d tried to encourage a classroom of sixth graders to share this fascination, and at that time in her life, her interest in Heyerdahl’s exploits seemed to be one with the relative freedom she’d known before she got married and moved to the suburbs with Zinnia’s father. There, Zinnia observes, she “kept the house in which she mislaid her ambitions.” But, she reflects:
Beautiful and sharply observant writing like this is one of the many pleasures of Guardians & Saints. It is a captivating and richly imaginative collection.
Would My Pick be Your Pick?
If you're interested in ________, the answer may be "Yes":￭ Stories about family conflicts and dysfunction
￭ Explorations of the effects of mental illness
￭ Coming-of-age stories
￭ Fairytales and stories with surreal elements