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- Losing Patience
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- Author: Joyce Faulkner
- Reviewer: Mindy Phillips Lawrence
- Publisher: Red Engine Press, Key West, FL (2004)
- ISBN: 0974565245
- Rating: * * * * Quills
- www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/0974565245/scriquil
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- Joyce Faulkner, author of Losing Patience, has produced a powerful collection of short stories. The tales weave around themes, such as guilt, forgiveness, misguided obedience and retribution. These psychologically memorable characters face complex choices.
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- Faulkner's story, Chance, depicts the deception of passion and its outcome. Chance feels like a second class person all his life. He winds up loving and losing a woman to his own father. He grows increasingly unbalanced until he exacts his frightening brand of retribution. This tale has a psychological twist like in an old Twilight Zone episode.
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- In Andrew, two Civil War soldiers, Grover and Andrew, carry on a ghostly conversation about life, death and regrets. The soldiers discuss the way life was before the war and how they've changed as soldiers after killing in order to perpetuate their own survival.
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- Just Hold Me takes place in 1967. Gary, a returning Vietnam veteran, realizes everything has changed while he was gone. He desperately needs to talk to someone, but is unable to make himself go home to his family. Instead, he turns to a total stranger for solace to try and rid himself of his knowledge of war and his horrendous internal guilt.
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- In Faulkner's story, Infinity, she takes on the never-ending circle of violence against women. An eleven-year-old girl has been violated and meets with a rape crisis counselor who knows first hand what she is going through. Infinity delves into the moral issue of what to do with a young girl, a child herself, who could become pregnant.
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- Human sacrifice, religious beliefs and blind obedience are represented in The Test, a modern retelling of a biblical story. In it, Abe has to choose whether to obey a voice that tells him to murder his newborn child or ignore it. Is he hallucinating or is he hearing from God?
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- Losing Patience is not without humor. In The Rubber Dome, Faulkner introduces a woman who has lost her husband. She is setting up file folders to qualify a man to take the place of her beloved husband, if just for the night. Things don't go as smoothly as planned. Her choice teaches her to laugh at herself and reach out to begin a new life.
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- All the stories in Losing Patience are engaging, mind bending and thought provoking. The collection will keep you coming back for another read to see what else the stories say to you.
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