Publisher's Weekly Review
Bergman (Almost Famous Women) assembles an alluring collection centered on women grappling with their circumstances. In the opener, "Workhorse," a florist procures lavish installations of endangered plants to console herself over a tyrannical father and the heartbreak of a marriage on the rocks. In "Wife Days," a competitive swimmer measures her alone time against her time as a spouse. The daughter of a second-wave feminist in "The Heirloom" covers costs on her ranch by allowing groups of hedge funders to crush cars with her bucket loader, while in "Peaches, 1979," a peach farmer desperately prays for rain. The novella-length "Indigo Run" involves a God-fearing Southern family and their restless daughter who looks back on her childhood in the 1920s and '30s, when she became embroiled in the revival ritual of a local preacher. Bergman emboldens her characters with wit and a shimmering sense of self-awareness. Her attention to details is often uncanny, such as the "Workhorse" narrator's description of her estranged husband after his return home from rehab: "his eyes were wider these days, like he was waiting for his addiction to meet him around the next corner." Though alienated from the lives they either once enjoyed or from the futures they yearn for, the characters demonstrate immense mettle. Bergman's fans will savor each story. Agent: Julie Barer, the Book Group. (Mar.)
Kirkus Review
A collection of quietly wrenching stories that plumb the minds of women stuck at life's fragile crossroads. In her third short story collection, Bergman masterfully probes the lives of strange, stubborn women and girls, from dissatisfied wives to suspicious, watchful children. Often finding themselves in the wake of tragedy or enormous life change--the unceremonious end of a marriage; a parent's death; the sudden, unwanted inheritance of a family estate--these characters work to navigate the existential anxieties of lives imbued by silent, amorphous sorrow. In "Workhorse," a woman newly separated from her husband ("We'd planned to divorce, but neither of us liked paperwork") contends with the whims of her recently widowed retired-businessman father; when a restlessness leads him to move to his native Italy and adopt a wounded mule, both parent and child must acknowledge the losses they've endured--namely, of someone to care for. The theme of parental mortality continues in "The Heirloom," which finds 29-year-old Regan the unenthusiastic inheritor of her mother's sustainability ranch; after she repurposes it into a site for city men to drive bulldozers and crush cars, she battles her own "pent-up rage to split a metal machine wide open," reeling from her mother's death and the unpredictability of loss. In "Wife Days," the semi-unhappily married Farrah swims endless laps, courts male attention, and engages in detached, animalistic sex with her husband, all while warding against the "craziness" that came, as her mother warned, "when the currency of beauty faded." The novella-length "Indigo Run"--set at Stillwood, a pain-riddled Southern estate that's housed generations of the old Glass family--probes the burdens its women carry from one generation to the next: loss, motherhood, ancestral burdens. Bergman's stories are so atmospherically and emotionally rich that they serve as portals into distinct interior worlds, often concluding on a quiet, destabilizing note that calls into question the narrative's apparent straightforwardness. As a whole (and though "Indigo Run" is unevenly paced), this collection is distinct and vivid, each story burrowing inside the reader's brain to leave an indelible mark. As singular as it is atmospheric. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Bergman (Almost Famous Women, 2015) presents a new and compelling short story collection in which the past and present are in constant communication, weaving the intricate ties between families and lovers and their hopes and disappointments. The idea of home, literally and figuratively, is central as homes are inherited and preserved, lose their former glory, are destroyed by nature or by human hand and rebuilt. And these homes are almost entirely occupied by women. Indeed, as the character Helena states in the story "Indigo Run," "Girls understand what home means in a way men don't." Beyond home, the legacy from parents echoes in marital relationships ("Workhorse," "Wife Days"), toxic masculinity becomes fuel for empowerment ("The Heirloom," "The Night Hag"), and looming climate change threatens destruction ("Inheritance," "Peaches, 1979," and "A Taste for Lionfish"), a theme Bergman is steeped in as a teacher of environmental writing at Middlebury College. Ultimately, these are stories you want to live in, uninhabitable as they may be for the characters. In a collection perfectly suited for our moment, Bergman examines what remains of what was given to us and suggests how we might move on as the world continues to change around us.
