In Women and Other Animals, a bold debut of energetic short stories by Bonnie Jo Campbell, we are swept away into the secret thoughts of various Michigan creatures, both fantastic and everyday. The collection of sixteen stories, winner of the 1998 Associated Writing Programs' Award Series in Short Fiction, encompasses a lyrical journey into the magic and mystery of place, the rivers and townships of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. Here strong men and women confront escaped circus gorillas and train wrecks, skin catfish and raise calves, and fight - for their lives, for love, and for the understanding to help them survive both.

Oftentimes we feel displaced in a strange new world, but the richly imaginative world of Campbell's stories pulls us in and makes her landscapes ours, instantly familiar, as women, as humans. The characters who inhabit these landscapes are odd, too, but never treated as freakish. Instead their humanity and dignity shine through, as in the protagonist of "The Smallest Man in the World," a beautiful woman who finds a connection between her own beauty and the smallness of a circus performer:

"I do not like to see my own face, because, despite my make-up, I look sad - sometimes as sad as that rouged old woman slumped over the bar opposite me. When I fix my face in the morning, it sometimes occurs to me to make myself up as a clown by lipsticking a massive smile on my face. Or exaggerating the sadness by painting a frown and a few shiny tears."

Later in the same story, this connection is pushed further when the protagonist watches the circus performer run down the bar toward her and claims that if the smallest man in the world is "brave enough to jump, I will catch him."

In "Gorilla Girl," the protagonist finds her only release from pent-up anger is the transformative power of violence. She experiments with athletics, then with men, but discovers that each leaves her only with a hunger for an unknown more. The release she searches for is eventually found, in part, by performing in a circus side-show act where

"the air becomes crisp, and every person in the tent feels connected to my Middle West gorilla, my mad-amorous crusher of households, my rampager of tidy rose gardens. Occasionally a woman rattles with laughter or else sobs in the dark - she has recognized, in my form, the monster of her own wasted strength."

Campbell's vision of place, however, includes more than these fantastic circus acts and strange locales. "Bringing Home the Bones" plays out in the farmlands of Michigan, where a mother struggles for a connection with her estranged daughters who do not understand her need to grow her own vegetables and kill her own chickens. It takes an unordinary event in these lives - the amputation of the mother's leg - to bring the women together. In the funny "The Sudden Physical Development of Debra Dupuis," the high school-aged Debra dreams of the healing powers of her developing breasts, "a meal for a hungry belly, a Christmas gift for an orphan, medicine for the wounded," until an unexpected turn-of-events proves the more serious affects her budding sexuality has on those around her. In "Taking Care of the O'Learys," a wife and mother searches for her own place in a house too big and a family too crazy.

It is this combination of the strong sense of place and the ability to see such dignity in misfits which brings to mind Eudora Welty and the tradition of Southern writers who show us the pluralities of lives. Yet Campbell's stories push beyond these comparisons through her own original characters, as rich and varied as the world they inhabit. It is a promising collection from a strong new voice, one we are sure to hear more from in the near future. The only question is what she will turn her gaze to next."

Katherine Perry - So To Speak, Spring/Summer 2000



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