Down to a Sunless Sea
Mathias
B. Freese
Reviewed by Jenny Salyers
Down to a Sunless Sea is a
collection of fifteen short stories written by Mathias B. Freese. I
have mixed
feelings about this slim book. On one hand, there are a few gems in the
collection. Then on the other hand, there are others that just seem to
fall
short of the mark. It took me a longer time than I usually take to
commit
myself to reading this book.
The author,
uses his
experiences and observations gained from twenty-five years as a
clinical social
worker and psychologist in crafting his stories. Most of them, are
rather dark,
keeping with the author’s dark view of humanity (something he has
readily
admitted to having). However, a few of the stories show both humor and
a moving
look at how we view life. In the introduction, Down to a Sunless Sea is
promoted as “plunging the reader into uncomfortable situations and into
the
minds of troubled characters.” This is a very apt statement, but in my
opinion
a few of the stories just seemed abrupt, and the characters not given
as much
of an opportunity to establish themselves as they could. The stories,
written
over a thirty-year time frame delve deeply into the human psyche, and
are
excellently written if a bit raw and packed with emotion.
I found the story “Alabaster”
to be one of most moving of the collection. This story introduces an
old Polish
woman and her daughter. The mother, a survivor of the Holocaust and her
devoted
daughter live in the neighborhood, but do not easily interact with
their
neighbors. They sit together, and alone, until their lives are
brightened
briefly by a small boy who is too young to know of the tragedy that
they had
lived through. He, after hearing from the old woman of her experiences
during
WWII, reads the tattoo she still carries out loud, wondering who
7859912 was. A
person, the old woman can not tell him was herself as others had seen
her, an
undesirable, and not the alabaster armed young girl she once was.
The other stories I found
enjoyable in the collection were:
“Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Father was a Nazi”
“Echoes”.
“Herbie”
“Mortise and Tenon”