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Alterations Kindle Edition
Many of these stories hark back more than fifty years, unwritten stories that lived in me the way stories do, as a bit of memory – a certain smell, the turn of a head, or the particular sound of a voice. Or, in the case of “Love, Mona,” in a quilted dime-store night table and a sleeping Mexican painted on a cupboard door.
My Brooklyn stories were told through the eyes of a child growing up with the rumble of the El along 86th Street, walking with her mother in her big-shouldered mouton coat, as she did her errands and talked with the shopkeepers. The walkup apartment house where she lived with her family, the damp steamy smell of the lobby where the metal taps on her shoes made a satisfying clicking sound as she ran up and down the marble steps. The seamstress in her apartment building, her friend’s father who seldom spoke, the people her parents knew, the relatives – her ear pressed to the wall, hearing talk that was not for her to hear – the people they spoke of in Yiddish so the child would not understand.
Decades later, they called to me, the memory of them morphing, changing, altering, becoming characters that were and were not them. And I kept writing about the loving and sometimes mysterious bonds of family. I dressed my characters, gave them habits and a particular way to speak, and put them down on the pages, wanting things they could not have, remembering things they wanted to forget. They mended and they sewed, they owned stores and boutiques, they jerry-made contraptions and carved dollhouse furniture. They dug in the dirt and planted tomatoes, they hunted for bear and did a jigsaw puzzle in a far off mountain cabin. Makers and fixers, they had the creative qualities derived from my parents and passed down to me.
Beginning with Frances, the young child grieving for her mother in “Love, Mona,” these stories come full circle to Rusty in “Feminine Products,” pregnant but unmarried, desperate to make a family for her unborn child. Family is a recurrent theme in my stories.
I hope they keep you turning pages, interested and entertained as the characters become ‘altered’ by their circumstances and continue to make their way in life.
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateMay 20, 2016
- Reading age14 - 18 years
- File size882 KB
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B01FZVJF0O
- Publisher : Penumbra Publishing (May 20, 2016)
- Publication date : May 20, 2016
- Language : English
- File size : 882 KB
- Simultaneous device usage : Unlimited
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 184 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 1938758153
- Customer Reviews:
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- Reviewed in the United States on July 6, 2013Rita Plush writes from the heart and the gut. Her situations and characters are very real and easy to identify with. In short order one feels as if they know the players intimately. She's an expert in writing about the human condition. If you like Alterations, check out her first published novel, "Lilly Steps Out", also available at Amazon.
- Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2014Entertaining, especially if you like fashion and design.
- Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2014Rita Plush is a consumate storyteller. She captures her readers with her engaging style, her wit, and her wonderful details in every story. Her stories touch, entertain and ultimately expand our mind. What more could you want!
- Reviewed in the United States on August 22, 2014I was deeply touched.
- Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2013Alterations is an interesting set of random stories told from the author's POV, with many being seen through the eyes of a child.
Taking the reader back to old Brooklyn, employing the help of a host of evocative memories, some of the tales are innocent and some not so much. Either way they make for fascinating reading, with Plush skilfully setting the scene quickly and sinking the reader deep into each scenario. More than once I finished a story only to wish it were longer.
Reviewed by Charlotte Foreman on behalf of BestChickLit.com
- Reviewed in the United States on October 17, 2013By Dawn D'Aries Zera
Before the first story begins in Rita Plush's 18-piece short story collection, Alterations, there is a page which features a black and white photo of a young couple. The young woman has kewpie-doll lips and wide eyes. The young man's head is tilted tenderly against his sweetheart's. This young couple, Plush reveals, is her parents, Molly and Max Weingarten, to whom she dedicates the book.
It is an appropriate dedication on many levels for this intelligent, eclectic collection of stories which share the common theme of family. There are complicated relationships and a common thread of spunk and tenderness. The mother-daughter relationships are particularly written with insightful clarity. "In Dance With Me", an eleven-year-old girl desperately clings to her mother both emotionally and physically while her father is away for treatment of depression. The story culminates in the magic of a stolen music box and the healing nature of dance. In "Signs," an adult woman nicknamed Rusty tells a boyfriend about the time her mother carried out her own form of vigilante justice after Rusty was sexually assaulted as a teenager. In "Queen of Sheba," a girl treasures the first few minutes of being able to spend time alone with her mama before her sister wakes.
But this is not to dismiss the quality depictions of the male characters as well, particularly in "What He Had," about a man who is inspired to build a dollhouse for the daughter he had walked out on years earlier. These are characters that come alive because they are multi-dimensional. Plush provides exquisite imagery in detailed story tapestries that keep each piece rich in scene as well - for example, "the fast-stepping tick-tick of her sling-backs on the linoleum floor," "in the car with dust on the dashboard and candy wrappers in the ashtray."
Plush writes in Alterations' forward that the short story collection was written over a period of 20 years, "some of them harking back more than fifty years, stories that lived in me, the way stories do, as a bit of memory-a certain smell, the turn of a head, or the particular sound of a voice." Indeed, the reader is transported to a time when, for example, in the short-short "Brooklyn Brisket," a mother's trip to a flirtatious butcher is illuminated through a child's observant eyes. The imagery here puts the reader directly into the scene. We can almost taste the thick slice of salami handed to the child, as she "[sucks] the fat and salt out of the meat," and watches the butcher, "his big knife on a silver rod, wrist swiveling, red lines of blood in his knuckles, all the time looking at my mother, who sometimes looked at him and then looked away."
- Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2013Alterations by Rita Plush
A beautiful collection of short stories. Filled with emotions, some told through the eyes of a child, but every one is unique and left a lasting impression. I recommend to all readers, Adults and Y/A as well. Loved it!
*I was given this book as a gift.