Tell Me A Riddle

Tell Me A Riddle / Tillie Olsen
NY: Laurel, 1976, c1961.
128 p.

This brilliant collection is made of four classic short stories:  "I Stand Here Ironing," "Hey Sailor, What Ship?," "O Yes," and "Tell Me a Riddle".

You may have read one of these stories anthologized in some textbook for high school or university -- I had never come across one of them, so found this little paperback a real gem of a discovery. 

Tillie Olsen tells four stories of motherhood and women's lives in poverty, with no romanticism. There is no noble suffering, just the realities of women having to live for others; the five children in the first story, or a husband's wishes, as in the last. These are stories of families who are scraping by, making do, and about what it does to them.

In the first story, a woman (not sitting still, never sitting still) muses about what she might have done that has caused her oldest daughter to have such troubles already. In the second, an alcoholic friend of the family is staying with them between ports - his addictions colour their lives while he is there. In the third, a daughter in this same family experiences growing up and losing her best friend when they hit middle school; while they are still at the same school, she's white and her friend is black. And it does matter, now. 

The final story, the title one, is the longest, and Olsen's masterpiece. It's the story of a Russian emigré couple, now in their elder years (incidentally, they are the grandparents of the family from the previous two tales). The husband wants to sell their house and move to a retirement community with his fraternity. The wife, meanwhile, does not. She wants to stay in her home and finally have some peace and quiet. To settle, to rest. And then she gets seriously ill. This story is genius; told sparely, with piercing insights and enough pathos (but not easy sentimentality) to bring you to tears, it is brilliant. I'd recommend that you find this one and read it however you can. 

While I don't always read a lot of short story collections, I'd most definitely recommend this one. It's one I'll be going back to.