by Corrine Watson
May 14, 2024
Corrine Watson is a freelance writer and editor based in Charlotte, NC. Her work has appeared in Wretched Creations, the Southern Review of Books and F(r)iction. Follow her on Twitter @CorrineWatson6.
Disembark by Jen Currin; House of Anansi; 264 pages; $18.00.
Jen Currin’s latest short story collection, Disembark, draws readers into the lives of queer characters navigating everyday relationships. Through twelve stories Currin delves into the multifaceted elements of human connection, portraying the nuances of love that are intimate, platonic, and somewhere in between. Each story captures the ways that's all relationships can be both beautiful and messy, regardless of orientation or identity.
Currin’s style feels effortless, which speaks to their talent as a writer. They skillfully weave vibrant imagery and depth into these unique stories while maintaining a casual tone that encapsulates the characters’ personalities. Currin’s protagonists are often passive observers, providing the reader insight into the complexities of their friends and partners. “The Golden Triangle” follows the delicate balance of love and detachment in the narrator’s relationship with her outgoing friend Del. Del is described as “this nice gay friend any straight girl would love to have as a sidekick — but then they ended up being Del’s sidekick, and lover for a while, until she got bored of them." Throughout this description, the narrator inadvertently captures her own relationship with Del. While she wants a romantic relationship, it is clear that Del holds the power to dictate how far they can go as she brushes aside intimacy. Currin uses the narrator’s passive “sidekick” role to draw attention to her apt intuition as she sees past Del’s casual humor and the way she subverts close relationships as a mask for her vulnerability and loneliness. We see this more clearly as they drift apart, and Del is desperate to keep in touch to avoid being forgotten. As the opening story, this stands out in the ways Currin captures the beauty of imperfect relationships between flawed characters that are equally meaningful even if they only end in friendship.
As some stories dive into professional spaces, Currin illustrates the subtle ways where intimacy enters these interpersonal relationships and creates a sense of unease. We see this play out in “Charmasist” where the narrator has an awkward infatuation with her creative writing professor. Currin sprinkles in moments where this professor crosses the line between friendly and suggesting, so when it is revealed that this man had in fact been using his position to groom young women, it feels less of a plot twist and more like Currin is confirming the inevitable. What stands out is the narrator’s jealousy, even in her discomfort around this man, she is jealous of the attention he gives to other young women. “You’d think I would have felt relieved by this. John’s light had finally shifted… But strangely, I felt hurt and angry."
We see the lines of professional and personal crossed again in, “Dark and Rainy,” as Currin aptly captures the liminal spaces of intimacy and power girls find themselves in as babysitters. Here the teenage narrator is often privy to awkwardly intimate moments that are both sweet and perhaps too sensitive for someone her age, as she’s given the burden of responding appropriately to the son’s confession to being a peeping tom, or the step-mother’s pregnancy scare and marital issues. While alone with the step-mother, she thinks, “I wanted to make her smile. But I could tell that there was something desperate and inappropriate about this desire. I was just the babysitter, after all." Currin aptly captures these intersections of intimacy and power and expertly illustrates the ways we navigate the awkward nuances of interpersonal connections.
“Banshee” highlights the way Currin blends wit into profound surreal prose. There is a deep humor in this story as a banshee takes up residence with a lesbian couple, and is described languishing around the apartment, moaning, listening to Drake, or smoking weed. The banshee often sits at the periphery of the story like the harbinger she represents as Currin focuses on the shifting power dynamics that brought on the current troubles in the couple’s marriage. The narrator’s resentment and her wife’s identity crisis after losing her job perhaps summoned this creature to symbolize the end of their relationship, but as they begin to nurture the creature there seems to be a faint spark reigniting their own intimacy. Yet Currin captures the awkward hesitation that exists between the couple as the narrator grieves the love they’d once had. “There were handcuffs languishing at the bottom of our tickle trunk that hadn't seen the light of day in over a year. Our dildos were no doubt covered in dust. I felt like I barely knew how to kiss her anymore. This thought made me stop the kiss." Despite its speculative premise, there is a profound realism to the couple’s connection and even though it is unclear if the couple will fully work through this rough patch, the story illustrates that the characters have perhaps reached a place where they are open to working on their relationship for better or worse. This suggests that Currin is using the banshee to represent the metaphorical death of the last phase of the couple’s identity or marriage, and allows them to confront the speculative manifestation of their issues and make steps to let go of the things that were driving them apart.
The stories often feel like snapshots, brief moments in the characters’ lives where we catch them on the beginning of a long journey. The titular story, “Disembark,” completes the collection by emphasizing the significance of these transitional spaces as we follow the main character on her initiation into the afterlife. Rather than seeing this journey through or diving deeper into the supernatural setting, the story focuses on the time she has to reconnect with her mother in the ferry on her spiritual voyage. The story concludes with her mother explaining that she will be continuing on alone. This feels like a resonant sentiment for the collection as a whole. Although these stories leave the reader wanting to know more, they feel like complete portraits portraying the brief moments that pave the way for new beginnings Currin has intentionally left open ended, allowing for speculation.
With profound insight, Currin’s writing draws readers into the spaces of human connection as we meet characters falling in and out of love and friendship. Through these unique stories, Disembark illustrates the universal complexities of intimacy and Currin is able to capture the nuances of multifaceted relationship dynamics.
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Exploring the Dynamics of Intimacy and Power in Disembark by Jen Currin
FICTION REVIEW
Image by Cottonbro Studio from Pexels
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