Mrs. Somebody Somebody BY Tracy Winn (Random House, 2010) From the Publisher: “In this astonishing debut, Tracy Winn poignantly chronicles the souls who inhabit the troubled mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts, playing out their struggles and hopes over the course of the twentieth century. Through a stunning variety of voices, Winn paints a deep and permeating portrait of the town and its people: a young millworker who dreams of marrying rich and becoming ‘Mrs. Somebody Somebody’; an undercover union organizer whose privileged past shapes her cause; a Korean War veteran who returns to the wife he never really got to know — and the couple’s overindulged children, who grow up to act out against their parents; a town resident who reflects on a long-lost love and the treasure he keeps close to his heart. Winn’s keen insight into class and human nature, combined with her perfect, nuanced prose, make Mrs. Somebody Somebody truly shine.”

Every once in a while I pick up a book by someone I have never heard of and find myself in skilled hands. That is the case with Tracy Winn, whose Mrs. Somebody, Somebody reveals the author’s acute eye and ear for the human condition. Each of the ten stories in this book focuses on the mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts during the years after World War II. A character from one story often shows up in the next — or later — story, and by the end of the book the reader has a good sense of the divisions of town society. The distance between overworked mill employees and the mills’ owners and operators is explored, as are the different levels of concerns about lives and lifestyles. This book is as much a social history about the boom years as an exposition of myths about the postwar era. Winn’s writing style combines a satisfying mixture of clean prose and lyrical imagery as she carves a route through each story with the control of a master. From the opening line, “Lucy Matsen was nobody — like all the women I worked with — until the day the baby fell,” we’re hooked. Right away we’re asking why/how/where/when that baby fell. This book is as much a social history about the boom years as an exposition of myths about the postwar era. Winn’s writing style combines a satisfying mixture of clean prose and lyrical imagery as she carves a route through each story with the control of a master. The title story captures an almost-universal female longing to be wanted by someone, anyone; for women to be seen and loved for who they are, despite the sometimes made-up exterior they present. Lucy Matsen is the epitome of the black sheep, a woman without obsessions about her appearance and a seeker of truth. She knows what is needed in the way of change and tries to implement progress in the mills but finds herself butting heads with the others. The story works as a comment on the pressures of society even this many years after our so-called advances in the world of unions. Another story, “Smoke,” pushes the reader back into childhood memories through pictures from a child’s point of view. But Winn writes the story in third person so that there is still a hint of distance from the child’s version. When the narrator’s voice states, “the day Daddy stayed home and the boy did things wrong, and his father said a crybaby was no son of his,” it is possible for a reader to have a foot in both camps, as a parent who has said something that harsh and the child who has received those words. Even so, it is hard not to slide back into the discomfort of being with adults focused on childlike imperfections.

In “Blue Tango” a sensitive man returns from the Korean War to his not-too-thrilled-to-see-him wife. He reminisces about how he left, against her wishes, and wonders if perhaps his wife had needed him more than his country. It is an interesting twist on how to see the returning war hero through the perspective of a dispirited wife who’s turned from her mate. “I’m not someone who should be left alone,” Delia tells her hubby, and eventually he hears her. So though we do not particularly like Delia’s character — she has had an affair with the gardener while her husband was gone — it is another of those moments that Winn prods us into taking a look at the situation from a new angle.

Real people live in Winn’s stories. In “Gumbo Limbo” we meet another woman in whom we may recognize ourselves. June DeLisle says “too fast her perm had wilted flat, and her slacks stuck at the top of her thighs,” another instance of how a pervading sense of under-confidence can make us feel ugly despite having tried to comport ourselves for the outside world.

It is the probability that the plot may be based on a true story that makes the reader want to distance herself from the voice of the narrator.

“Gumbo Limbo” is also a story about the experience of being female in a male-dominated world. June DeLisle is so motivated by her considerations of Norm that she does not see the extent to which her husband’s preferences affect her. She relates everything she sees, does and thinks back to him until it colours her entire life. When she meets a stranger on holiday, she notices something about the girl that cues her memory: “Changes passed over the girl’s face so fast. Norm would slide his hand up and down in front of his face changing it from a smile to a frown to an angry jack-o-lantern…” Even when Norm is nowhere in sight, he is inside her, talking.

Two of the weaker stories in the collection are “Another Way to Make Cleopatra Cry” and “Frankie Floats,” but this weakness is perhaps only relative in terms of the other strong works. In “Another Way to Make Cleopatra Cry,” the language is too often overdone with the result that the reader feels pushed. Whenever Winn refers to the bikers in this story, she uses a different term for them — beefaloes, beefomatics, road-hogs, leather-creakers, pork-bellies, porkers, Harley-honkers, Danglemen — as though wanting to wake us up, remind us where we are. But it is an unnecessary tactic — perhaps under-confidence on Winn’s part — because we are never far from the setting or the voice of the narrator. The repetitive list of terms only serves to remind us that a point is being made, and made, and made again.

On the other hand, the harshness of this story is very unavoidable, and the real possibility of it actually sucker-punches the reader at the end. A no-good father takes off and leaves his kids with his latest floozy, another person he’s abandoned. The floozy figures out a way to unload the kids on a soft-hearted bartender when a biker ‘rescues’ them from beside the road. It is the probability that the plot may be based on a true story that makes the reader want to distance herself from the voice of the narrator.

After the deft language of these first powerhouse stories in Mrs. Somebody, Somebody, “Frankie Floats” makes less of an impact on the reader. But this is not to say the story is weak; rather it is a backhanded compliment to suggest that Ms. Winn’s lesser stories are equal to any found in a quality literary magazine.

Both “Frankie Floats” and “Another Way To Make Cleopatra Cry” lack Winn’s strongest trait, of which “Copper Leaves Waving” is a fine example. In this story, she manages to write about the nebulous feeling of familiarity that overtakes — even drowns — us when memory of place sparks a connection in the brain. This is a feeling that is difficult, at best, to try and write about and Winn is adept at leaving her reader both awed and quieted with her tone and diction:

Winn steps back and forth through some of Lowell’s postwar years, with the result that several times we catch sight of a character met in an earlier story, recognizing something about his or her mannerisms or appearance before we actually know who it is. In the final story, for instance, we glimpse little Izabel and her sister Lina from an earlier story, and the instant of recognition delivers a warm surprise, something akin to running into a familiar face while traveling in a foreign country. Earlier, in “Cantagallo,” Izabel was shown wearing a pair of red high tops given to her by Lina, the sister with a lovely singing voice who is serving in Iraq. So though we never actually meet Lina, we recognize her instantly when, in “Luck Be A Lady,” the protagonist mentions the beautiful song of a young female as she gets on the bus with a younger girl in red high tops. It is a small moment packed with huge emotion, reminding us in that briefest glimpse of Lina that she was once very much alive in this small town, and that if she dies in the Iraq war, her ghost will live on in Izabel’s red high tops and the memories of her beautiful voice.

“Luck Be A Lady” is a brilliant cap to this powerhouse debut. We come full circle from meeting Stella in “Mrs. Somebody Somebody” to the love of her life, Frenchie Duras, a man who “lived alone with his secrets.” But it is his way of dealing with the guilt and shame of his past, memories that eat at him when he understands his heart is giving out and he is dying, that endears Frenchie to us. When he finds a stone wall heaved apart by frost, he spends years of physical labour rebuilding it, using his body to cleanse his emotional burdens:

And while he works on that stone wall, inside Frenchie’s shirt pocket is a small bone from Stella’s remains. Once again Winn has created a character it is difficult not to fall in love with. We identify and empathize with Frenchie’s flaws as proof of another human being just trying to cope with life.