I first read one of Corrina Wycoff's stories in the most recent issue of Other Voices, and it just so happens that this new story collection of hers is published by OV Books. Some folks with good taste doing the selecting over there.
I did not realize when I selected this collection last night to pull a story from, just how similar some aspects were to yesterday's collection by Elizabeth McKenzie. O Street is also a collection of stories that follows the life of an individual female from youth through coming of age to adulthood. This time around it's the life of Elizabeth Dinard.
Visiting Mrs. Ferullo is a story in the middle of the collection, and that this time Elizabeth is known as Beth, and is in second grade. Her mother tells her to stay away from home until the fire department runs their nightly siren at 6:30 p.m. This usually leads to her sitting in the hallway, waiting for that siren to go off so she can open the door and have her mother sort of cook her dinner.
Visiting Mrs. Ferullo has Beth daydreaming her way to having a surrogate mother-daughter relationship with a women named Mrs. Furillo. This relationship began when Beth saw her buying groceries in a fashion that made her realize she's really be cooking a dinner, and not the mess she goes through nightly with her mother.
Wycoff does a nice job of capturing that scared eight year old voice. As she plans on approaching Mrs. Ferullo after school one day, Beth decides that she will only knock on the door if she can jump up the entire flight of steps in one, single, jump. To me, this is something an eight year old would absolutely do to possibly slow down their progress, and to keep from the possible negative reaction from occuring.
Wycoff's writing brings forth all sorts of emotions - from laughter to near-tears and all of it done in a believable manner. I've now read two of Wycoff's stories and am looking forward to getting into the rest of this collection.
Stop on by tomorrow to see a bit about a story by Anthony Tognazzini.
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