Fred Sasaki

Something like self-help for the semi-fortunate, all of the shorts in Erin McGraw's "The Good Life" could have been born from episodes of Oprah, with topics like "Binge Eating Priests," "Geriatric Love and Betrayal," or "Support Group Junkies."

These are nice, trite, mawkish stories well suited to the daily commute. They are the kind of stories you finish on the train and, after the last listless line, you look out the window with a sigh, feeling nicely settled into a mediocre existence. Perhaps this is precisely the point. "The Good Life" is full of dull and ordinary troubles neatly resolved, usually in the last sentence. McGraw moves the text along steadily, eloquently even, with stories about pseudo-spirituality, makeovers, relationships and Christianity, but only to end at some happy hope in blandeur.

In an interview with Story Line Press, the author discusses her writing process and how she begins with a situation that intrigues her (broken marriages, recovering alcoholics, faltering priests, etc.) and proceeds to grope her way toward a plot. She prefers to write novels and says that "stories are murderous... . You have to run like blazes, do something death-defying, and then stick your landing." There is, however, nothing life-startling about this book, and her landings flop like a lobbed ball of dough.

It's as if she rides an idea with "interesting" characters for a few stops and, after a couple of soft turns, neatly picks up her bags with a wry smile and gets off with an "isn't it ironic?" look over her shoulder. We would have been better off had McGraw taken cues from Oprah's recent book-club selection instead and thrown one of her prototypes for the new millennium under a locomotive.

The Good Life

By Erin McGraw

Mariner Books, $12, 208 pages

(2004-07-20)

Also by Fred Sasaki

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