Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy

"One can't have it both ways, but both ways is the only way I want it." - A.R. Ammons
Maile Meloy, darling of Granta and the Paris Review, uses this poem as the epigraph to her collection of stories in addition to using it as a direct illusion in one of its stories. This collection is reminiscent of Flannery O'Connor in both attitude and style, often forcing the reader into close contact with terribly unpleasant people and almost threateningly forcing us to confront moral conflict. The majority of the stories are set against the geographic backdrop of Montana, where Meloy herself grew up. The landscape becomes a living, breathing character of its own, magnifying extreme conditions but also the very real and vast distances between us.

Meloy's characters lack control over their lives and their decisions manifesting in almost violent and sudden reactions to their conditions. They all want it both ways, as one character says "What kind of fool wanted it only one way?", but this sentiment and the consequences stand as evidence to the contrary. Although Meloy avoids descending into what could easily exist as fairy tale style morality plays, she does judge her characters even if from a distance and with reserve.
What is most surprising is how she manages to pack such an emotional punch with such detachment, her voice evokes the mundanity of the day to day, the quiet and desperate way days can casually proceed, but she also delivers unexpected plot twists in and almost backhanded way. She is a master of understatement.

Each story is a close up character study, slowly unfolding from an individual (often a child) perspective. What keeps Meloy from self indulgence is the way in which she implicates the world in these problems. Everyone has a hand in unrealistic expectations and inability to deal with responsibility; a selfish, aging man's desire for an affair are juxtaposed with neglected children or environmental disaster.

My favorite story in the collection is "Travis B.". The story follows Chet Moran, a desperate and lonely rancher whose profession has marked him physically and psychically. This is an instance in which the landscape was used especially well. Chet falls in love with Beth Travis, a white lawyer who travels 9 hours by car to teach in his town. What works here is that Meloy doesn't overexplain. Chet's quiet resignation to his loneliness absorbs all that is unsaid; class, race, age, distance and experience are encompassed in a sigh.