The Consequences of Desire - Dennis Hathaway

Awfully good writing about awful people. This can be said of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction's namesake as well as the award's 1992 recipient. Commonality beyond these two broad distinctions, however, if they exist, are hard to find

The late Ms. O'Connor's style follows one of the basic commandments of good writing: she shows us what's happening. She doesn't tell us Grandmother is a domineering, self-centered hypocrite. We get to watch the old gal in action, bossing her unattractive family around to suit her fancy. In his winning collection of stories, The Consequences of Desire, we see little outward action involving Dennis Hathaway's characters. But inside their heads, oh, mercy. We're immersed in the kaleidoscopic battling of their thoughts and emotions.

Themewise the stories could hardly be further apart—on the surface. O'Connor, while keeping obvious signposts of her Roman Catholicism deeply camouflaged in subtlety, pushes her characters to extremes of happenstance, including death, where their mortal actions can bring them heavenly grace. Religion or spiritual faith are absent from Hathaway's tales. His self-absorbed characters invariably find their dreams, their hopes, their desires coming up short or crashing to pieces when they find themselves face to face with stark reality. Teenager Justine feels the dream she's had most of her life of becoming a private eye blink out when she loses her nerve tailing a mysterious stranger into a rough part of town.

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