Book review: To Be a Man, by Nicole Krauss

To Be A Man, by Nicole Krauss

To Be a Man
by Nicole Krauss
(Bloomsbury, $33)
Reviewed by Siobhan Harvey

Examinations of gender, its social constructs, political constraints and personal mutability are a la mode in literature presently. In part a study of emergent gender fluidity, last year's International Booker Prize winner, The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, is a case in point.

In this then, American author Nicole Krauss' fifth book, To Be a Man, is perfectly on point. After four novels, including the marvellous A History of Love (2005), the author's new work is a collection of 10 stories with a common theme: the appealing and appalling impacts men and masculinity have upon various women's lives.

The tales in To Be a Man have acquired an impressive list of publications in Esquire, Best American Short Stories series, the New Yorker and the likes. It's not hard to see why. Immediately dragging the reader into their complexities, they come with captivating opening lines like, "Heels dug into the tar paper, twenty-three floors above 110th Street, cradling his newborn grandson – how did he wind up here?" (Zusya on the Roof).

Thereafter the undoubted verve and acuity of Krauss' prose holds sway, holding readers' attention as plots, subtle as they are profound, unfold. Take a standout like End Days, for instance. Here, drawn back to the hometown they fled years before, sisters Noa and Rachel confront surroundings razed to the ground by an inferno, their parents, Leonard and Monica's seemingly amicable Jewish divorce, glitzy nuptials tested by bridal nerves and the ghosts of failed relationships they recently abandoned.

What might sound like a convoluted plot becomes something well-paced and intricately charted at Krauss' skilful hand. Such talents are also evident in offerings like the darkly emotive Future Emergencies and the quirky The Husband. In the former, an environmental disaster is once more at play, with the author delicately evoking scenic symbolism in the form of a toxic gas leak. This acts as a backdrop to an intense but necessary confinement between a woman and her aged partner, Victor. A meal, a game of Scrabble and a loaded, prolonged baring of souls ensues. Again, there's a lot to digest here. But a long, hard slog of a read is avoided thanks to Krauss' careful pacing, which teases the emotionally and chronologically taut interaction across 30 pages.

Meanwhile, in The Husband an oddball situation prevails when a knock on the door sees a perplexed but acquiescent woman reunited with a supposed long-lost husband. What unfolds, though, isn't slapstick but a crafted five-act study of the highs and lows of family dynamics.

With summer fast approaching and a widespread keenness to consign this challenging year to memory, no doubt many will be looking forward to the escape of a sun-filled holiday. If so, with its luscious prose and the sorts of stories that can be simultaneously digested in a few hours but will linger long in the mind afterwards, Krauss' To Be a Man is an early contender for the must-have reads to slip into a suitcase or beach bag.