Elisavietta Ritchie, The Scotch Runner, Poet’s Choice Publishing, 2018, ISBN: 978-0-9972629-9-5, 189 pages, $9.00,
Elisavietta Ritchie’s gift for poetry is evident throughout her book of short stories, The Scotch Runner. She is also a talented humorist when she is not describing something dire. Fifteen stories of her graceful work are published in the collection.
In “Maybe It Was the Moths,” Richie comically captures a couple’s marriage as they prepare for a dinner party. The wife, Mattie, tries to prepare the dinner amongst the moths:
……….Flour moths were driving them, at least him, nuts. Mattie claiming hitherto-unknown
……….entomological interests, called them “fluttering shadows of dark angels.”
The husband, Henry, pursues a date with a pornographic painter:
……….Online the painter lady’s voice had been a swan’s down as she toyed with his idea of a ……….face-to-face meeting two towns over…
Meanwhile, weather, wild life, and allegory are wonderfully portrayed:
……….People got impatient in drought. All week they’d needed a good storm to water the ……….garden and cool things off. One cloud hung limp overhead but the sky held.
……….Yesterday an inquisitive yearling invaded the garden. Alas, if this was his ……….pseudo castle, it looked like every other salt box on the block.
……….Guests were arriving. Two-by-two, as if creatures into Noah’s Ark, which the house ……….was about to become. The thunderstorm broke, the pool was overflowing…
Ritchie’s descriptions, tone and plot appear effortless in this gem of a story.
In “Beyond Laramie,” Ritchie writes beautifully of a refugee. The narrator, who is not named, escapes a homeland of warmth for one that is cold.
……….Snow is a ragged winding sheet crumpled in the hollows on the northeast slopes.
……….Mine was a jumble of accents in countries steeped in heat and the glistening green of ……….enormous leaves … in jungles swarming with frogs, monkeys, insects, birds and ……….serpents in rainbows of color.
……….As in chess, where few pieces still stand but are stymied … any move I weigh ……….is dangerous.
The story is a gorgeous example of her poetry.
But not all of them satisfy. “The Traveler Meets Her Double in the Balkans,” is a disappointment. A chance encounter with a stranger whose demise is supposedly reported in a newspaper, is not unexpected. The action takes place on a bus tour and in a church that is elegantly described but overly ominous. The story’s tone is fantastical which requires the reader to suspend belief and is not successful. However, the ending has a beautifully written sentence:
……….Bony footprints in the snow, frozen drops of noble blood, all disappear in storms that ……….cover this black earth.
The collection’s title story, “The Scotch Runner,” describes a man who brings Scotch to a gathering and the subsequent romance that is ignited with the story’s protagonist, Sheila. They meet in the waiting room of a hospital. Both are undergoing “procedures” which are not explained:
……….Now Sheila felt more like Edvard Munch’s bony screaming female. She had ……….seen herself in the mirror: anorexic as a Giacometti sculpture … So she felt far ……….from glowing, this supposedly routine outpatient visit to the hospital for a ……….“little procedure not worth discussing.”
There is, indeed, no need to discuss the procedure, the catalyst that propels the couple together along with the Scotch in “a recycled mayonnaise jar of what he murmured was Chivas Regal.” It is a story that focuses on how to embrace the end of life:
……….How can one know the inner life even of those with whom one spends much of ……….a lifetime. And here we are, literally strangers, knowing that we know each ……….other deeply.
In the clever and funny story, “The Red Pickup,” Ritchie’s narrator is a female pastor, Winifred, or “Rev Wee Weenie Winnie.” The reverend has accidentally struck the red pickup truck of a woman:
……….The curses cascading from that dyed-blonde pick-up driver had been ungodly … She ……….was swaddled in what Winifred, a lifetime member of Save-the-Animals:Banish- ……….Fur-.Coats, hoped was only fake rabbit fur …
……….The woman got out, slammed the truck door, and stomped unevenly into the bank … ……….wildly swinging her arms, pushing through lines, bumping a man with a cane, grazing ……….an elderly lady, overturning a stroller, finally kissing the bank officer and shouting, ……….“Merry Christmas to all!”
The story takes place during Advent when the reverend’s cupboards are bare and the bank deposits do not even cover the church’s utilities:
……….Not a profitable profession. Sunday’s meager-as-ever-take-in-the-plate, intended for ……….bank deposit, consisted of several singles, dimes and quarters, which she slipped into ……….her pocket, where they further slipped, through holes into the coat’s lining.
The added tension of the holiday season provides the story with an intriguing backdrop:
……….Another week before contributions were due to dribble in. Pursuit by shadowy pickups ……….continued to dampen a season meant to be joyful. Prayer didn’t help; red pickups ……….skidded into her prayers as into her nightmares.
Whether tongue-in-cheek or epic, Ritchie’s storytelling is skillful. The language is exceptional and her word choices are poetic. The Scotch Runner is a pleasure to read.
© Elisavietta Ritchie and Caryn Coyle
Award winning poet, Elisavietta Ritchie also published a book of poetry with Poet’s Choice Publishers, Reflections: Poems on Painting, A Poet’s Gallery. She was an active participant with the Washington Writer’s Publishing House and her work has appeared in publications world-wide, including The New York Times, American Scholar, Poetry, Canadian Woman Studies and many more.
Caryn Coyle is an editor at The Loch Raven Review and her fiction has been published in more than three dozen literary journals.
The Loch Raven Review 