Book Review: Side Effects of Wanting (OT) (western short stories about the 70s)

Side Effects of Wanting, Stories by Mary Salisbury (Mint Hill Books, 2022, 145 pp, $15.95)

Smooth Writing

A good book has a good story, well-written. Side Effects is well-written. Very well-written. Very smooth. Magical. I don't know how good authors do it, but they do, and Mary Salisbury is one of them.

The Stories

A compilation of 16 short stories from 4-10 pages set mostly in Oregon (Medford) but also Colorado and California. Much like a Russian novel with almost too numerous characters to remember, plus a couple of typos, you are suddenly dropped into someone else's life, sometimes mid-conversation. This makes you smile as you figure out who is who, and is the Claire in this story the same Claire as in the earlier story but 20 years later?

One

A 17-year-old girl selects a college out of state and her older brother with his two friends and a dog drive her (her parents do not - a mystery for a later story perhaps?). The boys are mostly stoned: the story is set back in the 70s and when the girl arrives and sees her dorm room, she immediately withdraws from the school and goes to live with her aunt. Wow! Can you identify with any of that?

Other stories are written about different generations of people, about infidelity, with a man as the protagonist - or a woman. Author Mary Salisbury's pen is quite versatile and believable.

PS - many collections of short stories are titled after one story, perhaps the best or most well-known in the collection but not Side Effects. Is this title perhaps related to each of the included stories? Is each about one or more side effects? Or about wanting something? Some of the stories seem to just end as if they are cut off, perhaps for the reader to write the ending.