Aimee Bender's "The Color Master": A Review in Three Parts

My latest reading is Aimee Bender's recent collection of stories, The Color Master. I loved her first collection The Girl in the Inflammable Skirt and her second novel The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. Yet, I was apprehensive when approaching this collection. I'd not so surreptitiously read the first story "Appleless" in the bookstore before I went ahead and bought it, and didn't like it too much. (More on that later) And the collection is divided into three parts, so I'm dividing my review into three parts, one for each section.

The first part did not get off to a good start, to say the least. The first story, a three-page story called "Appleless," is an exercise in mythical and literary cliche: the vaguely defined "we" as a narrator, the objectified beautiful blonde woman, and a story that is so blantantly obvious in its attempt to try and make you think. Oh, I thought about it all right. Now, some of the imagery and description of the story is great--the "loaves" of hair, the smell and taste of apples--but it's a story that just plain doesn't make sense, and not in a good way. I probably missed something, but I'm not looking to discuss this story in a class or a book club. Quite frankly, I think the story sucked, especially for a first story--isn't it supposed to be a good one that's supposed to be first? And the funny thing is, I think this was the first story by Bender that I actually came to dislike the more I read it. Whether it's about misogyny or raping the earth, it's old hat. The packaging doesn't fool me.

Next was "The Red Ribbon," which I found interesting at first. When a woman plays out her husband's prostitution fantasy, it changes the way she looks at everything, including their relationship. Her awkward inquiry about intimacy with an intrepid saleslady was funny and poignant in its own way, but the story falls into the failing marriage cliche of storytelling. By all accounts, I liked this one better than the first, and perhaps this subject doesn't interest me, but I found elements of the deja vu variety that just bores me to tears.

When I got to the third story, "Tiger Mending," I thought, "Now we're getting somewhere!" A story about a strangely gifted seamstress as narrated by her sister as they travel to Malaysia to see what the sister's job offer was about. The voices of the two sisters are so distinct, yet they play off each other quite well, and the scenes in which they're at the tiger mansion are bizarre and spooky. But then, the story just ends, and again, it doesn't make sense in a bad way. I'm sorry, but what? They do this to themselves? So then what the fuck's the point of even doing it? Tell her to just not do it, let them die! They are not fit! Let them die out, like the pandas (sorry panda lovers). So another disappointment in the end.

"Faces" conjured up more familiar themes and situations. In fact, the main character in this story, William, exhibited similarities to the brother in Lemon Cake: he's antisocial but still manages to get by in classroom and social situations. The story wasn't that bad, and I commend Bender on giving a protagonist with a disability pov a whirl, but I found so many logic fails. William has face blindness (thank you Arrested Development! Saw it coming the minute the doc took the photos out), which for some reason is called "facial illiteracy" in the story (wut?) and made me wonder if Bender knew if this was a real thing. Now labeling it with a name people don't use is one thing, but the fact that he gives all his "friends" aka the people he hands out with the same name? Um, their voices and clothes would be different, wouldn't they? And wouldn't they call each other by their names at some point? I suppose it's funnier/quirkier/more "profound" for him to just call them all the same name, but face blindness is a real thing. People who actually have this get by by differentiating people by other identifying markers, like voices. Sure, they may forget who's who from time to time (because apparently facial recognition is important for memory, at least as far as remembering people are concerned), but they'll figure it out! Eventually he'd have to call someone by their name.

"On a Saturday Afternoon" was yet another story that started off promising, but kind of didn't do it for me by the end. It started out as the strangely told story of a woman who has become jaded and tired with dating, but then one day she asks her two male friends to enact a fantasy--a sexual fantasy--for her. I found it strange that the friends are unnamed and reduced to merely "the blond one" or something like that, though it becomes apparent that she regrets goading them into doing something that was so objectifying and demeaning, in a way. And the sex scene--which was such a big part of the story--is so awkwardly written I sped read through it the first time.

So, I didn't have high hopes for the next ten stories as I finished this part. Little did I know that I would be pleasantly surprised...