The Catawba Fictioneers: Jill McCorkle

In her short story collection, Crash Diet, Jill McCorkle takes on 11 different voices of distinct southern women and somehow manages to capture the personality and uniqueness of each one. A master of characterization, McCorkle establishes realistic, complex women in her stories, creating white women like Sandra, Lucinda, and Ruthie just as vividly as Mary, an African-American woman. A great read for any woman, especially G.R.I.T.S. (Girls Raised in the South,) McCorkle captures her reader while making her laugh, cry, and smile all at the same time, all while teaching a valuable lesson in every story.

Crash Diet

The first short story of the collection, "Crash Diet," is a sure-fire way to get any reader to keep reading and never look up. It follows Sandra, a woman who is determined to get her revenge after being left by her husband Kenneth for a woman with a grandma-like name. Hilariously funny yet relatable for any woman who’s ever been wrongfully dumped, "Crash Diet" ends with an important lesson for everyone to learn: “You can do okay in this world if you can just find someone worth holding on to.”

The story begins in the midst of conflict, with Kenneth leaving before Sandra even had time to mousse her hair, which is the perfect way to start a short story and is pretty common among writers. Right from the beginning, McCorkle has readers hooked. We want to know why he left her and how she will ever cope with such a traumatic event after five years of marriage! The rest of the story follows the bitter and revengeful, yet full of personality Sandra through first person narrative, which leaves the reader wondering how reliable her stories are. However, because of her situation and struggle, and due to the fact she is the perspective we hear all of the details from, we want to believe every thing she says, making Sandra instantly convincing. McCorkle brings every character to life in this story through information, physical appearance, thoughts and feelings, actions, and speech. For example, we can tell Sandra must have some self-confidence issues because of her obsession with weight, and that Kenneth must feel some guilt from his dialogue with Sandra after her visit to the hospital. Crash Diet was my personal favorite story in the collection, simply due to how relatable the characters were; I feel like I have met every one of them in my hometown! McCorkle does a fantastic job bringing her characters to life, which makes her a distinctive and acclaimed writer.

Waiting for Hard Times to End

Waiting for Hard Times to End follows Bunny, a sixteen year old girl who is worried about her nickname giver and sister, Rhonda, who left home and has been “traveling” ever since. We see their sisterly and familial relationship through daily postcards that Rhonda has sent throughout her two-year excursions. After a two-week long silence from Rhonda, Bunny discovers that her sister has been killed. Like the other stories in Crash Diet, “Waiting for Hard Times to End” is very relatable due to its realistic content and pulls at your heart strings by making you laugh and frown all in a matter of 21 pages.

This story is really interesting because of the shifts in its time scheme; it moves gracefully from the present to the past and back to the present with the use of Rhonda’s postcards. The postcards slow down the narrative and bring this interesting sister relationship to life, comparing and contrasting these two different family members through dialogue and exposition. Only masterful writers can shift from the present to the past without becoming confusing, and Jill McCorkle does a really nice job with it. Though this is one of the great things in this story among others, I think McCorkle made a mistake with her opening sentence, which basically foreshadows Rhonda’s death. Because of this choice, the reader suspects what will happen from the very beginning, which creates some aspects of sentimentality. Though it is comforting from the first line to suspect/know this event is most likely coming, it almost causes us to not even be upset for Bunny when she finds out this devastating news. The high event didn’t explode in the reader’s face, because Bunny was clearly worried about her sister throughout the entirety of the story. In order to make Rhonda’s death less predictable, McCorkle could have mentioned Bunny’s worriedness slightly, but focused on Rhonda’s wishy-washy and somewhat undependable personality instead. This would have made the reader believe that she was just caught up in another bad relationship and in another trashy town, and then the high event—her death—would have exploded in the reader’s face and created a lot more emotion. Don't get me wrong, I still felt bad for Bunny's loss and the characters and their situations were still compelling, I just believe that this is one way in which Jill McCorkle failed with this particular piece.

Comparison Shopping

There are not many stories included in this collection that I did not like, but Comparison Shopping was definitely not my favorite. About an awkward woman with an even more awkward name, this story follows Norlina and the story of how she got to where she is today, living in a conventional neighborhood and finally feeling a sense of belonging.

This story was disappointing, because Jill McCorkle’s characterization that usually comes so effortlessly was kind of off. Some of the characters weren’t very complex and some were just flat out unrealistic—I mean really, who escapes to a National Park, lives in a pup tent, and self-appoints himself a forest ranger like Byron? Byron had no depth to him at all; he was simply a pothead who loved nature. The imagery that involved him was just not believable. Additionally, Jack’s sex jokes got old and Norlina’s reaction to her best friend on live television dissing her in front of the whole world did not create as much conflict as I would have liked. This story just didn’t really go anywhere.

Jill McCorkle is a really interesting writer. Reading this collection has encouraged me to check out some more of her work. Whether you were raised in the South like I was... or even if you were born in the wrong part of the U.S...you are sure to know some Ruthie's, more than a few Maureen's, and your fair share of Sandy's.