I have a confession to make when it comes to short stories: I usually don’t read collections by the same author. The short story books I buy have always been the “Best of” series or ones that are a collection by various authors because they deal with the same theme or they all won a prize. But mostly, I go online or subscribe to magazines filled with short stories, so each story I read is from someone else.

Why I Picked it: That being said, I didn’t have many expectations from Mattaponi Queen. I knew The Book Lady (http://www.thebookladysblog.com/) recommended it and that was it. I didn’t even want to read her review for fear it would sway me one way or the other.

Mattaponi Queen is the debut collection of short stories by the very talented Belle Boggs. She weaves together stories of the Mattaponi Indian Reservation in Virginia and the surrounding area, with different characters, who then pop up on in other stories from a different person’s POV.

There are a lot of things I like about the writing style of Boggs:

She doesn’t give you so much description with useless adjectives or unneeded facts. She gets straight to the point of what she wants to say.
It was like love, she thought. Something you thought you should have until it was right there in front of you and you realized you were committed to it whole.
Each story is unique, going from third person to first person, back to third, always from a different character’s perspective. And they each had their own voice! Quite an undertaking.
What I mean is she spent a lot of time thinking, after that, about unfairness.
These stories are simple – not that they are boring or don’t take risks, but Boggs doesn’t attempt to grab more than she can handle. She has the ability to give you insight on a character and his/her lifestyle just enough so you know them without bogging you down with too much unneeded information. You also don’t leave every story knowing exactly what will happen to the characters, but they stay with you afterwards, wondering just what their futures holds.
There’s a note from Percival Everett at the beginning of the book which describes this so much better than I can:

These stories are good because they are true, true in that way that only good fiction can be.
These stories aren’t driven by plots, they are driven by characters, each one letting us into his/her life for a brief moment and the one thing that seems to drive most of them together is that life didn’t turn out quite like they expected. And who can’t relate to that?
It only occurred to her later that Byron had gone to the flower show to pick up a woman like herself, and that made the advantage his; she had only gone to look at flowers.

Favorite Piece: Homecoming – love the plot, the character of Marcus, and the circumstances he finds himself in. Also love the character of Skinny (a rather large, recovering drug addict, alcoholic, dying man) and how he of all people serves as a mentor for Marcus when he barely has a relationship with his own two children. I think Boggs has a fondness for Skinny as well because he has his own story, plays a prominent figure in Homecoming, and shows up for the first story as well.
The strong were going to get knock down; they were going to have people coming at them from all sides. They had to be ready, they had to be looking for the hit. That was what Briana should have known when she put the cocaine behind the frozen pizzas.
See what I mean by simple? She’s gets straight to the fact in a powerful way.

Here’s a taste of what to expect from this collection: a wife supporting her husband through his sex change, a dying man trying to connect with his teenage children, and a man selling his boat after his second wife leaves. ( )

I produce an event that celebrates short stories by Virginia writers. I picked up Mattaponi Queen, hoping to find something I could feature, and I did. Of the twelve stories in the collection, "Jonas," about a middle-aged woman who comes to terms with her husband's desire to have a sex-change operation, is my favorite. It is gentle, lyrical, and has so much heart it almost beats.

The other stories are finely wrought, and succeed to varying degrees. While I applaud Bogg's language and the specificity of place,"Deer Season," which opened the collection and acts as a sort of prologue, seemed more of a snapshot than a story. The rest are quietly efficient. They get the job done without fanfare or highjinks, and when done,I felt like I visited a place I enjoyed, but had no compelling reason to return. ( )