Sylvia Foley

Life in the Air Ocean is made up of nine short stories that are all interconnected.

• "Cave Fish" introduces Daniel to the reader. Husband to Iris, he is a veteran and has a baby daughter. "Her eyes slipped back and forth like a cave fish" (p 10). I have no idea what that means.


• "Boy Wonder" takes us back to when Daniel was an abused boy.


• "Life in the Air Ocean" is from Iris's point of view. "Iris knew she was dawdling on the side of madness" (p 33).


• "Elemenopy" is Ruth's story and alludes to a sinister secret.


• "Off Grenada" introduces us to three year old Monica as the new addition to the Mowry family. Older sister, Ruth, is now seven years old. "Stilts of electricity were walking over the water" (p 74).


• "Cloudland" is ominous. Allusions of sexual abuse and alcoholism are repeated.


• "State of the Union" addresses Iris's alcoholism and growing paranoia that her husband is cheating on her. At this point, her children have grown (Monica, the youngest, is in college) and she barely has contact with them.


• "History of Sex" is told from Ruth's point of view in first person and is probably the most disturbing of the stories.


• "Dogfight" is told from the youngest daughter, Monica's point of view.

All along bits and pieces of the story are drawn out. Ruth is a baby without a name of gender for the first two stories. It's like a peep show where only tantalizing tidbits are introduced. As the curtain goes down on one story, you hope it opens to reveal more in the next. This was a difficult series of stories to read. Depressing doesn't even begin to describe it. I feel like I read this and winced all the way through it.… (mais)

Life in the Air Ocean is a book of inter-related short stories pulled from the lives of a small family in the middle of the last century. Daniel Mowry is a refrigeration engineer living in Carville, Tennessee and in Bogota, Colombia. His wife, Iris, drinks and imagines her husband's fictive affairs. His daughters struggle with intimacy and relationships in the shadow of the Vietnam war.

Foley writes beautifully about this damaged family and their ties to one another. Each story stands alone, but enhances the stories found both before and after it.… (mais)