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The Pedestal Magazine > Archives > Issue 57 > Reviews >Shellie Zacharia's Now Playing

Shellie Zacharia
Now Playing
Keyhole Press
ISBN Number: 0982151241

Reviewer: Alice Osborn


          It's rare to find a collection of short stories that's both so darn readable and consistently entertaining. Such is the case with Shellie Zacharia's Now Playing, her debut work of flash fiction and longer short stories. Inside you'll find tales about a kid cutting off her nose, a yard sale gone wrong, a lonely sixth grade teacher who steals a cardboard cutout of a lead singer from a music store, continuing ed sewing classes taught by a fourth grade loser, experimental disco theater, a shoplifting four year-old, and more. Sure, these stories are funny, but they are also poignant, serious, and insightful commentaries. Zacharia's settings include a mix of urban and suburban: bowling alleys, community ed classrooms, resort hotels, busy intersections, playgrounds, and Bed Bath and Beyond. Although her characters may be more artistic and musical (many of her characters play guitar) than the norm and more likely to hang out in an art gallery than at the movies on a Saturday night, Zacharia is able to transcend their eccentric preferences and orientations in order to render their wants and needs relatable to all.

          These characters yearn to live out loud and take chances in the middle of their working lives. One of them could easily be your sister, your next door neighbor, or even yourself. Most of Zacharia's characters are women in their mid-thirties who have careers with which they're somewhat satisfied, but most know that they have played it safe while their former classmates took greater creative risks. Perhaps without even realizing it, they are all looking outside of themselves for the answers, while what they're missing could be unearthed if only they looked deeper within. Some readers may not resonate with her happy or satisfactory endings, but Zacharia manages in a few pages to have her characters navigate conflicts, attain some sense of peace, and reach optimistic decisions regarding how to move forward with their lives.

          Zacharia allows us a peak into her characters’ daily grind right at the moment they are turning a corner. Philip Gerard, author of Writing Creative Nonfiction, is fond of saying, “Everything was fine until you showed up," referring to storytelling. The "you" refers to the catalyst, which can be a person or thing that motivates the main character to get up from the couch and do something. Once Zacharia’s characters get going, they don't stop.

          Many times this "you" is the past. How many times have you wondered what would happen if you ran into an old school chum and you hadn't been exactly nice to her or him? Could you write an honest, yet scathing complaint letter like Lucy does in “Luckily, Lucy Sims Has No Stamps”? Or what would you do if you had to review an ex-boyfriend's play? Zacharia explores this latter thread in the titular "Now Playing."

          In this story, the main character, a writer, has been assigned to review her old boyfriend's experimental play for the independent paper for which she works. The fun ensues when she's late to the performance as a result of letting a neighbor cut her bangs. Because of her tardiness, she doesn’t get her 3-D glasses and playbill, both of which are necessary for informed viewing. As the show continues, our character can't figure it out and is wondering what she's going to write about in her review. She finally decides what to do without being unethical.

          One of my favorites is "Cardboard Ben" in which Nikki, a schoolteacher, steals a cardboard cutout of her old high school classmate, Ben Stevens, who is now a famous singer and guitarist. She keeps CB (Cardboard Ben) in her living room, talks to him, and wants him to become her muse, but she soon sees that she’s bordering on obsession when she mentions him frequently during class. A telling line is when Nikki's friend, Vivian, warns her, "It would be better if you said you were making out with Cardboard Ben. Don't trade love for crafts. That's what my grandmother did." By the end, Nikki does the right thing.

          A few of the stories have interconnected characters, and Zacharia is very clever in making the plot lines overlap. Descriptive titles, dialogue, and quick brush strokes that reveal the core of a character are three of Zacharia's main strengths. Her provided details are memorable; quirky and extreme, they ring true, illustrating how people are essentially unpredictable and do odd things all the time. When it comes to her titles, Zacharia loads up on description, as a poet would, so that she doesn't need to be so expository within her narrative. This way the reader knows exactly what to expect and can get acclimated quickly. These are the opening lines in "After Carlos the Continuity Expert Quit the Movie and Headed to Costa Rica”:
He said it had to do with birds. They had names, beautiful names, and he'd call them out like he was reciting prayer: scarlet-thighed dacnis, chestnut-headed oropendola. The women on the set found it erotic, the way he said these names, but one day he was saying thrush-like schiffornis and then he was gone. He left a message on the director's answering machine. She showed up for the filming of the diner scene for Emilio's Girls and scowled a lot and drank enough coffee that her hands shook. Someone gave her a muscle relaxer, which helped.
          Zacharia also has an uncanny ability to express what we all frequently think, but seldom say. In "Making the Bed," Deborah ponders bedding and marriage:
So maybe they are not the finest sheets, but they are worn and washed and stained in the right way, darker where our bodies lie night after night, and someone might say those are love spots and I'd say they were right.
          With her adeptness for characterization and dialogue, Zacharia manages to render stories that offer deeper connections, insights, and truths, often including compelling flourishes of humor. She does so remarkably in this collection without weighing down her narratives with “literary” concerns and pretensions. Her stories are like songs, each containing a melody, hook, and bridge—you end up wanting to listen over and over again.
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