By Bonnie ZoBell
Stefanie Freele’s beautiful short story collection, Surrounded by Water, is surrounded by illumination. The book, published by Press 53, shines brilliantly through the depths of human sorrow and hope, but it does so on Freele’s own quirky and quiet terms. This author has an uncanny gift to get right to where it matters in even the most everyday story. She sees what we can’t and shares it with us. The story is no longer every day. These stories illuminate and reflect; they crash all over us and settle into quiet ripples. They drown us with what life really is, which requires we listen. 
The stunning tale “Us Hungarians” alone is worth the price of the book. In this story that won an award in Glimmer Train’s Family Matter Contest, Allee visits her brothers, Steyr and Kurz, who live on the world’s most revolting refusal disposal site because their parents have found them a good deal on rent from a fellow Hungarian. “Allee imitated their father. ‘Vat you say? Hungarians are honest people.'” Their mother is sad that the kids have gone off to college at “za ends of za urt.” Freele’s wonderfully understated humor sets up an engaging juxtaposition with her brilliant details when she describes the “slough pond” her brothers finally reveal to her. An “approximately three- or four-acre-size shape of neon green, the color of antifreeze, surrounded by an arm’s-length border of what appeared to be bleached and crushed shells. All she could say was, ‘Ewww. That white rim around the pond, crystallized chemicals?” The white rim turns out to be “layers and layers of small bones.” Seagulls killed by the chemicals and in the process of decomposition.
In “Fifteen Minutes,” the overworked female narrator is surrounded by the helplessness of the males in her life. Her husband has missed his “Vasectomy Cluster appointment” again. This time it’s “because he dropped a tree on a power line. . . . ‘Pray the Fire Department doesn’t charge us.'” Last time it was because “he had to wait for the results of the pig bid at the fair.” “The time before he forgot.” She agrees with the male receptionist when she calls to reschedule him that her husband should just be left on the vasectomy list indefinitely. The story closes with her baby boy sleeping in the middle of their king-size bed, whom she checks “to make sure he isn’t too warm.”
“The Way You Move Twelve Minutes from Home,” shows, as do many in Freele’s charmingly diverse collection, the range of voices and tones she’s capable of. Here we’re given some very questionable advice in second person, which makes you have to wonder just who the hell this narrator is: “Be manic. Work through the holidays. Don’t give a fuck about 
the turkey soup and any other leftover. Scoff at the idea of Christmas lights. Say things like, Now we’ll finally get ahead with all that money I’m bringing in. Take medicine on an empty stomach; refuse ice, food, rest, and prayer.” Wow.
The stories in this delectable collection are beautifully written, spare in that they don’t waste your time with words that don’t absolutely need to be there, but also full of just the perfect kind of details to tip you into other people’s worlds. Freele’s dark humor and eye for what it is to be human will make you want to read these stories over again.
Leave A Comment