Fictional Lowell sets the scene for love, death, and everything in between
by Nina MacLaughlin, Boston Globe, N. E. Literary News (12/11/22)
The stories in Stephen O’Connor’s lively new collection, “Northwest of Boston” (Loom), take place primarily in and around Lowell, and are peopled by roofers, veterans, teachers, ex-cons, martyrs, saints, barflies, and storytellers. O’Connor moves easily between humor and pathos. In one story, a character called Marley is understood as dead, turns out not to be, then turns out to be: “There, among the photos of the recently dead, was the pock-marked face, the wispy hair, and the placid eyes taking a last peek at the living public.” In another, a man tells his wife about a gone-wrong roofer he used to know, and a choice he made 25 years ago. Two men sit in a bar in a story called “Jailbird” and talk about right and wrong and in-between. Another, set at Walden Pond, features a young devotee of Henry David Thoreau, and his encounter with an older, wiser Walden enthusiast. As they talk about Tom Brady, the Sox, coming snow, loss, lies, betrayal, O’Connor’s characters feel familiar, very much of the place, in their crackling sarcasm, the cadence of their sentences, the chatter and matter of real life. The stories traffic in love and death, in hard decisions, and bad ones, and how we go about piecing together, day by day, how to live and what’s important. “It’s all a mystery,” it turns out, “deeper than Walden Pond.”