Kirkus review Ruby Dee’s Bag of Tricks
A group of music-loving young people attempt to survive in 1970s and ‘80s San Francisco in Philippa’s collection of stories.
A series of interlinked stories portrays the impoverished lives and occasional joys of a community of women in their teens and 20s, at the centre of which is a punk band known as the Shits. “The girls all love them,” we are informed early on, “they attend every show The Shits play in town.” They sweep streets and perform other menial jobs while attempting to score drugs and accompanying the band on the road. Amy, from Ontario, has a sweet disposition and doesn’t protest when Henry, a member of the band who dabbles in Neo-Nazism, breaks off their relationship and begins sleeping with Sophie. Sophie fears that if she fails to acquire beer for Henry, he’ll leave her; she loves watching him sleep because then “she doesn’t have to share him with anyone.” She shrugs off the abuse he inflicts when he drinks. Babs fancies herself a witch and enjoys casting spells on people; she owns a pet rat named Luna who perches on her shoulders as she ambles through town, delighting in the feeling of being “cool and different.” Carla collects books and has a cleaning obsession; she has a habit of shooting up and then polishing the kitchen to a “sparkling, steaming perfect shine.” Shelly, who deals speed and heroin, gets involved with a man named Omar via one of her contacts. Their sexual role-playing becomes increasingly brutal. He confines her there until she awakens one day to find him gone, leaving her with perhaps her only chance to escape. (The casual savagery of men is a recurring theme in these stories.)
Philippa’s partially fictionalised short stories, inspired by her youth spent in the punk scene, beautifully summon the San Francisco of a bygone bohemian era: Salvation Army trailers and health clinics, Mexican street food and eggplant parmigiana, and the scent of chlorine and spices. Her gift for attentive recollection brings the city to life; and while she displays evident fondness for the foibles of these hardscrabble young people, her nostalgia is never rose-tinted: It is a dangerous, less progressive world, and the characters engage in reckless behaviour, experiment with sex and drugs, and witness (and sometimes perform) shocking acts of violence. The book teems with characters who, in their specific strangeness, seem to have stepped out of an early Belle and Sebastian song. Easily the most memorable of these is Annie, who weighs 250 pounds and styles herself after Marilyn Monroe. Annie lugs a hickory baseball bat, which she uses to terrorize men who fail to satisfy her during sex. (The scene in which she chases a man from her apartment, screaming curses and epithets, is probably the best in the book.) It’s a testament to the author’s skill that she’s able to make these crusty punks and vagabonds vulnerable and at least somewhat sympathetic; after all, they are not exactly liberal thinkers. In short, they gleefully harass gay people, hurl racial slurs with abandon, and regularly ingest speed and heroin. Nevertheless, Philippa also acknowledges their humanity beyond the obvious distasteful antisocial behaviour.
A beautifully eccentric cast of characters anchors these nostalgic vignettes.
‘Bag of Tricks’ by Ruby Dee Philippa is available worldwide and through Earth Island Books, as are ‘Tricky Business’ and ‘Old Tricks, New Treats’ – the entire trilogy is in print and shipping now, with Volume One, Bag of Tricks available as an audio book too, and the others following soon.
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