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The Lives of Kelvin Fletcher: Stories Mostly Short
March, 2009Miller Williams
University of Georgia Press
Acclaimed poet and English professor Miller Williams' first book of
fiction consists of seven short stories and a capstone novella, linked,
by a single protagonist, into the sequences of a life.
At the beginning, we find Kelvin Fletcher, age 10, struggling to grow up in small-town Arkansas. The stories follow his life over the next decade, through adolescence, faith, envy, lust and rage to an unsteady grip on manhood and salvation.
Throughout these stories, Williams wields remarkable control over the narrative voice, allowing it to mature as Kelvin does. By the time the reader reaches the ending novella, the narration has become more concentrated and keen. For the first time, it shifts from third person into first, allowing the 20-year-old Kelvin to tell his own story.
Beyond the character of Kelvin, what links these stories is a question of choices. Kelvin begins the collection believing in the stark line between right and wrong and our ability to choose which side of the line we stand on. By the end, Kelvin believes in a different sort of line - the one that pulls us forward into our lives, whether we want to follow or not.