Idaho Librarian

Reviews

Christina Adam’s Any Small Thing Can Save You: A Bestiary is an alphabetical collection of short stories with appealing chapter titles such as “A is for Asp” and  “M is for Moose.”  Adam’s bestiary is not the medieval type of bestiary where real or mythical animals represent religious symbols, but rather a modern bestiary where animals, birds and reptiles are juxtaposed against human relationships, usually one between a man and a woman, and reveal something about that relationship.

In “A is for Asp,” the woman encounters a snake in her home.  The snake hides and she enlists Stan in a futile attempt to find the snake.  After Stan goes outside, the snake reappears:

The woman’s indecisiveness about whether or not to tell Stan about her interaction with the snake is telling—a decision that “would make all the difference in the world” to their relationship. 

The author reveals small but highly significant moments of reflection throughout the book.  In each story, Adams quickly immerses the reader in new settings and characters.  In “V is for Vulture”, Adams describes the Mexican Baja setting in the first paragraph with references to  “vultures perched on ragged fences, as if their hunched and lurking silhouettes were comic advertisements for the point of no return,” “miles of dusty desert,” and “a blue or pink or yellow cement-block house, overgrown with lavish bougainvillea.”   In the story, the man’s exhausting and losing fight with a large fish on a fishing trip is a symbol of his despair over losing his lover.

Adam’s stories make the reader reflect on relationships both with others and with the natural world.  The narrator in many of the stories is someone in middle age who is reflecting on a past or recent experience, leaving a lingering sense of sadness with the reader.  

Any Small Thing Can Save You: A Bestiary is suitable for public libraries and academic libraries collecting works by Idaho authors.   The author, Christina Adam, who lives in both Idaho and Texas, is a recipient of an Idaho Commission on the Arts Fellowship.  Her work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and has been anthologized in Circle of Women: An Anthology of Contemporary Western Women Writers of American Fiction.