Kevin Wilson is dynamite in a tube. I started reading the first short story, grand stand-in, in his debut collection, tunneling to the center of the earth, and I wanted to read standing up and shout “wow”. But I was sitting in a Long Island Rail Road car at the time so I decided to cool it.
KW takes a silly “what-if” and treats it seriously until you are totally wrapped up in a nutty world that casts a dark shadow over this one: reality squared-you’ve been checkmated by literature, bub.
The conceit in grand stand-in is that successful, middle class families, know as fams, are hiring grannies (and grandpas) from an agency to emotionally enrich the lives of their small children. So grandparenting, no longer left to the vagaries of genetics, has become a profession.
It turns out that real grandparents just don’t fill the bill anymore: too slow perhaps, not interesting or politically correct enough. Hire a professional granny who can scuba dive and teach your toddlers Japanese as well as performing the classic skills like sewing and baking cookies.
But one of the best parts of the professional grandparent experience is that your child gets to experience death in a controlled environment, carefully prepared for. When the grandparenting contract runs out, the child is told their grannie has died…maybe while skydiving. Mortality becomes another enriching experience for your offspring.
In grand stand-in we get a first-person take on what it’s like to be a professional grannie. This is a lesson in what I’d call embedded fiction. We are drowning in media these days…film, TV, books, video games…blogging…but KW makes that all seem like old hat. Why not graft fiction right into your life by hiring pros to be bit players in the only story that really counts-your own?
But a critical pro grannie skill is also to disconnect. Professionals in this line may perform for six or more families at a time and all the family history details, whether fake or real, have to be kept straight. And you and the child must actually accept and love one another. But at your equivalent of 5PM, you have to turn the love off…like flipping a switch, and walk.
Can you do that? What I found intriguing is that I bet some people can. Experience the distorted mirror world of grand stand-in for yourself. I’m going to read the remaining stories in tunneling to the center of the earth. Maybe they will be as good.
I’ve calmed down now. I liked this story. Tunneling to the Center of the Earth will be published as a Harper Perennial original next month.
-DH
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