Perspective: A lyrical look at a gritty bad girl

Throughout Glory Goes and Gets Some, you feel like the sheltered cousin at the family reunion who is stuck seated next to the bad girl of the clan. And she's talking about all the nasty things she's ever done. You don't have to ask any questions. The words are just spilling out of her. Not that you would ask anything anyway. After all, you tell yourself, you don't really want to know about sex, drugs, alcohol and addiction or that she is HIV positive.

But then, maybe you do. Author Emily Carter is convinced of it.

Glory Goes and Gets Some is an elliptical, fictional biography of "bad girl" Gloria Bronski told in 21 short stories. The stories are grouped under six headings that suggest the progression of Glory's life, starting with the streets of New York City, literally, and moving through her time in and out of numerous Midwest addiction treatment centers. Some stories are trips to the past where you learn Glory has been out of control since childhood. Through most of them -- Zemecki's Cat, WLUV and Bad Boy Walking are among the best -- Glory demonstrates how all her life she has done her damnedest not to fit in.

You keep reading about her not just to find out what happens next but to hear the poetry in Carter's language. A story or section will make you feel as though you have grit in your mouth and then have you rereading certain lines and paragraphs for their originality or beauty.

Of a guy in one of the rehab centers: "Shamble-shanked and sparrow-hopping on the balls of his feet, Johnny McDonnell assembled himself in his counselor's office. Although Johnny liked dealing with women behind desks better than with men behind desks, his sense of righteousness was today unassailable."

Of one of the men she meets in a bar: "There was something in his eyes that was too abrasive to look at, his gaze when it fell on me was like a scrape."

Of Minneapolis, where she took treatments: "My darling, it's haunted here: In downtown Minneapolis the souls of the good dead become electric: streetlights or the tiny white jewels threaded in loops to the black sky lining the iron bridge across the Mississippi River. But look out: lead the wrong kind of life and you'll turn into one of the newly installed port-a-johns in Boom Island Park."

The title story was published in The Best American Short Stories 1998; other stories originally appeared in The New Yorker. They are often graphic (not as much as a Harry Crews story, but close), but beyond the profanity and grossness there is often something very poignant, like Carter's description of the main character in Zemecki's Cat:

"Love surrounds Zemecki but seems to avoid him, the way a creek flows around a discarded hub-cap."

- Sharon Bond is a Times staff writer.

GLORY GOES AND GETS SOME

By Emily Carter

Coffee House Press

$20.95

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