Award-winning author Sara Pritchard’s latest book, Lately, explores a number of life’s incidents, including failed marriages, religious re-exploration, and the freedom that is felt after releasing oneself from traditional roles.

            “Here on Earth we don’t take off our underpants in public and throw them at some Welsh has-been on stage”.  This advice, offered by the narrator’s father in the story entitled “Here on Earth,” is indicative of the collection’s overall tone.  Much like her first novel, Crackpots, Pritchard uses clever humor while exploring life’s various dilemmas.  With an air that can only be assumed through years of experience, and the challenges that accompany those years, Pritchard has crafted a collection that seems at once creatively fresh and comfortably familiar. 

            Though she uses a unique narrator for every story, they all allow the reader the impression that he or she is cozily tucked in the corner of Pritchard’s study, chattily catching up on the lives of old classmates from Pritchard’s inventive locale, New Northwest Pennsy-hi-o. 

            “Lately”, the title story, features the reflections of Gloria, a woman reaching an age in life when memories are developed primarily through exposure to time.  Though life has given Gloria the opportunity to make bettering choices, she nearly exclusively chose the unsuitable ones, leading her to motherhood and marriage long before she was prepared, and leaving her largely unfulfilled.  Her most prominent connection between past and present is the realization that her daughter, Frieda, “has repeated the mistakes of her father and me”.   And, now powerless to alter the past, she recognizes that her grandson’s path is likely to be much of the same.

            Throughout the collection, Pritchard seems to finish a number of stories with an awareness of the futility of reflection.  In some cases, these reflections are literal, as in “The Honor of Your Presence,” or they contain the smallest fragment of hope that the next generation, often grandchildren at this stage, will have the opportunity to make the differences that the narrator was not able to accomplish in his or her lifetime, such as Reggie in “The Wonders of the World”.

            Along with the themes of aging, religion, tradition and secrets, the most prominent and nearly completely over-arching theme available is that of women overcoming the trapped sensation they experience within their largely traditional roles.  Often, when these women develop the courage to express themselves, they do so wholly and flamboyantly.  No more inspirational example of this can be cited than the final story, “La Vecchietta in Siena”.  The protagonist, LaRue, has spent her life as a dutiful, though often forgetful, wife.  It is only when she begins see beloved deceased relatives following her that she realizes the courage to fulfill her dreams.  She slips underneath the retaining rope alongside the track, mounts the fallen horse, and crosses the finish line triumphantly as the crowd cheers, “Go, old lady! Go on! Go! Go!  ‘Viva la vecchietta! La vecchietta oo-rah!’”  This final hooray ties the collection together nicely, providing the reader the comforting knowledge that, indeed, these characters that he or she could not avoid embracing do have a possibility of happiness, though in New Northwest Pennsy-hi-o, this happiness might just be dying your wedding dress black and throwing a divorce party.