Second effort

LITE MOTIF Lombardo gets heavy in his second book.

Billy Lombardo’s still figuring it out.

His first collection of stories, The Logic of a Rose, came out in 2005 and won the G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction. Now, he has another book on the way, How to Hold a Woman (OV Books, $16.95), out June 23. And he has a novel, The Man With Two Arms, coming out in February from Overlook Press. And yet, to talk to the Bridgeport native—who now lives in suburban Forest Park—he’s still just a novice.

“With Logic of a Rose, there was just so much stuff I didn’t know about craft,” he says. “I’m just playing around with it still.”

How to Hold a Woman certainly doesn’t betray any crisis of confidence. A novel-in-stories, the book winds its way through six years in the lives of the Taylor family—five-strong until the daughter, Isabel, dies. That’s not a spoiler; Isabel disappears early on, but Lombardo holds back on the details until the end. Each of the characters, the father Alan, the wife Audrey, and the youngest and oldest sons—Sammy and Dex, respectively—get their turn with the narrative.

In the opening story, “At Khyber Pass,” Alan has just returned from a summerlong research trip in Madagascar. Absent over the course of two months, he’s astonished at the difference in his children. Isabel has discovered The Great Gatsby and contracted a dramatic flair. Dex is away at baseball practice, but Sammy is suddenly suntanned, assertive and inquisitive as they settle in for lunch at their favorite restaurant.

It strikes such a simple, wonderful note in the life of a family. Alan’s not quite sure what to expect, and the familiarity with a version of his family from several months before just makes the reacquaintance all the more surreal. It also sets the quiet, close-to-the-vest tone of the book.

When Alan has trouble controlling his tears over being back with his family, Lombardo writes, “Audrey says nothing, but she switches her fork to her left hand and sets her right hand on Alan’s knee. Isabel smiles a closed-lip smile and tilts her head as though Alan has given her something. A flower.”

In The Logic of a Rose, Lombardo tackled childhood, mining his own time growing up in Bridgeport for a loosely connected collection. But in How to Hold a Woman, the subject is adulthood, dealing with grief and familial strain in a more complicated context. Lombardo has also taken great strides as a writer, working with a much more precise pen.

We’d been hearing about this book for a while. Gina Frangello, editor of OV Books, mentioned it at AWP’s conference, saying, “It’s about the death of a child, but it’s not shitty like The Lovely Bones.” It’s a funny line, but it’s also true: How to Hold a Woman narrowly dodges sentimentality, even when the young boys take over the narrative.

“I just think of sentiment as being unearned,” says Lombardo. “But when some people are moved, they call it ‘sentimental,’ like they’re being manipulated or something. I’ve actually never minded that. That’s what we’re doing, we’re manipulating. I don’t have any problem with that.”

We’ve heard Lombardo read one of the stories, “How I Knew You Were Mad at Me,” several times around town—a genuinely funny and surprising story about the quiet ways couples fight. In the context of the book, it takes on a new task, sneaking the tragedy to the fore. But of course, when we ask him about it, he says he’s not sure how it works in the book. He’s still working it all out.“Gina, when she accepted it, she told me, ‘I gotta tell ya, I never took on a book that needed this much work,’” laughs Lombardo. “And I was like, ‘That’s okay, that’s fine. I’m totally cool with that.’”

Lombardo reads from How to Hold a Woman Saturday 7 at 11am at Printers Row Lit Fest.

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