Reviewed by Matt Usher
Take Me With You Next Time
by Janis Hubchman
WTAW Press, The Betty Imprint
ISBN: 979-8-9877197-3-2, Trade paper, October 2024
A tumbril is a sort of cart with an open back with which to dispense its burdens. Tumbril is a French term derived from the Old French word tomber: to fall. The tumbril came to have many uses in the Age of revolution: it could carry a load of goods, supply ammunition for an army, or haul manure in the farm fields. The odd one out among the uses was during the French Revolution, where tumbrils were used to ferry the deposed aristocracy to the guillotine. This may seem to have very much little to do with the following, but please keep it in mind. We shall have need of it later.
Women have it hard. Much harder than men realize. It is difficult to describe just what being a woman entails; consider, though, their relation to their environment. Simply put, men act weird around women and often in threatening ways. You may have heard of the recent informal poll: if lost in the woods, would you rather encounter a cis man or take your chances with a bear? There was a hailstorm of women opting for the bear that fell upon the tin roof of gender relations. Aside from the creep angle, we also have the professional: being passed over for promotion, the pay gap, the threat of the above in the workplace. And this is not to mention the physical dimension of the female experience, which we will politely elide here.
The women in Janis Hubchman’s Take Me With You Next Time often suffer from the problems caused by close quarters with men. There are abusive (ex)-husbands, old lovers who’ve changed from a long past youth, and those who have worn with age or who have robbed the proverbial cradle. Age also plays a more general role as a solo experience, impossible to flee from. These are stories of struggle and ennui, quotidian life and the misery hidden beneath its surface.
Hubschman has a close style with a mixture of tenses, one that always stays close to the mind of the woman whose story this is. She tends to chew to the pith with brief character descriptions: “…Nina was at least a half-foot taller than Joy with dark cropped hair and fashionable chunky-framed glasses”. In most of the descriptive language we find this laconic style. We have a brief introduction of the actor and then they rise to the stage. She has some novel uses of figurative language: “Her own family deployed puns and one-liners like anti-missile lasers to defuse tense situations and deflect intimacy”. A good simile that makes the passage draw the reader’s attention; defuse complements the bomb theme as well.
The first story of the collection, Alamo, sees us start in a bridal shower populated by an increasing number of women who are all, in a theme that will repeat quite often in the subsequent stories, professors of composition. On the way to the end we have an interesting depiction of a Xanax overdose, a real cop pretending to be a stripper, and tell of a husband off in upstate New York on a zen retreat. Janis very often uses coincidence as a device to drive the plot of each short story. Here we have the above mentioned cop who just happened to come around with a mother-in-law in tow. We follow Nina as she tries to navigate this chaos, shake off the xannies, and try not to get shot. An improbable tale, but a nice romp through middle-aged worries here well realized.
In the next stories we find a painter and a tutor; a woman harried by a parrot whom she suspects is the reincarnation of a paramour; and a runner who just can’t seem to find the space to actually run.. Here we notice also that all women thus far have children. There are a number of experiences that Hubchman depicts with regularity: wistfulness over youth, suburban upper middle class life, the struggles and joys of children, unreliable men, and teenage love. Within what she knows, Hubschman produces very readable prose that entices the reader to continue just one more story to see what new problems these women will need to contend with.The collection is very reliable on these points.
In the subsequent stories we strike upon yet more prevailing themes: professorship, long bike rides, and the memories of flings and adultery alike. When Janis touches upon sex, it is most frequently in chaste teenage explorations. The writerly eye is very much averted here, though it often looks just long enough to let us know that it is girl-led and mostly initiated. Notably one of the few adult encounters involves a, within the confines of this world, transgressive bout of free love where the protagonist asks the partner of whom she will regret to be rough with her. Small worry, though, as at worse it involves a simple sore shoulder. If you have a hunger for the torrid and the lewd, don’t expect it here.
Later still we find stories revolving around the care of the elderly, particularly in-laws, as they age and lose their faculties. In one instance this involves a husband, one with a twenty year or so age gap above his wife. When these narratives touch upon that, it is always the men who are older and who seemed much more exciting back then than they do now. This is feelingly explored with very keen attention to the worries over a fragmenting mind as well as the exhaustion of having to care for someone in that state. Generally, though, this involves putting them in a nursing home.
We notice as well a strong undercurrent of the temptation of infidelity, even in the cases of teenage crushes and longing. Men are frequently demanding and in need of care in these narratives. Yet, they still provoke temptation in the far more put together women whom the stories center around. In Creature Comforts, we end in musing upon marriage to a doctor being a type of settling, the narrator reflecting that it was the easy path. Janis pens stories that often revolve around this conflict of stability, excitement, and intimacy. It’s easy to get engaged with the knife’s edge emotions of these borderlines of feelings and material safety.
It’s about time we let the other shoe drop regarding tumbrils. In honor of the more sanguine use, there is an associated phrase: the tumbril remark. What exactly these remarks are is summed up well by an anecdote. A certain English aristocrat was once approached by a mendicant pleading that he hadn’t eaten in three days. Her response was: “Fool that you are, you need to eat. Force yourself if you must.” These remarks fall along the intersections of privilege, class and racial oligarchy, as well as a dearth of imaginative sympathy. One instance from these stories: “the furniture is from IKEA: Ektorp, which means cheap crap in Swedish, I’m sure.” This is in Wilderness of Ghosts, where the narrator has a house to return to from college and a job furnished for her by her parents. Another: “White ash swirled and settled on the soft leather vamps of my Chanel boots.” An accurate detail within the story Creature Comforts, to be sure. But this is in a story where an immigrant who runs a cleaning service is portrayed as annoying and untrustworthy. One can only stumble upon so many references to summer homes, gated communities, and well to do careers without losing sympathy for the struggles of these protagonists.
This may not be so bad, as it is an honest and compelling depiction of this upper middle class life. Where it strays into the tumbril is when it approaches matters of race and class dynamics. We first find this in Escape Artist. There is an underlying B plot regarding a daughter doing missionary work in El Salvador. San Salvador is depicted as a city “controlled by vicious gangs” without a hint of irony. Following this up is a made up statistic that “most of [the teens] would be dead before they turned thirty-five”. With this imaginary statistic, one wonders how society proceeds with a majority of its citizens dead so young. At the near-contemporary year these short stories take place in, El Salvador had about 90 murders per 100,000 people. This isn’t even notably bad compared to other countries in the region. Not to mention that missionaries would often be housed in gated communities, safe behind walls. This is the plaintive voice of a privileged, xenophobic character assuming that the rumors about a country of largely brown people are true.
The narrative voice doubles down on this in Creature Comforts. This professor’s class is full of students with “unpronounceable” names. And, of course, this group is not enthusiastic about an English Composition class. One student, Deeba Jagan, is given the distinction of having a voice that was “braying, unpleasant, and with an accent I couldn’t place”. She is further attired with a cleaning business where she employs, naturally, the three Mexican women in the class. Things transition from grating to verging upon racism. Deeba assists, saying “most of them will end up going back to where they came from” because “they don’t have what it takes. You have to stop making excuses, work hard, and speak English”.
We might throw the bone that this comes from the mouth of an unpleasant character, but our professor does not contest these statements and later reifies them. She goes on to ask another member of her gated community if Deeba was safe to have around her children. Immigrants are, of course, a threat. Later we see our professor teaching an article written by Thomas Friedman of all people. The capstone is when she lists herself as on equal footing with her students: “Dechontee [who lost] their parents to mad dictators, why Lupe would eventually return to Mexico in defeat, or why my brilliant, privileged husband resorted to drugs”. One of these things, as the saying goes, does not belong. And let us not forget the unhoused “disheveled, bearded man” that “walked alongside them for a block” only to have muttered ‘bitch’”. And, as it must be, he was possessed of a “rank odor”. A small wonder the professor “felt lightheaded, needed to sit down”. Is it too much to ask for a reprieve from this stereotyping, or perhaps positive representation?
That all being said, Take Me With You Next Time is a very readable book that can be perused at a brisk pace. You’ll find a good variety of stories and characters, provided they’re within the framework and ethos of the narrative voice. To pair with those you’ll have grounded interpersonal drama between believable characters encountering the vagaries of age, married life, and remembered childhood. Hubschman is at her strongest when she dwells upon these themes and engenders nuanced women who have to contend with what life throws at them. If you like upper middle class drama or if any of the themes listed above appeal to you, it’s worth a slot on your bookshelf. It centers well on the modes and strata of society that it occupies. I can’t in good conscience recommend this to anyone who’s a poc or is marginalized. Or working class, for that matter. If any of the above strikes you as first world problems, let this tumbril pass you by.
About the reviewer: Matt Usher is an agender, highly neurodivergent writer and musician who likes poetry, tabletop roleplaying, trading card games (mtg and ygo), and professional wrestling. They are based out of Brooklyn with their two partners in a happy polecule. Most of their works are short stories but it happened that their first credit was in literary criticism. If you want to reach out and/or contact them regarding their reviews or stories (please do), you can find them at https://bsky.app/profile/mattusher.bsky.social
