Knockout Beauty and Other Afflictions by Marina Rubin is a recent collection of seventeen short stories about various female characters such as Daisy in “Jaula” about whom Rubin writes, “In writing circles, she was known more for her beauty than her talent.” It’s a trick for the reader. After she has an alleged romantic encounter with a famous male writer, the critics change their tune about Daisy: “Turns out the girl could write.” The trick could become a feminist critique, the “jaula” of the title a cage into which women characters and often women writers find themselves trapped.

The trick, a sort of epiphany, might even begin with the title, even with the cover of the book itself, showing an attractive blonde gazing out over a vague flame behind the capitalized letters KNOCKOUT BEAUTY. Rubin and her publisher, Crowsnest Books, appear to have the real goal of bringing the reader into a cage where the author will present, instead of talentless beauty, complicated human relationships through sharp, poignant analyses of the characters in Knockout Beauty.

There’s something refreshing about Rubin, a Ukrainian immigrant to New York City, writing through other perspectives (Daisy is Latina, for example) instead of what North American audiences might typically expect from an immigrant writer—i.e., that they would merely write about their own background and nobody else’s. Rubin’s writing, while often including text that hints at the narrator’s immigrant background, is more concerned with exploring other people, the other side of the relationship with the narrator instead of an autobiographical (whether first- or third-person) depiction of a particular group among the many in New York.

“The Man in a Fedora” is one such story, a too rare tale of a friendship between a man and a woman that takes its well-spent time to introduce the doomed beauty of the relationship between Max Florentine and the female narrator, who is searching for him after having heard a rumor that he ended his own life. Rubin weaves timelines by letting the narrator tell us of the numerous beautiful moments she shared with Florentine. Yet she also lets us hear about what went wrong, why there was such a gap between the last time she saw her friend and the moment at which she learned of his supposed suicide: “The years that vanished without a trace with nothing to show for them, the months I couldn’t account for, spent in constant worry or utter numbness, relationships that became glum fiction, the boredom, the overall absence from being […] there was something fundamentally wrong with the way I was living. Max’s death brought it all to the surface. This was the essence, the heart of the matter.” All of that from the narrator’s grief, like a “two-tone necklace, or a black chiffon scarf,” a sense that their relationship, or a feeling itself, could be something physical, a piece of clothing with which one is so intimate for so long and then one day loses or must remove from one’s wardrobe.

Clothing often plays the role of a MacGuffin or supposedly unimportant object charged with meaning. Such is the case in “Valentino,” a story about Iris, an “other woman” whose chosen therapy is visiting vintage clothing stores. When the wife of her lover shows up at a fundraiser gala, she remarks about Iris’ dress that she had the same exact one! Indeed, there was even a unique tear in the side, a tear Iris has had tailored. The conceit is almost too much, yet it returns a reader to the first story, “Jaula,” to consider that perhaps there’s a reason this conceit is considered perhaps too disposable. After all, it’s still true that the other woman is who becomes passed around like second-hand clothing in such a relationship.

And, again, it’s the relationships that are so essential to Rubin’s stories. “Your Lover is British” is the story of Marguerite, who lists in order and with descriptions of each her three best lovers, none of which is her current one, Hugh, reduced to serving as the stereotypical Brit in the devilish joke about who your mechanic, policeman, and lover are in heaven, and who in hell.

In “Smorgas,” there’s another saying involving a triangle of kinds of men: “When God created men, he gave some beauty, some brains, and others the ability to make money.” In this story, Rose meets Matteo, the first of the three types. They have a wonderful love affair that, Rose anticipates, is doomed. Matteo gives her great sex but little intellectual stimulation. The story, another of the longer ones in Knockout Beauty, adds another layer: Matteo’s friend, Casper, comes to visit. Casper is the second and third of the three types of men. And “Smorgas” lets the three characters live in a love triangle in which Rose spends time with Casper during the day, enjoying intellectual stimulation and expensive food, and Matteo during the night when she enjoys stimulation from Matteo himself. For a while, it seems as if she can maintain the situation of eating the cake and having it too. But the story must move forward, as “Smorgas” does, presenting Rose as a “woman without love or history of hunger.”

In each of the longer stories, Rubin introduces minor, incidental characters who often move the plot along by either imparting wisdom, such as with the sayings above, or providing seemingly trivial but plot-driving pieces of information. This effect keeps the reader focused on these characters. It keeps the reader thinking of how significant all the relationships in our lives are, even the minor ones. These longer stories are where Rubin can stretch out these analyses of characters, entertain each possibility of a given relationship. Of course, such stories employ montage to show the reader the most memorable moments, the way human beings look back, and let the writer shine the light of her talent through the tale.

There’s often a concern with everyday people and simple moments of fleeting joy and pleasure in life. There’s an attention to people that, after years of isolation behind our screens, we’re in sore need of.

– Ian Ross Singleton