Second Language

Second Language. Ronna Wineberg. Moorhead, Minnesota: New Rivers Press, 2005. $14.95. 0-89823-224-4.

In her debut collection, Wineberg collects thirteen vividly crafted stories. These are thick stories, like rich broth. The collection opens with "The Coin Collector," dealing with a woman whose husband died recently and left her with a wicker hamper full of silver coins. But these coins aren't just money saved; each one has a memory attached. And while they can help secure her financial future, they also keep her attached to the past. This is a story about grief and death and life, which is all of these.

"The Piano" is a warm little ditty about a woman who buys a piano she can't afford. "After you had been given so much of what you wanted in life, was it wrong to want more?" she asks herself. When it comes down to it, the piano makes her happy. Wineberg is showing us not just humans but their humanity, which is ever changing and yet instantly recognizable.

The title story concerns adultery. Wineberg uses this platform to explore the way we justify our actions and our lives, and what words really mean; what is adultery? The character's mother is ill with cancer –she asks herself; what is that but a change in cells?

“’What she loves about teaching English as a second language is the very fact of words, their precisions,’” Lucy, the main character says. “When you learn another language, she once read, you gain another soul.’ Later, Lucy says “The first language is love,” and “Having a lover when you’re married, she decides, is like knowing a second language. You don’t understand the idioms and eccentricities.”

And like Lucy, all of these characters are stumbling towards a knowing. They are faced with something they previously didn’t see or realize, like learning a second language; they are learning to live in a world that’s different than before.

-CL Bledsoe


	Second Language Second Language. Ronna Wineberg. Moorhead, Minnesota: New Rivers Press, 2005. $14.95. 0-89823-224-4. In her debut collection, Wineberg collects thirteen vividly crafted stories. These are thick stories, like rich broth. The collection opens with "The Coin Collector," dealing with a woman whose husband died recently and left her with a wicker hamper full of silver coins. But these coins aren't just money saved; each one has a memory attached. And while they can help secure her financial future, they also keep her attached to the past. This is a story about grief and death and life, which is all of these. "The Piano" is a warm little ditty about a woman who buys a piano she can't afford. "After you had been given so much of what you wanted in life, was it wrong to want more?" she asks herself. When it comes down to it, the piano makes her happy. Wineberg is showing us not just humans but their humanity, which is ever changing and yet instantly recognizable. The title story concerns adultery. Wineberg uses this platform to explore the way we justify our actions and our lives, and what words really mean; what is adultery? The character's mother is ill with cancer –she asks herself; what is that but a change in cells? “’What she loves about teaching English as a second language is the very fact of words, their precisions,’” Lucy, the main character says. “When you learn another language, she once read, you gain another soul.’ Later, Lucy says “The first language is love,” and “Having a lover when you’re married, she decides, is like knowing a second language. You don’t understand the idioms and eccentricities.” And like Lucy, all of these characters are stumbling towards a knowing. They are faced with something they previously didn’t see or realize, like learning a second language; they are learning to live in a world that’s different than before. -CL Bledsoe