Interior Designs: Stories

Philip Graham

"'We actually turn ourselves inside out and find comfort in what we've imagined,' one of the characters in the book's title story says, and it's that odd mixture of illusion and disillusion that makes Graham's stories so compelling, that makes reading this collection a sad and utterly convincing encounter with one who can, like the magician pulling an endless string of knotted scarves from beneath his cuff, perform the fiction writer's greatest feat--making us see through his eyes, compelling us to believe, without a doubt, in the world he has created."    --John Gregory Brown reviewing Interior Design for the Chicago Tribune, December 15, 1996.

Excerpt from the short story, "Another Planet," from Interior Design:

Finally I reached under the bed for my box of tennis balls.

Under the covers I held a flashlight between my chin and shoulder, and with a pen I drew on one of the balls. My pen sometimes catching on the fuzzy surface, I mapped out continents, river systems and mountain chains, creating a strange world I could hold in my hand. It looked like none of the planets on the mechanical model of the solar system that spun so wonderfully when my science teacher cranked it up, and on my planet there was only one town, only one house. Inside lived my family, and spaghetti was our favorite treat. We ate and joked noisily at the table, and we all asked for seconds. I allowed no bitter words to escape from anyone. After our meal was done and we cleared the table and washed the dishes together, I put the tennis ball away under the bed with all the other happy versions of my family. I was careful to rest it on an ocean, for I didn't want to crush anyone. How optimistic I was, to think our troubles could be solved, and yet how pessimistic, to think they could only be solved on another planet.