Tape Review

Beyond My Father's Shadow
By Fran Yardley
Roundlake Sound
680 Bartlett Carry Road
Tupper Lake, NY 12986
Email: franyardley@excite.com
Reviewed by Alan Irvine

As the title suggests, this is a collection of stories concerning Fran Yardley and her father, or, more accurately, her father's influence in her life and her reactions to him and his influence. Indeed, substantial parts of the stories happen after her father's death and concern, not her father, but his influence still lingering in her life after his death. The four stories are all original, personal stories composed and told by Yardley, and all are substantial, ranging from 16 to 28 minutes in length. They include tales of a snowy bus ride home from school when she was a girl, of an adventure while traveling in Rome with her daughters, of her father's love of jazz, and of her father's death and the final disposition of his ashes.

The stories are all well told. Yardley's tellings are full of energy and life; she obviously enjoys telling these stories, and her enthusiasm is quite contagious. The listener can scarce resist getting swept up in that enthusiasm and joining in the fun of these tales. (That energy is pretty typical of Yardley's tellings, whether of folk tales or personal tales.) The tales are full of vivid details, richly filling out the picture of Yardley's life over the years. The details anchor the stories in Yardley's life and reveal much about her, not just as a storyteller, but as a person. By the end of the final story, we feel as if we have known Yardley for years, sharing in the ups and downs of her life. These stories are strikingly personal in the sense that they are obviously hers and hers alone, though we get the privilege of sharing them for a while.

Yet these strengths also point to the weaknesses of the tales. Yardley's enthusiasm tends to undercut the dark emotions in the stories. The stories deal with grief, despair, fear, uncertainty, and we need to experience those feelings for the final, happy resolutions to have their full impact. But Yardley is so obviously enjoying herself that her joy sometimes overwhelms the fear or grief, reducing it to just an abstract idea of emotion. And those rich details are sometimes too much, giving us more than we need to envision the story, including details that, while obviously important to that period of her life, are not necessarily important to the story at hand. In one story, "Welcoming the Drums," for example, she tells of her reaction to the news that a cherished family pet has died. The moment is touching, but has nothing to do with the ongoing story other than the fact that it happened during the same span of time. Similarly, she tends to stick too close to the actual facts at the expense of the story. At the end of the first story, "Refusing to Fly," for example, she narrates the events as they happened, then goes back and gives us a different ending, telling us the way the story should have ended, at least how, looking back, she now wishes it had ended. But since we already know that this ending is just a "should have been," it carries little weight. How much stronger that ending would have been if she had told the "should have been" first, as if that was how events played out, and only then, stopped and revealed the truth. Then the story would have carried a powerful message of how we often miss the opportunity for doing the right thing out of concern for our own comfort. As it is it is a nice story of a memorable series of events, but fidelity to the truth robs it of a more universal punch.

But if the stories are sometimes too accurate for their own good, they are still pleasant tales, well told. More than that, they are fun to listen to. Yardley is a delightful, energetic teller. You won't regret spending an hour and a half getting to know her and her father.