Father Guards The Sheep is a collection of eight short stories by award-winning American author, Sari Rosenblatt. The collection won the 2020 Iowa Short Fiction Award.

In Daughter of Retail, Ellen Schmurr, the daughter of an obsessive mathematician finds a way to excel in his eyes, to step out of her older brother’s shadow, when she connects with a foundation garment customer in Schmurr’s department store.
In Miss McCook, a fifth-grade teacher has to deal with mouthy students, an unsafe apartment, an intruder and a bad case of nervous insomnia.

In Harvester, a NYU research assistant loses her job, but finds a challenge making a success of a loving, but failed, gesture her boyfriend makes concerning his dog.
In The New Frontier, Joel Weissman’s father is a single-minded lecturer on rubber. Joel’s step-mother is supportive but lives elsewhere. Can Joel use his experience with this suave, well-spoken geek to succeed in his How It’s Done speech for his class?

In Sweethearts, a harried wife and mother of two misses the prestige her professional life afforded her, especially when dealing with a snarky PTA mom. Her husband’s interest with the friend of his ex is irritating, although the attention to her from a gym attendee bolsters her confidence.
In Communion, a husband comes home from a difficult work day to find a distressed neighbour on his porch. The situation requires the provision of soda, soup and sandwich, as well as a visit from a nun, but is not resolved without physical restraint.

In Father Guards The Sheep, dismissed from her last position, Esther gains, under false pretences, a position with the New Haven Arson Warning and Prevention Strategy. She is to predict which houses landlords might want to torch. At the same time, she sabotages her mother’s inconvenient business plan with a lie, to ensure her own accommodation.
In As In Life, Ellen Schmurr returns, after twenty years away, to Naugatuck, to her father’s department store, to help her family organise live-in care for her elderly father, Irv, who has been ejected from a care facility: “Our father was born without a fine mesh strainer, and as a result anything that comes into his brain, any disturbing or anxious or mean thought, goes directly into his mouth exactly as it’s been delivered to him from his circuits. He doesn’t have the cognitive wherewithal to be diplomatic or euphemize.”

These are character-driven tales that have a distinct Anne Tyler feel to them: ordinary people living ordinary lives that somehow shine. Sometimes the stories feature the same characters in alternate lives, or from a different perspective, or at a later time. Rosenblatt is clearly talented at depicting life’s challenges and how people deal with them. A very enjoyable read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and University of Iowa Press

𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫? 𝐃𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐲, 𝐃𝐚𝐝, 𝐲𝐨𝐮’𝐫𝐞 𝐚 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐚𝐧, 𝐈 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐡 𝐢𝐧 𝐨𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐝𝐨𝐦.

In this collection, a young girl feels like ‘filler’ to her athletic brother as she takes the first steps into her future, working at her father’s retail store “Schmurr’s”. In 𝘔𝘪𝘴𝘴 𝘔𝘤𝘊𝘰𝘰𝘬, a college grad works as a fifth grade school teacher, successor to a woman on maternity leave and feels inept coping with loud-mouthed students who love laughing at her. She moves into an apartment that her over protective father is sure makes her an ‘eligible young victim’, a place that gives her many sleepless nights. A research assistant loses her job and moves in with her boyfriend, new to the relationship things are moving too fast, she torments herself wondering about his ex and trying to ease his dog Rose into her own new house.

My personal favorite, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘍𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘳, is about a little boy (Joel) left long ago by his first mother, in the care of his single father and loved by his father’s second wife Mim, but that too has crumbled. As he struggles to understand the intricacies of their relationship, and how his father could invest such passion in his job lecturing about rubber and have none left to spare for the women in his life, he discovers that he has a knack for impressing audiences himself. Like father like son? Is he also just like the man Mim would “wash right out of her hair?”

𝘚𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘴: President PTA oddball makes an enemy of the top mom but that’s the least of her problems when her hubby runs into an old friend. Maybe candy is a sweet enemy to some, but for her it is patient and kind. The title story 𝘍𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘎𝘶𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘩𝘦𝘦𝘱 is about disbelief and reinvention when a woman misleads others to secure a job on the Arson Squad.

The last story takes us back to Schmurr’s store and the aging, filterless father whose anger is strongest, mind clearest when he is on the attack towards his own children and wife. It’s mean at one angle, funny at another but in new light it’s surrender to things for what they are 𝘈𝘴 𝘐𝘯 𝘓𝘪𝘧𝘦.

The characters are well written but some of the stories left me empty. What worked is the inability some of the characters suffer in trying to understand themselves, like the father in 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘍𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘳. There is defeat, acceptance, fear, anger and hope. All in all the stories were engaging if I didn’t always understand the ending. I adored little Joel, I think he could have a book all his own.

Publication Date: October 2, 2020

University of Iowa Press

Sari Rosenblatt writes interesting, complex, and realistic characters. These are strong, character-driven stories focusing on different ways fathers watch over their families, from the perspectives of their children, in different ages and stages of their lives. Each story stands alone, but they're also loosely connected in a way that rounds out and finishes the collection well. Pick up this book when you want some good people stories.

I liked this overall. Humor is tough to pull-off, but much of it worked. The stories are varied enough and mostly enjoyable. This is a nice light read. 3.5 Stars.

Thanks very much for the ARC for review!!

Rosenblatt's prose is wonderful--lively and sparkly, making jokes and thoroughly enjoying itself. The settings and premises of the stories are similarly whimsical, like the Schurr's Department Store bra department and an NYU research job that involves classifying news articles by meaningless strings of numbers. Unfortunately, the joke of writing seems to have taken precedence over its object; in other words, I couldn't locate what, in real life, the comedy was referring to.

Part of the problem is that the characters are flat-ish by design, their emotions never taken seriously, their desires never particularly believable, nothing much of importance at stake. Compare this to the comic writing of authors like Percival Everett, George Saunders, or Taffy Brodesser-Akner, where the joy of the joke is dependent on the seriousness of the underlying ideas or the pathos of the whimsical world's people.

In the end, Rosenblatt's delightful sentences were not enough to make the reading of this collection a delight.