“Bitter Butter,” on the other hand, turns in the other direction – what begins with whimsy ends in unapologetic darkness. (Though The Museum of Possibilities is by no means a grim read, Sibbald dispatches more characters than you might expect!)
The author’s journalistic and authorial instincts creep into her characters’ behavior. They are often observers. In “Best Before,” a supermarket cashier judges his customers by the groceries they bring through his checkout; in “Drowned,” a journalist reporting on a drowned woman sees her own life with every word she scribbles. Just as the world reflects ourselves back at us in unexpected ways, Sibbald’s characters also project their lives and longings onto the world they witness.
Longing, in fact, is one of the collection’s major themes; characters are driven by it, act on it, see the world through it. The book’s final section, “Wanda In Five Times,” brings to life the innocent longings of its titular character in a way that truly resonates. (If you’re a fan of Sibbald, you already know our protagonist from the 2006 novel Regarding Wanda. These stories fell outside of the scope of that book, but it would be unfair to call them “leftovers” considering how well they stand up on their own.) When we meet Wanda, she is an ‘army brat’ growing up in the 1960s, a life of unsettled homes and unpredictable departures. Her family appears to be the very picture of what the promoted idyll of the era would be – father the firm head of the household, mother in heels even to do housework – but as the stories progress, this façade disintegrates, largely due to our insider’s view through Wanda. In “Comet, It Tastes Like Gasoline,” Wanda’s conflict with her parents is, ostensibly, that they gave away new kittens to the SPCA; as parents might, they tell her they will all find new homes, but the dark truth eventually surfaces. The depth of her family’s dysfunction, however, is clear, and it has little to do with euthanizing kittens.
“Up In The Air, Junior Birdmen” is the central Wanda story in more ways than merely the literal. Up until this point, she puzzles and pains over youthful discoveries (such as a childishly innocent but not-particularly-positive sexual encounter) and strife (at a young age, Wanda’s turmoil leads to her guzzling Pepto Bismol). In this story, she pivots into adult understanding in several ways as she deals with the departure of her father. For the first time, she truly sees her mother as an independent entity, and the empathy she develops by story’s end comes during a crucial moment of maturation. From here, the stories move into Wanda’s adulthood. They are strong entries, but they lack the childhood perspective that evokes such a powerful mood in the other three stories.