Spence, June 1961–

PERSONAL: Born 1969; daughter of James (a mechanical engineer) and Anne (a nurse) Spence. Education: Graduated from Southern Missouri State University; Bowling Green State University, M.F.A.

CAREER: Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH, fiction writing faculty.

AWARDS, HONORS: Willa Cather Award, 1993.

WRITINGS:

Missing Women and Others (short stories), Riverhead Books (New York, NY), 1998.

Change Baby (novel), Riverhead Books (New York, NY), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: In Missing Women and Others, her first collection of stories, June Spence explores the lives of girls and women living on the edge—of bad marriages, bad divorces, bad jobs, and bad habits. But despite the marginalized existences of her central characters, critics appreciated how Spence's sharp eye for detail and witty style brought interest and depth to the kind of characters not otherwise much noted in literature. In one story, "Fight or Flight," the narrator and her friend Bernadette are jogging partners who play "who's the rapist" while they run; "they're all potentials," Bernadette finally decides, and the narrator finds herself checking her door lock five times each night. In "My Mama and Me Lose Track," the teenage protagonist and her sleepover friends exchange sexual urban myths, including "shattered light bulbs, smothered hamsters, blanching vegetables," and "IUD babies with springs embedded in their hands, cigarette babies womb-stunted and asthmatic…. It is a wonder that we dared to have sex at all." What the girls come to realize is that "this was the nightmare: not being loved." In one of the more comical stories, "Words for What She Wanted," the protagonist takes revenge on her sister, who has asked her to take care of her cat while she's away, by feeding it tinned pate: "She knew he would grow morose when Allison came back and tried to feed him those sordid brown pellets again."

The title story, placed last in the book, was singled out for the most attention by reviewers. It is told from the point of view of a town from which a mother, her daughter, and the daughter's friend have mysteriously disappeared. According to a Publishers Weekly critic, their stories are "obscured by conflicting stories from likely witnesses" and by others who manage to confuse the situation—some who confess or point to alien intervention, newspaper reporters, even "the fading posters in store windows, and the psychologists who advise moderate exercise and lots of rest to all who fear a similar fate." Laura Miller, in her review of the book for the New York Times Book Review, wrote of the story "Missing Women": "The community tries to digest the mystery through the usual means, but it remains unassimilated, and the townspeople (and the reader) are thoroughly spooked."

Reviewers of Spence's debut collection were generally impressed with the book, although some qualified their praise. Miller thought that the collection grew stronger as it progressed, culminating in the final, title story. The earlier stories, Miller wrote, are patterned after "'the classic New Yorker story'—a handful of moments evocatively sketched that capture a character or two in the course of a few pages." Miller did not feel that these stories evoked much reaction, writing that their subjects, not often found in stories, might be better off that way. But the strength of the title story, Miller wrote, "bodes well for this writer's future." Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, writing for Library Journal, recommended the book. She noted Spence's endings, which "while lacking neat resolutions,… point the reader in the direction the characters may go." She also applauded the title story for its dreamlike narration and persuasive evocation of women's roles.

Spence's first novel, Change Baby, tells the story of Avie Gross, a twenty-four-year-old woman whose life has been defined by her perceptions of being a "change baby" who was born to her mother, Mabry, shortly before menopause. After escaping small-town Regina, North Carolina, Avie thought life could only get better. Instead, she has become a recovering alcoholic involved in a difficult affair with a married man. When seventy-three-year-old widow Mabry is injured in a house fire, Avie returns to Regina to care for her and finds herself plunged back into the stifling, repressive small-town atmosphere she grew to hate years ago. When a cousin reveals shocking facts about Avie's relationship to her mother and her two older siblings, a cascade of unpleasant family secrets results, causing Avie to question not only her identity but also her place within the family she thought she knew. As Avie struggles with these revelations and with the possibility of a budding romance with a local pastor, she realizes that if she does not overcome the generation-spanning dysfunction of her family, she will be overwhelmed by it. "Spence's prose is deft, forceful and quirky,… but never overbearing, and her alternating narrators … have delightful voices," commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Similarly, Library Journal contributor Leann Restaino remarked favorably on the book's "crisp, vivid narrative." Carol Haggas, writing in Booklist, called Change Baby a "flawlessly executed debut novel," while the Publishers Weekly critic named it an "impressive first novel" and a "true winner."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 1, 2004, Carol Haggas, review of Change Baby, p. 65.

Library Journal, May 15, 1998, Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, review of Missing Women and Others, p. 118; September 1, 2004, Leann Restaino, review of Change Baby, p. 143.

New York Times Book Review, July 12, 1998, Laura Miller, review of Missing Women and Others, p. 11.

Publishers Weekly, April 20, 1998, review of Missing Women and Others, p. 44; August 9, 2004, review of Change Baby, p. 229.