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Wake in the Night
Six stories span a century of rural American women. Marriages occur in the 1930s for lack of other opportunities; a young girl dances to Thriller for her friend’s older brother; a pastor remembers her childhood spent fantasizing that she is the prophet John the Baptist. In the small towns of the Midwest, girls and women dream of finding voice and forcing the world to listen.
“Spanning the last century with narrators aged 10 to 100, these stories reveal women struggling to fit a definition of womanhood that cannot contain them. By employing forms that break with convention in the same spirited ways her characters do, Laura Krughoff creates a world of stunning detail that examines just what people will do when expectations stifle truth. In Wake in the Night, we are reminded why we must push beyond easy categories and find new ways of understanding the roles we play.” ~ Paula Carter, author of No Relation
“Laura Kroghoff’s stories have the lyrical exuberance of a Grace Paley in their bones.” ~ Christopher Grimes, author of The Pornographers and Public Works: Short Fiction and a Novella
“In these beautifully written and disarmingly humane stories, Laura Krughoff points out the problems with our preconceived notions, and then imagines what new notions we might generate in their place so she can undermine those, too. Reading Krughoff is like having the nicest person in the world tell you there’s no Tooth Fairy, but that, even if there were, said creature wouldn’t act at all the way you’d think it would.” ~ Andrew Farkas, author of Sunsphere and Self-Titled Debut
"Wake in the Night is flooded with life, and one gets the sense that Krughoff is a careful study of character and what forms a person’s identity. That curiosity and care with which Krughoff approaches her characters are deeply felt in her writing, making this an unforgettable collection." ~ Emily Webber, jmww
“Spanning the last century with narrators aged 10 to 100, these stories reveal women struggling to fit a definition of womanhood that cannot contain them. By employing forms that break with convention in the same spirited ways her characters do, Laura Krughoff creates a world of stunning detail that examines just what people will do when expectations stifle truth. In Wake in the Night, we are reminded why we must push beyond easy categories and find new ways of understanding the roles we play.” ~ Paula Carter, author of No Relation
“Laura Kroghoff’s stories have the lyrical exuberance of a Grace Paley in their bones.” ~ Christopher Grimes, author of The Pornographers and Public Works: Short Fiction and a Novella
“In these beautifully written and disarmingly humane stories, Laura Krughoff points out the problems with our preconceived notions, and then imagines what new notions we might generate in their place so she can undermine those, too. Reading Krughoff is like having the nicest person in the world tell you there’s no Tooth Fairy, but that, even if there were, said creature wouldn’t act at all the way you’d think it would.” ~ Andrew Farkas, author of Sunsphere and Self-Titled Debut
"Wake in the Night is flooded with life, and one gets the sense that Krughoff is a careful study of character and what forms a person’s identity. That curiosity and care with which Krughoff approaches her characters are deeply felt in her writing, making this an unforgettable collection." ~ Emily Webber, jmww
81 pages, Paperback
Published October 15, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 12, 2019
This book is a surprise. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking in ways I haven’t seen much of before, and truly original fiction is always a pleasure. To say the prose here is poetic is perhaps not going far enough — some of these stories actually seem to BE poetry, not in the conventional flash-fiction compression sense, all dense prose and concrete imagery and carved-out moments. Instead, these stories take their time; they seem to bloom on the page like a tea flower unfolding in hot water; they breathily float around ideas and emotions in hauntingly beautiful language. And yet there is nothing “light” or “flowery” about these powerful narratives of women struggling and awakening: wives in abusive marriages forging their existence in spite of misery, a young girl discovering sexual power in the face of a burgeoning pedophile, a daughter carrying the death of her mother through a long, long lifetime. “Each death is as singular as the first you can remember, your mother’s, when you were twelve,” the narrator states at the opening of “By the Time You are One Hundred.”
That narrative perspective is another remarkable feature of these stories: as though giving a casual middle finger to conventional wisdom about point of view, half of these stories are told in the second person. Two of them are told almost in the form of instructions. One is written entirely in questions—not a single statement in the entire six-page story. These are the kinds of stories we’re told shouldn’t work, and yet they do. They work wonderfully. They work wonders.
Throughout the book, the unifying theme is women. Women fighting each other, supporting each other, loving each other. Girlfriends and mothers abound. “People often assume I am lonely. And by people, I mean women,” says the narrator of “I Am the Voice Calling in the Desert.” “Perhaps I know this better than most women because my mother never quite recovered from the disappointment of me.”
But the core of everything isn’t the relationships between women—if this collection is about anything, it’s about how dangerous it is to be a woman, about what women do to survive.
“The girls are frightened, but they are safe,” the narrator of the title story says at one point. But then she turns it into a question: “The girls are safe, aren’t they?”
As in life, there is no easy answer to that question.
This is a daring and confident collection from a masterful writer making her own rules, and I am not only planning to reread it over the years—I plan to study it, to teach from it, to share it with others, to cherish it.
That narrative perspective is another remarkable feature of these stories: as though giving a casual middle finger to conventional wisdom about point of view, half of these stories are told in the second person. Two of them are told almost in the form of instructions. One is written entirely in questions—not a single statement in the entire six-page story. These are the kinds of stories we’re told shouldn’t work, and yet they do. They work wonderfully. They work wonders.
Throughout the book, the unifying theme is women. Women fighting each other, supporting each other, loving each other. Girlfriends and mothers abound. “People often assume I am lonely. And by people, I mean women,” says the narrator of “I Am the Voice Calling in the Desert.” “Perhaps I know this better than most women because my mother never quite recovered from the disappointment of me.”
But the core of everything isn’t the relationships between women—if this collection is about anything, it’s about how dangerous it is to be a woman, about what women do to survive.
“The girls are frightened, but they are safe,” the narrator of the title story says at one point. But then she turns it into a question: “The girls are safe, aren’t they?”
As in life, there is no easy answer to that question.
This is a daring and confident collection from a masterful writer making her own rules, and I am not only planning to reread it over the years—I plan to study it, to teach from it, to share it with others, to cherish it.
March 7, 2019
Wake in the Night is one of the strongest short-story collections I’ve read in years. The stories are solemn but powerful, bleak but invigorating. They explore the complicated lives of women with a depth that a reader can’t resist being moved by. In “This Is One Way,” my favorite from the book, the protagonist suffers decades of loveless marriage and loss before finding hope in a surprising revelation. The story carries the sadness of empathy along with it before forcing the reader into the equally overwhelming twin sadnesses of joy and understanding. In “Skinned,” the reader is left uncomfortable throughout as the child protagonist experiences something indescribable between perversity and liberation. “By the Time You are One Hundred” shows the pain of living too long, especially when everyone else is dying.
These stories kick you in the teeth, knock you down, and hold you there by your throat until you cry “Uncle!” before they help you to your feet again. The thing is, even if there were no story at all in these pieces, they still would be worth reading just for the quality of the prose. Krughoff writes with a tense, kinetic fury, sometimes in traditional styles, but other times in experiments that shouldn’t work but do. Two of the stories are written in second-person narration, which is a difficult enough trick to pull off. Beyond those, the stylistic gem is “History of a Hunting Accident,” written entirely in questions. Wow. Just having the guts to attempt something like that is impressive, but to pull it off with such precision while still managing to tell a compelling story? Magnificent. I’ll be thinking about that piece for a long time.
I can’t recommend this book enough. I’d probably give it six stars if I could. Well worth it.
These stories kick you in the teeth, knock you down, and hold you there by your throat until you cry “Uncle!” before they help you to your feet again. The thing is, even if there were no story at all in these pieces, they still would be worth reading just for the quality of the prose. Krughoff writes with a tense, kinetic fury, sometimes in traditional styles, but other times in experiments that shouldn’t work but do. Two of the stories are written in second-person narration, which is a difficult enough trick to pull off. Beyond those, the stylistic gem is “History of a Hunting Accident,” written entirely in questions. Wow. Just having the guts to attempt something like that is impressive, but to pull it off with such precision while still managing to tell a compelling story? Magnificent. I’ll be thinking about that piece for a long time.
I can’t recommend this book enough. I’d probably give it six stars if I could. Well worth it.
March 24, 2019
Wonderful book of short stories that give voice to an array of American women from around age 10 to 100. Every story was so full of emotion and show how the social conventions of the time influence people's decisions and how we live with those choices or push against them. These stories read together also showed that even though we think times change and people now have more freedom and choices, progress is slow and the old frame of mind still lingers. Read the whole book over two afternoons but kept thinking about these stories long after.
January 28, 2019
Wow! I was not expecting to feel so deeply when reading Wake in the Night. The connection to the characters is strong, and I could not wait to find out what happened next. My favorite stories were "Skinned" because of the intense desire and freedom, and "Wake in the Night" since the excitement and fear felt like they were mine. Enjoy!
May 26, 2019
This small collection of six stories packs a big punch in terms of style and perspective. Each brings us into the world and perspective of different women at different stages of life (and occasionally through these stages and perspectives in one story, as the opener "This Is One Way" and my personal favorite, "By the Time You Are One Hundred," do). Krughoff's play with point of view and focus on psychological interiors gives the reader a front row seat to the characters' histories, emotions; through them we experience ways in which they follow or kick against normative expectations of women and girls (feeling the stakes, the fallout, the joy, the regret involved along the way). Enjoyable yet with enough depth to put a catch in your throat, these short stories are masterful character studies that stay with you long after you're done reading them.
November 19, 2019
I love this little collection. The opening story, "This is One Way," is emotionally real, while "By the Time You Are One Hundred" is lovely. My favorite is "Skinned," a story that made me feel connected to all of the characters, the young girl whom the story is about, as well as the slightly older young boy who is described as "predatory." Krughoff depicts a world of disappointment and renewal.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews