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Black Light
With raw, poetic ferocity, Kimberly King Parsons exposes desire’s darkest hollows—those hidden places where most of us are afraid to look. In this debut collection of enormously perceptive and brutally unsentimental short stories, Parsons illuminates the ache of first love, the banality of self-loathing, the scourge of addiction, the myth of marriage, and the magic and inevitable disillusionment of childhood.
Taking us from hot Texas highways to cold family kitchens, from the freedom of pay-by-the-hour motels to the claustrophobia of private school dorms, these stories erupt off the page with a primal howl—sharp-voiced, bitter, and wise. Black Light contains the type of storytelling that resonates somewhere deep, in the well of memory that repudiates nostalgia.
Taking us from hot Texas highways to cold family kitchens, from the freedom of pay-by-the-hour motels to the claustrophobia of private school dorms, these stories erupt off the page with a primal howl—sharp-voiced, bitter, and wise. Black Light contains the type of storytelling that resonates somewhere deep, in the well of memory that repudiates nostalgia.
212 pages, Paperback
First published August 13, 2019
148 people are currently reading
7346 people want to read
About the author
Kimberly King Parsons
4 books278 followersKIMBERLY KING PARSONS is the author of the national-bestselling novel We Were the Universe, number two on TIME Magazine’s Best Books of 2024 and a Dakota Johnson Book Club pick the New York Times calls “a profound, gutsy tale of grief’s dismantling power.” Parsons’s debut collection, Black Light, was longlisted for the National Book Award and the Story Prize. A recipient of fellowships from Yaddo and Columbia University, Parsons won the 2020 National Magazine Award for “Foxes,” a story published in The Paris Review. She lives with her partner and children in Portland, Oregon, and teaches fiction in the MFA Writing Program at Pacific University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 288 reviews
February 18, 2020
***NOVEMBER 2019 UPDATE*** This delightful book has unseated the presumptive champion to become my annual six-stars-of-five bestestest read of the year!
AND it was a 2019 NBA longlister...AND it's in the 2020 Tournament of Books!
Don't start this read if you're not ready to go there. You know the "there" I mean, that there that Gertrude Stein railed against not being there in Oakland, California, circa 1920. Or today, for all I know or care. The there you're going with Author Parsons is the there that we try hard to deal with each in our separate ways, the there that we hate but need. You're not going alone. You might, in fact, prefer solitude on the trip, but by definition, reading is an accompanied silence. Like a playlist of stuff you can't remember liking when you were twenty but comes up when you enter the year you turned twenty into YouTube's maw.
The whole collection's about the messiness of being alive, the passionlessness of the quotidian, purple cabbage Thai dishes that jumble against red beards, hairy armpits. And you know what, no one wins.
There it is. This mess of words and ideas is what's kept Author Parsons busy the past twelve or so years. It's been a good, solid busy, as you can see if the hard stuff is where your reading needs are right now. It's actually more hard for me to imagine her finding the room inside herself to birth two kids! All this life, all these people, you end up feeling like your entire brain is swelling from their bad breath and farts.
As is my wont, I used the time-honored and very efficient Bryce Method to (re)view the stories as they came over at my blog.
SIDE NOTE I was uberpleased that Author Parsons liked my review!
AND it was a 2019 NBA longlister...AND it's in the 2020 Tournament of Books!
Don't start this read if you're not ready to go there. You know the "there" I mean, that there that Gertrude Stein railed against not being there in Oakland, California, circa 1920. Or today, for all I know or care. The there you're going with Author Parsons is the there that we try hard to deal with each in our separate ways, the there that we hate but need. You're not going alone. You might, in fact, prefer solitude on the trip, but by definition, reading is an accompanied silence. Like a playlist of stuff you can't remember liking when you were twenty but comes up when you enter the year you turned twenty into YouTube's maw.
The whole collection's about the messiness of being alive, the passionlessness of the quotidian, purple cabbage Thai dishes that jumble against red beards, hairy armpits. And you know what, no one wins.
There it is. This mess of words and ideas is what's kept Author Parsons busy the past twelve or so years. It's been a good, solid busy, as you can see if the hard stuff is where your reading needs are right now. It's actually more hard for me to imagine her finding the room inside herself to birth two kids! All this life, all these people, you end up feeling like your entire brain is swelling from their bad breath and farts.
As is my wont, I used the time-honored and very efficient Bryce Method to (re)view the stories as they came over at my blog.
SIDE NOTE I was uberpleased that Author Parsons liked my review!
I *loved* reading your take on every story 🖤
— Kimberly King Parsons (@kkingparsons) August 19, 2019
August 17, 2019
EXCERPT: I'm usually nervous in cars. Whether I'm driving or riding, I can't seem to forget that I'm in a little shell,hurtling along. I want a death that comes from the inside, something I won't have to watch as it's happening - a clot turned loose in my brain, a glossy organ seizing up and shuddering in secret. Car wrecks are shattered windshields and jutting bones, the listless highway patrol scooping bits of you and not-you off the asphalt, zipping the whole mess into a bag. But when Bo is driving - even though she's always looking at herself in the rearview or swerving around road trash in case it's a bag of kittens - my anxiety, usually a thrum as steady and constant as my heartbeat, is something I can smother, tamp down, and forget about for a while.
ABOUT THIS BOOK: With raw, poetic ferocity, Kimberly King Parsons exposes desire’s darkest hollows—those hidden places where most of us are afraid to look. In this debut collection of enormously perceptive and brutally unsentimental short stories, Parsons illuminates the ache of first love, the banality of self-loathing, the scourge of addiction, the myth of marriage, and the magic and inevitable disillusionment of childhood.
Taking us from hot Texas highways to cold family kitchens, from the freedom of pay-by-the-hour motels to the claustrophobia of private school dorms, these stories erupt off the page with a primal howl—sharp-voiced, bitter, and wise. Black Light contains the type of storytelling that resonates somewhere deep, in the well of memory that repudiates nostalgia.
MY THOUGHTS: There are a lot of everyday materials that fluoresce or glow when placed under a black light. A black light gives off highly energetic ultraviolet light. Just as these energetic stories fluoresce and glow as they are being read. And just as a black light shows up things not normally visible to the human eye, these are the things that are focused upon in this collection of short stories.
Don't expect anything cute or heartwarming. The author focuses on the seamier side of life, the bits that happen, but nobody talks about, the bits that are swept under the carpet and glossed over. It is our fears and disappointments that she focuses on, not our dreams, aspirations and achievements.
Some of the stories border on the bizarre, all are slightly strange, but very, very real. This was an interesting read, one that deserves not to be hurried. These stories bear a closer inspection and I will be giving them a second read.
My two favourites in this collection are Fiddlebacks, and Starlite.
#BlackLight #NetGalley
😉🤔😏🙄
THE AUTHOR: Kimberly King Parsons is the author of the short story collection Black Light, forthcoming from Vintage August 13, 2019, and the novel The Boiling River, forthcoming from Knopf in 2020ish. Her fiction has been published or is forthcoming in The Paris Review, Best Small Fictions 2017, New South, Black Warrior Review, No Tokens, Joyland, Ninth Letter, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Her book reviews and interviews have appeared in Bookforum, Fanzine, Time Out New York, The Millions, and elsewhere. She lives with her partner and sons in Portland, OR, where she is completing a novel about Texas, motherhood, and LSD.
DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Vintage, via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of Black Light by Kimberly King Parsons for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.
For an explanation of my rating system, please refer to my profile page on Goodreads.com or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com
This review and others are also published on Twitter, Amazon and my webpage https://sandysbookaday.wordpress.com/...
ABOUT THIS BOOK: With raw, poetic ferocity, Kimberly King Parsons exposes desire’s darkest hollows—those hidden places where most of us are afraid to look. In this debut collection of enormously perceptive and brutally unsentimental short stories, Parsons illuminates the ache of first love, the banality of self-loathing, the scourge of addiction, the myth of marriage, and the magic and inevitable disillusionment of childhood.
Taking us from hot Texas highways to cold family kitchens, from the freedom of pay-by-the-hour motels to the claustrophobia of private school dorms, these stories erupt off the page with a primal howl—sharp-voiced, bitter, and wise. Black Light contains the type of storytelling that resonates somewhere deep, in the well of memory that repudiates nostalgia.
MY THOUGHTS: There are a lot of everyday materials that fluoresce or glow when placed under a black light. A black light gives off highly energetic ultraviolet light. Just as these energetic stories fluoresce and glow as they are being read. And just as a black light shows up things not normally visible to the human eye, these are the things that are focused upon in this collection of short stories.
Don't expect anything cute or heartwarming. The author focuses on the seamier side of life, the bits that happen, but nobody talks about, the bits that are swept under the carpet and glossed over. It is our fears and disappointments that she focuses on, not our dreams, aspirations and achievements.
Some of the stories border on the bizarre, all are slightly strange, but very, very real. This was an interesting read, one that deserves not to be hurried. These stories bear a closer inspection and I will be giving them a second read.
My two favourites in this collection are Fiddlebacks, and Starlite.
#BlackLight #NetGalley
😉🤔😏🙄
THE AUTHOR: Kimberly King Parsons is the author of the short story collection Black Light, forthcoming from Vintage August 13, 2019, and the novel The Boiling River, forthcoming from Knopf in 2020ish. Her fiction has been published or is forthcoming in The Paris Review, Best Small Fictions 2017, New South, Black Warrior Review, No Tokens, Joyland, Ninth Letter, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Her book reviews and interviews have appeared in Bookforum, Fanzine, Time Out New York, The Millions, and elsewhere. She lives with her partner and sons in Portland, OR, where she is completing a novel about Texas, motherhood, and LSD.
DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Vintage, via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of Black Light by Kimberly King Parsons for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.
For an explanation of my rating system, please refer to my profile page on Goodreads.com or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com
This review and others are also published on Twitter, Amazon and my webpage https://sandysbookaday.wordpress.com/...
December 7, 2019
I think I will be a dissenting voice for these stories. I found them to be repetitive in ways that were unpleasant.
So much fatphobia, either from a self-directed perspective or other-directed, but all from people who hate fatness and largeness, equating it with disgusting, unclean, lesser-than. The author may be making a point but who wants to read that over and over? In the first story, a woman is larger than her medical student boyfriend, who lectures her in micro-aggressive ways about her story; she is described as cracking a toilet in a dive bar. In another story two women who clearly have eating disorders refer openly to their female coworkers as cows. In another story a woman describes her family as piggies.
Many of the characters see each other only in the ways they can use them. Yes I know this happens in real life but I didn't enjoy reading about it.
There is a repeating theme of seeing light or jewels inside other bodies, an interesting idea once but it's overused by showing up repeatedly.
I know there's a trend in MFA programs for women to grab hold of unpleasantness as if it is the same as being more feminist. I just don't enjoy it much, and the characters in these stories don't either - they are miserable, living in squalor or addiction, and self-destructing.
So much fatphobia, either from a self-directed perspective or other-directed, but all from people who hate fatness and largeness, equating it with disgusting, unclean, lesser-than. The author may be making a point but who wants to read that over and over? In the first story, a woman is larger than her medical student boyfriend, who lectures her in micro-aggressive ways about her story; she is described as cracking a toilet in a dive bar. In another story two women who clearly have eating disorders refer openly to their female coworkers as cows. In another story a woman describes her family as piggies.
Many of the characters see each other only in the ways they can use them. Yes I know this happens in real life but I didn't enjoy reading about it.
There is a repeating theme of seeing light or jewels inside other bodies, an interesting idea once but it's overused by showing up repeatedly.
I know there's a trend in MFA programs for women to grab hold of unpleasantness as if it is the same as being more feminist. I just don't enjoy it much, and the characters in these stories don't either - they are miserable, living in squalor or addiction, and self-destructing.
November 25, 2019
National Book Award Longlist 2019. A black light makes visible that which is invisible in natural light. What is more, it causes facial features to look ugly—even grotesque. Parsons focuses her black light on the poor and marginalized in these dozen short stories. Their lives are messy. They may be addicted. They may lie and cheat. There is a loneliness and emptiness in these teenage/twenty-something characters that matches the semi-rural Texas where these stories take place.
Parsons' raw, fierce eloquence gives voice to the fears and disappointments of these young adults. Recommend.
Parsons' raw, fierce eloquence gives voice to the fears and disappointments of these young adults. Recommend.
January 30, 2019
Is Friday Night Lights meets Ottessa Moshfegh a thing? Because this collection is kind of like that: unafraid of being dark or weird or gross, and set within the wandering, vacant emptiness of Texas, or anyplace far enough away for you to feel like there's no one else around. These are my favorite kinds of stories, with sharp, surprising sentences and characters full of wanting and loneliness, resourcefulness and humor.
October 21, 2019
This short story collection was an interesting mix of the dark and gritty with the mundane. These stories center around the lives of the poor and the marginalized. The collection overall was a bit uneven with some stories not as strong as the others. 3.5⭐️
June 25, 2020
This hyper-realistic short story collection is dark and depressing and with prose not always sharp enough to work for me. The stories are mostly about people in the middle of bad decisions; not necessarily life-threatening bad decisions but rather smaller, mundane ones. Often these decisions involve neglect, neglect of their own bodies, their living environment, or most tragically their children. In subject matter it reminded me of Lidia Yuknavitch's writing (who makes an appearance in the acknowledgements) but writing wise it could not reach her brilliance. I did not love the way Parsons wrote about weight and sadly too many of her protagonists were unkind about either their own bodies or the bodies of others.
I received an arc of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
I received an arc of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
August 27, 2019
A debut that entertains, stuns, and dazzles at every risk-taking turn. This is short story as art and it's mind-boggling that the two best stories, Glow Hunter (a sensory trip) and Starlite (a seedy hotel masterpiece), were not published before this book's release, making your purchase of this collection mandatory. Parsons is a force and her perfect blend of humor, longing, propulsive style, and humid southern atmospherics makes Black Light one of the best books of the year. I mean, holy shit, people.
January 11, 2019
This book is the best. A fever dream with grip. No one writes a sentence like Kimberly King Parsons.
January 20, 2020
Tournament of Books Longlist
New to Me in 2020
Parsons short story collection Black Light reads like a forensic examination exposing the grit the grime and all the pieces of ourselves we leave behind in this life. Set mainly in rural Texas and centered on the experiences of women, these are mournable stories. You have daughters abandoned by their fathers, children unsure of which version of their mother awaits them at home, girls rejected by their lovers and women whose lives are directed by their own self loathing. This collection cracked me open and left me raw. One of my Goodreads friends Richard Derus said in his review - "Don't start this read if you're not ready to go there." Sage words of advice for Black Light is a heavy load to bear that requires the reader to spend time in those uncomfortable spaces we typically try to avoid.
New to Me in 2020
Parsons short story collection Black Light reads like a forensic examination exposing the grit the grime and all the pieces of ourselves we leave behind in this life. Set mainly in rural Texas and centered on the experiences of women, these are mournable stories. You have daughters abandoned by their fathers, children unsure of which version of their mother awaits them at home, girls rejected by their lovers and women whose lives are directed by their own self loathing. This collection cracked me open and left me raw. One of my Goodreads friends Richard Derus said in his review - "Don't start this read if you're not ready to go there." Sage words of advice for Black Light is a heavy load to bear that requires the reader to spend time in those uncomfortable spaces we typically try to avoid.
May 19, 2019
This collection doesn't shy away from the grotesque and beautiful. Parsons' characters are entirely relatable. Sad, bored, difficult, destructive, endearing and often hilarious. These stories have some of the best opening and closing sentences I've ever read (and everything in between is pretty damn good, too).
October 31, 2019
Weird. Unsettling. Brutal. Blunt. Savage. Off-kilter. Dreamy. Luminous. Vivid. Odd. Effing glorious. I'm obsessed with it. And I found a new favorite author.
(Review to come, I think)
(Review to come, I think)
November 13, 2019
This is a collection of short stories primarily set in a semi-rural working class Texas, where there are quantities of both insects and grime. The characters in these stories are primarily children and young women negotiating lives that are marked by insecurity, whether emotional, parental or financial. Despite this common thread, the stories are varied and very interesting. While I liked Parsons's stories set in this world, the two stories that had the most impact were the two that step outside this environment. The first, Guts, follows a young woman whose relationship with an almost-doctor gives her the ability to see the diseases and ailments of the people around her. The other, Into the Fold, concerns a student at an exclusive boarding school who witnesses the ostracism of a new classmate.
Parsons is a writer to watch. Her observations are razor sharp and compassionate. I look forward to reading more by her.
Parsons is a writer to watch. Her observations are razor sharp and compassionate. I look forward to reading more by her.
August 4, 2019
In Black Light, Parsons mines the dingy side of life: the messy, the worn, the dirty. These stories are populated with the poor, the addicted, the liars, the wounded, the cheaters. Parsons deftly strings together this handful of compelling stories out of that muck of darkness. I blasted through this book in an evening, mesmerized by her stark stories, her hapless characters, the muddied insight into pallid lives, the feeble hope for redemption. Through all the darkness, there is clarity here: a sharp rendering of lives lived on the edge, and the brilliant human beauty that is found there.
November 24, 2019
I'm not sure what it is with contemporary short story collections from the North American Anglosphere, but I often feel deflated/bored. This has received critical acclaim and good reviews and is now on the Tournament of Books longlist. There's no denying that King Parsons can write a perfect sentence. However, despite the raw, gritty atmosphere and focus on people on the margins, it still came off like a cool, nonchalant, workshopped-to-death collection that left me feeling empty.
October 18, 2019
Disappointing. I was expecting something in the vein of Ottessa Moshfegh set in the dark underbelly of Texas, and instead this collection is mostly monotone, with performative "cool" writing, and stories that don't really go anywhere. All of the characters in Black Light have the exact same detached, observational and slightly paranoid tone. The narrators may be different types of people, but they all sounded the same.
I'm all for a character study (and the aforementioned Moshfegh excels in such writing), but reading Black Light reminded me of another recent debut collection that I didn't care much for--Carmen Maria Machado's Her Body and other Parties. Both books felt so contrived, that the writer was using every trick in her toolbox to convince the reader of her skill. I know many people loved that collection, but it really rubbed me the wrong way. Unfortunately this did too. 2/5
I'm all for a character study (and the aforementioned Moshfegh excels in such writing), but reading Black Light reminded me of another recent debut collection that I didn't care much for--Carmen Maria Machado's Her Body and other Parties. Both books felt so contrived, that the writer was using every trick in her toolbox to convince the reader of her skill. I know many people loved that collection, but it really rubbed me the wrong way. Unfortunately this did too. 2/5
July 4, 2019
Don’t miss Kimberly King Parson's BLACK LIGHT out in August. Queer Texas stories. From the “gimcrack ache” of unrequited love to the glow of a second night together, Parsons transcribes what’s irreducible in all of us.
August 31, 2019
Every story here is on the cusp--the language, the settings, the lives of longing and daring, the awkward and raw relationships. I love the title: think about what shines under weird and dark light. Parsons explores the Texas backdrop with her foot on the gas. Great collection!
September 3, 2019
this book was so gd good. ugh. will i ever get over it?
there were a couple stories that didn't captivate me as hard but for the most part i loved every single one from start to finish. the way parsons describes things is incredible. the details and the dialogues are touching and real as hell and she honestly writes like exactly how i want to write but way better than i could ever write. there were a few times where i'd finish up a story and have to sit there for a solid 10-15 minutes like 'wow ok' sort of just processing the sharp and sudden endings (every time without fail) that came when i still had so many questions n curiosities. oh and all the texas locations!
SIGH. thanks for that.
there were a couple stories that didn't captivate me as hard but for the most part i loved every single one from start to finish. the way parsons describes things is incredible. the details and the dialogues are touching and real as hell and she honestly writes like exactly how i want to write but way better than i could ever write. there were a few times where i'd finish up a story and have to sit there for a solid 10-15 minutes like 'wow ok' sort of just processing the sharp and sudden endings (every time without fail) that came when i still had so many questions n curiosities. oh and all the texas locations!
SIGH. thanks for that.
July 24, 2019
One of the best short story collections I’ve ever read. I devoured the first 100 pages in one sitting, then the last 100 pages in another sitting. I couldn’t put it down either time. This is a book of stories about ordinary people - ordinary people in various states of deprivation, despondency, raw longing, chaos, love.
We visit grimy motel rooms, the stuffy dorms of an all-girls school, the mushroom-laden grass off the side of a Texas highway, the stale reception area of a realtor’s office. Places that feel separate from us but also eerily familiar. Parsons’s observations about relationships, desire, female pain, coming of age, sexuality will feel so penetrating and on the nose to you. Her prose is so blisteringly honest, you’ll feel it in your veins. Black Light dissects all the darkness in an endearing way. I didn’t think it was possible for discomfort to be charming, but Parsons manages to make it so.
I love atmosphere in a book and Black Light is full of enveloping air. If Black Light was a scene you came across, it would be a young woman, smoking the forbidden cigarette in the gas station parking lot under a flickering streetlamp, it’s 3 am and still 85° out. I love these stories so much. A favorite of 2019. A forever re-read. Thank you Vintage for sending me a free review copy and congrats Kimberly King Parsons on such a compelling debut ⚡️
We visit grimy motel rooms, the stuffy dorms of an all-girls school, the mushroom-laden grass off the side of a Texas highway, the stale reception area of a realtor’s office. Places that feel separate from us but also eerily familiar. Parsons’s observations about relationships, desire, female pain, coming of age, sexuality will feel so penetrating and on the nose to you. Her prose is so blisteringly honest, you’ll feel it in your veins. Black Light dissects all the darkness in an endearing way. I didn’t think it was possible for discomfort to be charming, but Parsons manages to make it so.
I love atmosphere in a book and Black Light is full of enveloping air. If Black Light was a scene you came across, it would be a young woman, smoking the forbidden cigarette in the gas station parking lot under a flickering streetlamp, it’s 3 am and still 85° out. I love these stories so much. A favorite of 2019. A forever re-read. Thank you Vintage for sending me a free review copy and congrats Kimberly King Parsons on such a compelling debut ⚡️
April 4, 2019
Unfortunately, no matter how much you love an author a short story collection will be uneven. As readers we all know the score. Black Light is the debut story collection by Kimberly King Parsons. When I started this collection, I was unfamiliar with the author. These stories explore the human condition in all of it’s ugliness. I would be lying if I said I loved every story but Ms Parsons voice and skill as a writer made each story a compulsive read. The soft no and we don’t come natural to it would definitely be my favorites. I’m thrilled to see where Kimberly Parsons fiction is heading. If you enjoy Ottessa Moshfegh definitely check this book out.
October 4, 2019
Well it finally happened!! I finally found a book of short stories that I not only liked, I LOVED! I knew if I kept trying it would happen. I saw this book mentioned in the long list for the National Book Award and once I read the blurb I was hooked. I was mesmerized by Parsons’ writing. I don’t even know if I could pick a favorite story because they all spoke to me. What a wonderful talent, can’t wait to read more!
May 16, 2019
This book changed what I thought a short story collection could do with character development. King Parsons sees people and the world in a way few other writers do. She holds her deeply flawed, messy characters up to the Texas light, allowing them their full humanity. The result is a collection full of people who are sometimes awkward, maddening, or disgusting, but always beautiful. This is in no small part thanks to King Parson's deftness with language. Her sentences, like her characters, will leave you breathless.
June 6, 2019
Wow. What a stunner. This is one of the most exceptional story collections I have read in a long time. It made me think of how I came to love short stories in the first place a la Mary Gaitskill and Lorrie Moore. Parsons is the real deal, and these stories will make you laugh out loud--they will make you burn with longing. A truly remarkable book. I loved every minute of reading them.
September 4, 2019
Burned through this one. I know so many of the images will stick with me for a long time and the language was really special. I also fully loved the gay shit because THAT'S WHO I AM--but really, it was thoughtful and heartbreaking and beautiful.
April 3, 2019
I absolutely loved this book! Kimberly King parsons is a hugely talented author, and I can't wait to read what she comes up with next.
September 8, 2019
Flavorful stories, lyrical voice, portrait sentences. Short story collection goodness.
August 10, 2020
Parsons’s debut collection, longlisted for the U.S. National Book Award in 2019, contains a dozen gritty stories set in or remembering her native Texas. Eleven of the 12 are in the first person, with the mostly female narrators unnamed or underdeveloped and thus difficult to differentiate from each other. The homogeneity of voice and recurring themes – drug use, dysfunctional families, overweight bodies, lesbian or lopsided relationships – lead to monotony.
“Glow Hunter” and “We Don’t Come Natural to It” are representative: in the former, Sarah and her girlfriend Bo have sex and go for a drive while tripping on magic mushrooms; in the latter, the narrator has a crush on her co-worker Suki, who has lost 200 pounds, and they remain obsessed with their and others’ fat bodies (the references are inescapable: “a pudgy,” “the fatty,” “some cow,” “thinspiration”). The opening story, “Guts,” is uncomfortable for the way that it both fetishizes fat and medicalizes sex: when unreliable, alcoholic receptionist Sheila turns up at her boyfriend Tim’s hospital saying there’s something wrong with her internally, he performs an examination that’s part striptease and part children playing doctor.
“The Light Will Pour In” is refreshingly different for its Lolita-type situation. “Into the Fold,” set at a girls’ boarding school, reminded me of Scarlett Thomas’s Oligarchy. In “Fiddlebacks,” my favorite, siblings on a night hunt for creepy-crawlies come across their newly religious mother and the handyman trysting in a car. “Starlite,” the only one in the third person, has colleagues, one a supervisor and both married, meet up in a seedy motel for drugs and junk food. The shortest stories at just a few pages each, “In Our Circle” and “The Animal Part” animate art therapy in a mental hospital and urban legends told while camping (though I’d forgotten it, I’d encountered the former in The Best Small Fictions 2017).
These stories engaged me at neither the sentence level nor the plot level, but many readers (and critics) have felt otherwise. Here are two lines I liked, from “Glow Hunter”: “Bo says everything that scares you is something to poke at with a stick, to pick up and turn in your hands” & “I’m very aware that we are organisms on the surface of a rock, orbiting a burning star.”
“Glow Hunter” and “We Don’t Come Natural to It” are representative: in the former, Sarah and her girlfriend Bo have sex and go for a drive while tripping on magic mushrooms; in the latter, the narrator has a crush on her co-worker Suki, who has lost 200 pounds, and they remain obsessed with their and others’ fat bodies (the references are inescapable: “a pudgy,” “the fatty,” “some cow,” “thinspiration”). The opening story, “Guts,” is uncomfortable for the way that it both fetishizes fat and medicalizes sex: when unreliable, alcoholic receptionist Sheila turns up at her boyfriend Tim’s hospital saying there’s something wrong with her internally, he performs an examination that’s part striptease and part children playing doctor.
“The Light Will Pour In” is refreshingly different for its Lolita-type situation. “Into the Fold,” set at a girls’ boarding school, reminded me of Scarlett Thomas’s Oligarchy. In “Fiddlebacks,” my favorite, siblings on a night hunt for creepy-crawlies come across their newly religious mother and the handyman trysting in a car. “Starlite,” the only one in the third person, has colleagues, one a supervisor and both married, meet up in a seedy motel for drugs and junk food. The shortest stories at just a few pages each, “In Our Circle” and “The Animal Part” animate art therapy in a mental hospital and urban legends told while camping (though I’d forgotten it, I’d encountered the former in The Best Small Fictions 2017).
These stories engaged me at neither the sentence level nor the plot level, but many readers (and critics) have felt otherwise. Here are two lines I liked, from “Glow Hunter”: “Bo says everything that scares you is something to poke at with a stick, to pick up and turn in your hands” & “I’m very aware that we are organisms on the surface of a rock, orbiting a burning star.”
February 9, 2023
Wow, what a selection of stories. Most are quite short and run a variety of themes, but all are intense and raw. Don't remember ever reading a collection of stories where so many of them hit the gut. The stories compliment each other and fit together in this collection. Will definitely read more by this author.
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