A haphazard and unpolished set of tales despite occasional Southern charms.
A collection of short stories that aims to inject real-world drama into tales of the holiday season.
Editor Davis takes up the laudable challenge of shedding light on rural poverty in an often saccharine genre. A recently released prisoner struggles to buy gifts for his daughters in Laura Hunter’s “As Luck Would Have It,” a notable work that encapsulates a bleak realism one doesn’t often encounter in stereotypical depictions of Christmas. In it, the ex-con gets out of prison only to encounter a post–Covid-19 world of social distancing in which the cost of protective masks is prohibitive and conservative members of his family fail to grasp the pandemic’s reality. However, other entries in this anthology fail to reach similar heights. Many unfold too quickly, offering sketchy narratives that feel wan and lifeless. Others simply feel inconsequential; in one story, for instance, a narrator merely glowers at rotten kids in a mall, while in another, a narrator unremarkably ruminates on his dad while peeling an orange. A few clichéd, hopeful endings lack any grit to speak of, and a few tales take place outside the Southern United States despite the book’s title: Pete Black’s “Stille Nact,” with its bland report of a World War I truce, is the most obvious example. In addition, “Moonlight” features a distracting use of Southern dialect that feels mocking and garish. Ultimately, although a few stories stand out as rare treats—including Jennifer Horne’s wryly narrated “Halfway to Nashville,” which closes the collection—this book too often feels as if one is rummaging through a stocking full of coal.
A haphazard and unpolished set of tales despite occasional Southern charms.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 75
Publisher: BWPublications
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Oddly exquisite.
Part essay, part story, part diatribe, part diary—even part dictionary—this book defies definition.
The narrators of this collection—a loose compilation of short works cut from Gen Z angst and internet gobbledygook—share more than a milieu. In “Love Story,” the fairytales of our youth are supplanted, “Once upon a time” replaced with “He was giving knight errant, organ-meat eater, Byronic hero....She was giving damsel in distress, pill-popper pixie dream girl.” Later on, “Halloween Forever” showcases another form of affection, that between an internet rabbit-hole denizen and “her” FBI agent, the one the meme says must be watching her. “Internet Girl” catalogs the protagonist’s descent into the digital, from Neopets to naked chat rooms. Managing to reference 2 Girls 1 Cup and 9/11 in a single sentence, the narrator continues apace, jumping from cultural touchstone to cultural touchstone without stopping for breath. The collection does take the occasional detour across a more traditional narrative arc, as in “Cancel Me,” in which the main character is locked out of a party. Standing in the rain with two dimwitted stand-ins for male mediocrity, she contemplates cancel culture, absolution, and, not for the last time, edgelords. The first-person narrators of these stories, only one of whom is named, share a hodgepodge of leftist beliefs not quite coherent enough to serve as evidence in the debate over whether they are in fact the same person. This book is billed as fiction, a truth that may recurrently shock the reader. The fictionality here is another layer to be parsed, along with thick films of irony and sincerity that demand to be scrubbed through by hand. If you text with a single index finger, steer clear. The girls who inhabit this world are only occasionally wise, but always clever.
Oddly exquisite.Pub Date: May 14, 2024
ISBN: 9780593656532
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
In 10 eerie stories, Valencia leans into the horror and grit under a shiny world.
Women get lost in deserts and caves and find strange creatures waiting—including their new selves.
Wellness retreats, guerrilla marketing campaigns, literary blogs, remote Airbnbs in Joshua Tree: Where there is glamour, there is terror in this self-assured debut collection. Although all Valencia’s stories are engaging, those that follow gangs of easily influenced women are the highlights of this set, such as "Mystery Lights," about a marketing campaign in Marfa hijacked by an angry bewigged influencer and her followers, or the Black Mirror-esque “The Reclamation,” about a desert wellness retreat with a cultlike leader. The gendered nature of the horror genre comes through in these stories’ looming threats of sexual violence, such as in the opener, “Dogs,” in which a woman’s escape from a pack of dogs lands her in a strange man’s locked SUV; “You Can Never Be Too Sure,” in which a myth about a predator prowling around a college campus collides with the truth; or “Bright Lights, Big Deal,” about working in the literary world pre-#MeToo. Girls disappear; some reemerge acting more animal. Some are lost forever to the forest. Aliens and ghosts hover close or fall away. In “Clean Hunters,” a ghost-hunting couple’s honeymoon is called into question when the wife can’t feel spirits anymore. In “The White Place,” a mysterious white orb hovers over a famous painter, her cook’s pregnant daughter, and the man they both are involved with. Valencia investigates the threats lurking behind our wellness brands and cave tours, viral literary aspirations and ski bum college friend groups. Self-actualization, she says, is sometimes not a desert meditation retreat—it may be a cave-dwelling flesh-eating creature. These stories show us there’s not all that much in the way between them.
In 10 eerie stories, Valencia leans into the horror and grit under a shiny world.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781959030621
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
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