GOOD WOMEN

by Halle Hill ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 12, 2023

Twelve stories illuminate the lives of Black women in the contemporary Deep South and Appalachia.

The vividness of the situations and personalities, the sparkling distraction of brand names and status details, the intrusion of technology moments like an Apple Watch pinging with a bill reminder at a funeral—all of these, plus a healthy dose of dark humor, act to make the full force of the dissatisfaction and anger that drive Hill’s debut collection slow to be fully perceived. In the first story, “Seeking Arrangements,” a young woman is on a Greyhound bus with an older white man she met on a dating site. Supposedly he “created Myspace before Myspace,” though she can’t verify this with Google. “He calls me his ‘mutt’ and ‘little hot thing.’ He says he’s only teasing. He likes to chat on Yahoo! email. He thinks I’d look good with a shaved head.” Now he's convinced her to travel 22 hours from Nashville to Florida to visit his mother in “a Presbyterian retirement community with gates that keep people like me out.” She’s minding his vast array of medication (he says he’s too ill to fly) but in truth has no idea what she’s doing there and fantasizes about running off with Lakeisha, the bus driver. The story “The Best Years of Your Life” is narrated by the admissions officer of an unaccredited university in a former Sears building, a woman who puts equal energy into luring student prey and excoriating herself for being involved with this scam. The people who come to her—like a weathered white woman who dreams of a law degree that will help her get her son out of federal prison—often believe they have received a sign. “That sign,” she explains, “is nothing more than cache cookies tracking their 1 a.m. Googles: ‘how to start over’ or ‘how to go back to school with a 1.9 gpa.’ ” This story is where the title phrase comes up, more or less as a knife in the gut. “You’re a good woman,” the “World’s Best Meemaw” tells the narrator. “Your kindness is changing us, we won’t forget it.” Other characters are tormented by pregnancy (unwanted, ill-starred), weight control, evangelical faith, screwed-up mothers and fathers, and police brutality and are unable to find the comfort others do in Pema Chödrön, nontoxic cleaning supplies, or White Claw.

A stunning slow burn brimming with observation, emotion, and incident.

Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023

ISBN: 9798885740173

Page Count: 216

Publisher: Hub City Press

Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | SHORT STORIES | GENERAL FICTION