Lindsey, Mama, and Nona go to a pool party in their new handicapped-accessible van.

(from I Want to Show You More)

They drove to the party in the new van. Nona liked driving it. She said the van was a smooth ride and it was a blessing never to have to worry about parking. Next to Nona, Lindsey’s mother sat in her wheelchair, which locked into place with clamps built into the van’s floor. She was wearing her red cowboy hat.

This is my favorite story in the collection so far. I was immediately invested in Lindsey, her struggle to accept her mother’s quadriplegia and all of the changes that went along with it. Lindsey is horrified and disgusted by her mother’s condition–gnarled hands and urine bag–while also feeling an intense and abiding love: “she loved her, loved her desperately; she would sit with her, facing her, her back to the party, to the world.” It all feels very real, a vivid portrait of a family.

This story is online. Read it here.

A woman remembers the year her parents divorced. 

(from Hydroplane: Fictions)

My father went, Crazy.

My mother went, Crazy.

They thought I couldn’t see the fight. But I saw his hand flash through the air.

So I took the rocks to the car.

The neighbor girls could hear the war from their stoops.

I could still hear it clear.

I blared the horn to drown it out.

I was captain of my boat. I was thinking of my treasures.

I didn’t want to like this story, which was originally published in American Short Fiction‘s Winter 2006 issue. The writing style is very affected (think Gary Lutz). There are many paragraph breaks, as you can see, and a lot of repetition. Sometimes she even rhymes! I can’t believe she’s pulling this off, really, but she is. She won me over big time.

Because the prose is so stylized, I would sometimes forget just what it was she was writing about, but I became engrossed with the rhythm and beauty of the language. This story is about all of these things: divorcing parents, cars, blue shirts, boys playing basketball, becoming the person you want to be too late to do anything about it, unrequited love, catty girls on stoops, and shitty mothers, though Steinberg might disagree with me on all counts.

Listen to her read a story from her new collection, Spectacle, here.

A man finds himself without the means to communicate with his wife and children.

(from Dark Roots)

I watch people sometimes, wonder how they can walk around with the weight of what they know. Wonder if they feel like me, stumbling with lead shoes on the bottom of the ocean, swimming in a sea of the unsayable. It’s a mistake we make, thinking it’s words that tell us everything.

“A Pitch Too High for the Human Ear” is a pretty short short story, as are most of the stories in this collection. So far, I’m really impressed with Kennedy’s prose and range. This is a first person narrative, told from the point of view of a man who can no longer run like he used to, who sees his abilities failing. Even his dog grows old and deaf. I would suggest buying this collection, which got good reviews in the NYTimes and Kirkus. You can read most of the story here.

An old man with a brain tumor escapes his hospital bed and wanders in the snowy woods where a kid falls through the ice. (Worst summation ever?) (EDIT: Worse than I thought; I’d forgotten the word tumor. Of course he had a brain.)

(from Tenth of December)

The ice edge broke again, but, breaking it, he pulled him- self infinitesimally toward shore, so that, when he went down, his feet found mud sooner. The bank was sloped. Suddenly there was hope. He went nuts. He went total spaz. Then he was out, water streaming off him, a piece of ice like a tiny pane of glass in the cuff of his coat.

Trapezoidal, he thought.

Artists rarely save their title track for the end, but it’s easy to see why here. This story’s a straight-up heartbreaker. Maybe even a tearjerker. Then again, it’s unexpectedly life-affirming or at least bleak-lightening, or. I don’t know. And per It’s 3-something in the morning. I thought I went to bed early. Turns out it was just a nap. It’s a fine time to read this story, but writing about it? Not happening. You can read it here.

So that’s the end of the collection, and right on time, given that the flimsy spine of the advanced readers copy is about ready to give up the ghost. Shame to see a signed book falling apart, even one that lasted long enough to be read. I won’t be lending this one out.

“Epizootic”: Insurance men mourn their financial losses now that so many are committing suicide to give their families the big payout.

“Hundred Dollar Kisses”: A recently fired man answers an investigator’s questions are to why he struck his co-worker with a telephone.

Q: What is wrong with the world?

A: Everybody pays attention to pictures of things. Nobody pays attention to things themselves.

“Guardian of the Person”: A guy and his new wife drive home to pick up his inheritance. The uncle who raised him has a drink. The reader scratches his head.

“With His Hand on the Throttle”: Earl neglects his wife and plays with his model trains, to the chagrin of his mom.

(from While Mortals Sleep)

Some of these are like non-supernatural Twilight Zone episodes. I’m having trouble buying in. Like, there’s no way we as a people were as simplistic and stupid as we appear to be in “With His Hand on the Throttle.” Well, outside of bad television. That’s kind of how I feel about everything I’ve read so far from While Mortals Sleep. I liked the doom and gloom of “Epizootic” but the rest have been a little light and silly. There’s a reason Vonnegut never had these stories published.

A woman sends her lover out on a quick errand and she’s hit by a taxi.

(from Dark Roots)

Every day I go to get off at the wrong floor. I keep forgetting. She’s in rehab now. They’ve given her six weeks in here, to assess progress, testing all the reflexes and how hard her hands can squeeze. After that, well, we’ll have to see, they say. They mean moving her to a permanent residential facility. Those are the actual words they use; they are good at jargon, of course; that is their job.

I liked this story a lot (I say this frequently, don’t I? I need a new way to start these posts). But I did. The premise, though simple, is one I haven’t seen much in short fiction, and I was immediately drawn to the ease and simplicity of the prose. The love that the narrator has for Beth feels very real. I feel like I can see and hear and touch these people. I’m being sentimental now. Perhaps it’s too early to write this post. I’m eager to read the rest of Dark Roots, which I got in the mail yesterday.

The author has a new book out, Like a House on Fire. Here’s an interview with her. Maybe they have more awards in Australia, but it seems she wins a whole lot of prizes. Like, a whole lot. Maybe we should all move there.

A master of miniatures devotes himself to ever-smaller pursuits.

(from The New Yorker, April 10, 2006)

Despite the absence of visible evidence, he was certain of its formal perfection, of the elegant precision of its parts—never had he taken so much care.

A neat little story. This guy just keeps carving tinier creations — each improbably intricate and detailed — and eventually dedicates himself to making things even he cannot see. It’s not an emperor’s new clothes kind of deal; in fact, there isn’t a lesson here, as far as I can tell. Just an engrossing and brief of artistry and obsession. I think the fact that the title is pulled from from the first sentence is telling in that regard. This story is what it appears to be. You can read it here.

My office as work is a mess, so I’ve decided to try to chip away at the pile of old New Yorkers I have lying around.

Sexual assault at a medieval theme park leads to promotions for the victim and the witness.

(from Tenth of December)

Once again it was TorchLightNight.

Around nine I went out to pee. Back in the woods was the big tank that sourced our fake river, plus a pile of old armor.

Don Murray flew past me, looking frazzled. Then I heard a sob. Near the armor pile I found Martha from Scullery, peasant skirt up around her waist.

Martha: That guy is my boss. Oh my God oh my God.

I knew Don Murray was her boss because Don Murray was also my boss. All of a sudden she recognized me.

Ted, don’t tell, she said. Please. It’s no big deal. Nate can’t know. It would kill him.

From a sort of aerial view, this is old-school Saunders, the creepy/insane theme park populated buy douchey bosses and disgruntled, droney reenactors. But “My Chivalric Fiasco” is both darker and more ridiculous than I remember those old stories being. On the one hand there’s the grim horror of the one character being raped by her boss, and taking on shame because of it. On the other, there’s this drug, KnightLyfe, that somehow turns a relative dullard into an Arthurian orator, complete with suddenly capitalized Letters and ren faire phrasing, a la “But then there Occur’d a fateful Event.” So. Real world? Cartoon world? Does it matter? Surely it’s closer to the former than the latter, but mostly it’s up in the air. Saunders is a master at assembling the skeleton of a scene and letting the reader decide how serious things are, and how upset we want to get about everything.

I couldn’t find this story online in its entirety. Get the book, read it and upset yourself.

A man must flee his village before the faceless ones come for him.

(from There Is A Country: New Fiction from the New Nation of South Sudan)

The half moon was sinking slowly behind the dark rain clouds. The dreamy shadows melted into the dark corners around the compound like a blanket had been spread over them earlier. In one corner of the compound, four tiny lights were shining. They moved. Black cats.
I stood at the door to my hut. The night was still early, but the town had already gone to sleep. There was no public electricity and the few privately owned diesel generators in the neighbourhood had gone silent. It was very quiet. The children who had been singing in the compound next door had retreated to their homes. The night had come. I knew they would come for me one day. And when they do that night, I would be ready for them. “They” and “them” have no faces, but I had a fair idea who they were.
Juba 1991. It was a bad time for the citizens of the besieged town. The civil war had come to Juba for the first time. The town had been shelled several times. Citizens could hear the rumblings of heavy guns and fighting outside town. Casualties were being brought in as the army were witnessing heavy loses in battles. They had become jittery. And nobody knew the casualties on the rebel side.

This anthology came with the latest McSweeney’s, and it’s a damn cool idea. It’s not often you get to read the work of authors from a fledgling nation just now building its identity, and this first story from the collection is a strong one. Where What is the What — a book I cannot recommend enough — put the marauding muralhaleen (I think I have that right) in concrete terms, this swiftly moving story keeps the reader very much in the dark. All we know is that they’re fast, brutal and nocturnal predators. Frightening stuff.

(You can read this story here, but it’s pretty ugly compared to the anthology.)

A prepubescent girl surprises herself with her actions.

(from Ninth Letter Spring/Summer 2013)

In your memories of childhood, aren’t you mute, and isn’t this odd? I can never remember what I said, or to whom, or in what tone. One remembers the things done to one, the accusations, threats, perhaps the presents given, or some tickle of praise–but never, really, one’s response.

I liked this story a lot. It’s categorized as fiction, though it reads much more like nonfiction, particularly in certain instances (like the above passage). The story is about a young girl who is taken by her sister to her sister’s boyfriend’s house, where much older people sit around kissing, drinking, and watching TV. The girl ends up doing something inexplicable to herself and the others, which I won’t give away here.

I like the prose in “The River” very much. It’s smart and a bit challenging in places, yet totally readable. I’m really interested in stories about childhood, whether the narrator is looking back on her childhood or experiencing it in real time, and this story is able to capture so much of that TV-and-babysitter era.

I’m a big fan of Ninth Letter. Each issue has a unique and interesting design; it’s a literary magazine as well as an art project. The art never gets in the way of literature, though. I think you should subscribe.