You should definitely read Dark Tales by Shirley Jackson

After reading Shirley Jackson’s novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle, I looked for more of her work at my favorite bookstore Giant Nerd Books in Spokane. They didn't have any, so when I returned the next week, I was delighted to find four books of her books waiting. What a wonderful bookstore! So, I figured I ought to start fulfilling my part of the request and purchase Dark Tales—which I quickly devoured. In fact, at times, I would be reading and think how I ought to slow down. Or that it would be so nice to be finished with the book so that I could reread it with the second eye that brings so much more out. Suddenly, my first reading became a preliminary run. 

In my book, that's a sign of an excellent book.

Dark Tales by Shirley Jackson is a selection of stories from her previous collections and several unpublished works. The book is fantastic, every story a careful and ingenious work of art. If I’d realized upon purchase that the book wasn’t one of her original collections, I likely would have paused to read her collection The Lottery, which is already in my queue. Regardless, I will enjoy encountering these stories again, whether by rereading this collection or stumbling upon them in the collections she gathered during her lifetime. I will not keep you in suspense: this is definitely a book to read, no matter your preferred genre or style.

Every. Single. Story. Is. Fantastic.

The stories range from first-person to third-person, but the majority of them are told in third. The ordering of the stories is well done—each story complementing the one before it, whether in tone, subject matter, speed, or length.

All of the stories turn in the end, usually in an unexpected but earned way—much like the episodes in Twilight Zone. She very much could have written for the program, and one can easily imagine Shirley Jackson and Rod Sterling sitting by a fireplace trading cigarettes and stories.

In these “dark” tales, dark stands in for strange, unexpected, slanted. None are gory or gross, none are horror or require nail-biting in suspense. No, these are almost like illusions—where one expects ground, it turns out to be the reflection of ground—where one reaches into a hat for a rabbit and pulls out a smile. 

Because the stories absolutely function on the way they twist, I’ll simply note a few favorites and leave the rest to come alive to haunt you.

My absolute favorite is “Louisa, Please Come Home,” the story told by a young woman about how she ran away, how very well she planned it, and how all worked out swimmingly—from taking the bus instead of walking, to purchasing a plain raincoat that looked like anyone’s raincoat, to wandering the bus station late at night with other college-aged girls. Her trick, she believes, is to imagine herself as others like her and then to think like them. She finds a room in a house to rent and follows the news of her disappearance, which varies from kidnapping to murder. In one poignant moment, she and her landlady are having breakfast and the girl’s picture is in the newspaper. The girl remarks that she looks a lot like the picture, and her landlady waves her off and says not to be so self-absorbed. Ha! But it is not simply the telling of a well-executed plan but an exploration into the anonymity we all experience without trying:

“It’s funny how no one pays any attention to you at all. There were hundreds of people who saw me that day, and even a sailor who tried to pick me up in the movie, and yet no one really saw me.” 

This not-seeing—this fact of our being like so many others—becomes a terrifying reality toward the story’s end.

In another story, “The Story We Used to Tell,” two friends find themselves transported from a house into an old picture of the house. When the first friend disappears, she is searched for but the case of her whereabouts soon abandoned. Her friend insists that a few more days be given before giving up and that night she sleeps in her friend’s bedroom:

“The full moon had turned into a lopsided creature, but there was still moonlight enough to fill the room with a haunted light when I lay down in Y’s bed, looking into the empty windows in the picture of a house. I fell asleep thinking miserably of Y’s cheerful conviction that the old man was loose in the picture, plotting improvements.” 

When the friend also becomes consumed by the picture, she and her friend encounter a strange dancing couple who harass them and dance with them. This story is one of the darker visions in the book and is threaded with vivid, nightmarish imagery with a turn at the end that invites, if not requires, the reader to begin again.

Many times, I felt myself hearkening back to Patricia Highsmith's Collected Stories because of the variety in this collection and its particular focus on the house as an intimate space, such as the story of Highsmith's in which a young woman is tidying her house for her sister's visit, or in another in which a person continually buys parakeets and gives them to all the people who post "lost parakeet" signs in the city. All seems fine but nothing is actually fine.

In Dark Tales, Jackson walks Jack the Ripper into a bar, playing the role of a man worried about a girl slumped drunk in an alley; in another story, a wife imprisoned in her bedroom by a jealous husband has accepted her fate; in a short but memorable story about a college girl stealing small objects from her roommates, the ironic importance secrets play in creating community becomes laid bare. 

All told, these are stories to be told again. They are all quite readable, the style consistently beautiful but clear, the insights sudden and thought-stopping, and the variety of tales makes for a well-rounded trip through the halls of Jackson’s stories. I recommend Dark Tales this in every way and would hope the book or any one of its tales be included in literature classes. None of Jackson’s work appeared in any undergraduate or graduate literature course I took, though clearly should have—this is simply, and unquestionably, writing of the highest caliber. 

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Yes, Go Read Shirley Jackson's novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Until reading Shirley Jackson’s novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962), I’d somehow made it from high school to now only reading her widely anthologized short story “The Lottery.” That haunting story of a town’s annual ritual of stoning a randomly chosen citizen, despite no one remembering why.

I picked up a vintage paperback of We Have Always Lived in the Castle somewhere in life and finally read it over holiday break. It is one of the most beautiful and perfectly told stories I have ever read. It was so strange and right that I'd feel excited by the reading experience itself. Joyous. As one feels when falling in love, just being near the person. From the narrator’s way of thinking to the descriptions of the small town to the minds of the characters--Jackson's telling is rich and finely crafted in its minimalist approach. 

The narrator is the younger of two daughters in the Blackwood family, a once wealthy and powerful family in the town but after five family members were all poisoned to death at the same dinner, the family has become alienated, feared, and ridiculed by the town. The house remains like a haunted house on the outskirts of town, and Merricat is the only one of the three to leave the house for town, for weekly grocery shopping, which she does not enjoy.

“The rows of stores along Main Street was unchangingly grey. The people who owned the stores lived above them, in a row of second-story apartments, and the curtains in the regular line of second-story windows were pale and without life; whatever planned to be colorful lost its heart quickly in the village. The blight on the village never came from the Blackwoods; the villagers belonged here and the village was the only proper place for them.

I always thought about rot when I came toward the row of stores; I thought about burning black painful rot that ate away from inside, hurting dreadfully. I wished it on the village.”

Merricat and her older sister Constance live in the house with their wheelchair-bound uncle whose mind wanders in time, and he sometimes begins narrating parts of the night of the poisoning either as though he’s there again or as a more present-self who has been rethinking that night from every angle in order to figure out how it happened.

The older sister Constance had stood trial for the deaths and the trauma of that, not to mention and the loss itself has kept her homebound. It is a quaint but isolated life—one that the narrator loves. She loves her sister Constance, and her love reminds me of how I once felt about my older sister when I was very young--a kind of idolization as much as adoration. Merricat spends much of her time alone, busy in her mind creating games that help her determine varying routes through town or arbitrary rules that guide her daily play in the surrounding woods. Some of these rules call back to her life when her parents were still alive--there is the sort of faint outline of that life still showing through in this one.

She has learned about botany and cooking and much from Constance. Constance cares for both the uncle and Merricat, allowing them both to live as much in their imaginations as in reality. Which perhaps allows her to do so too; one of the magical aspects of the novel is only understanding Constance through her interactions with other characters. What sort of life had she imagined for herself before that night? Before that trial? How does she imagine herself now that she has become caretaker for a disabled uncle and wandering sister?  

However imagined, the way of life that Merricat, Constance, and Uncle Julian have measured out their days becomes threatened when a far-flung cousin comes to visit and ingratiates himself into the family. He begins courting Constance, which involves his frequent and vocal disagreement with the way she allows Merricat to behave or allowing Uncle Julian to live there instead of in an institution of some sort. The cousin comes to seem like the physical incarnation of the town and patriarchy—constricting, narrow, self-serving and with a lust for money. His presence makes the house feel under threat, and the narrator tries multiple clever ways to make him go away. Each attempt beautiful in its enactment.

But the way everything turns out, which I’ll leave to you to discover, leads to a kind of ideal life for the sisters--or at least for Merricat who has Constance all to herself. But their lives, fully autonomous now, exist only by sacrificing all interaction with the outside world in order to live it, safely. Where the town had tried to demolish them in rage and jealousy, now the town keeps them alive out of guilt and pity.

Surely there is a clear wisdom here that Shirley Jackson is pointing at, regarding the total sacrifice that women must make in order to live autonomous, creative lives—or perhaps it shows the extent that love, or nurturing, when used to protect another, can lead to self-destruction and the suffocation of one’s own possibilities. Multiple times while reading it I thought the novel must be a queer classic and taught in many a queer literature class due to its way of rendering identity, relationships, love, and the conflict between the individual and the community that leads, inevitably, either to the total annihilation of self or town. They cannot both live and retain their points of view because of the chasm in perspectives.

In conclusion, Jackson writing is superb. The style, the perspective, the way that the story and mystery of the family’s murders unravels via town folk chants, the wandering mind of the uncle, the overheard dialogue of an archaic afternoon tea. It’s gothic and observant and creative. Shirley Jackson has definitely become one of my favorite writers, shoulder to shoulder with Carson McCullers and Flannery O’Connor. She sees inside things and writes in the strange angles that reveal the world in useful light. And this book's light seems to glow like ghosts thrown on the wall by a modernist’s stained glass lamp. 

Perfect.

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Yes, You Should Find Mary Roberts Rinehart's Alibi for Isabel

When I picked up Mary Roberts Rinehart's Alibi for Isabel (1941), I believed it to be a novel and was quite surprised to find myself in the middle of a story collection--and what a pleasant surprise it came to be. This is my first Rinehart book, and I had no idea that she was considered America's Agatha Christie but can see why. The stories in this collection are wonderfully readable and full of variety in plot. There's murder mysteries, war stories, and even a Florida fishing story. Some stories end like punchlines and others with the ominous knowledge of what's to come. All of the characters are interesting, even when they're plainly awful.

The opening story "Once to Every Man" is about a couple with a one-year old; the mother is exhausted with caring for the child, even with the help of the nurse, and this is exacerbated by the rationing that makes shopping its own set of hurdles. Early on, we learn that her husband has announced that he will be leaving her for his mistress, and even would like her to take the train to the lawyer in order to draft up the papers. She realizes the utter nonsense of his decision and decides to leave the baby with him so that he can can come to his own epiphany. 

And so he finds himself unable to focus at work, starts noticing the flippant greed of his mistress-fiance who does not want to care for the baby or cook or sit home with him when she could be out dancing; he is then confronted by the nurse-maid packing up and leaving to care for her sister, which leaves him as the sole caretaker of the baby. No other women can be hired because they are all working jobs related to the war and making more money than they would otherwise. Unable to find help, he stays home from work, suffers from no-sleep-thanks-to-baby, and when the cupboard is bare he has to push the stroller and baby to the store, a task made more difficult due to the ration book and the weight of what he buys (his wife had solved the problem by using the stroller as a cart and having the nurse-maid care for the baby at home). 

Within only a few days, he realizes not only the financial cost of leaving one family to marry again, but also the pleasure that came from spending evenings home with his wife. He sees, finally, all that she has done to keep his life steady, despite the clear upheaval of life the introduction of the baby has caused, and he sees the error of his ways. It's then that she returns, and the story ends with sort of a wink when she calls up the nurse-maid and tells her it's fine to return now. 

Later in the collection is a story that is almost the inverse of that plot, "The Temporary Death of Mrs. Ayers," in which Mrs. Ayers, an older woman/widow who lives alone but has busy days ensuring her adult children's lives are steady and that she supports the war effort by volunteering at the Red Cross; meanwhile, her own financial situation is dire and still have not recovered since 1929. Her feet are hurting her something awful, one son needs to borrow money for his business, the younger son wants to enlist in the war (his older brother had served in the first world war), and her granddaughter is in the hospital having her appendix out. Finally, when she feels faint, a doctor checks her pulse and advises her to stay home. Of course, none of her children know her financial situation or the emotional weight she carries by caring for them--much less the steady drain on her caused by constant war. The idea of rest, though, seems laughable to her until the weekly family dinner she hosts when her son's finance starts stridently insisting that she support the son's decision to enlist. And then she announces the doctor's advice for her to rest, but she exaggerates the extent of what she needs: 

"It's to be rather drastic," she said, "The idea is to cut myself off entirely. I'll not be seeing even any of you. No radio, no telephone, no newspaper, no visitors. I'm not even going to talk to Sarah and Annie [her household help]. It's to be--well, exactly as though on took a thumb out of a bowl of soup"

Which is to mean that her removal will seem to change nothing in the lives of everyone else. Her children rally and cheerfully escort her up the stairs to her room. It's then in these two weeks that she has the time to reflect on her life, talk to the portrait of her deceased husband, and rest from the constant beat of war. She rereads the love letters her husband wrote her when they were first married and he was in the Spanish War. On the second week, she begins feeling more restless and goes down during a night blackout and talks to one of the volunteer watchmen. It seems like the first real conversation she has had, where she isn't holding back one part of her in order to steady the other. At the end of her isolation, she feels much better, sees that her children have survived without her, and is able again to contribute to the war effort. It ends with her volunteering to stand by the air-raid phones.

She felt happier than she had felt for a long time [... Sitting by the phones] wasn't much, she thought. But after all wasn't that what this war was about? That weary people, men and women and children, could sleep in peace; could live and work and sleep.

Above her the sky was filled with stars. Some day Andy would be up there. But perhaps Herbert [her husband] was up there too, and maybe God and all his angels. She waited serenely, while she put her family and the beaten weary world into her hands. 

What I appreciate about the stories is not only the strong female characters who often appear (although there are frivolous ones, too) but also her candid portrayal of the war--whether its effect seems small, as in the fact of rationing, or whether it changes the course of the characters' lives, such as in my favorite story "Test Blackout" when a man volunteers to be Post Warden on night shift once a week. His wife finds his decision laughable and makes fun of him to her bridge-playing friends as he goes out, wearing the helmet and gear he wore in the first world war. It does not fit well, which he is aware of. But in volunteering, he has gained relationships with the men in the neighborhood and regained a clear purpose for his life; his life as a businessman was flailing. He now feels needed and necessary. 

On the night of the story, there's to be a test blackout, and while the readers are allowed to see the seriousness of the event, he is on edge for it all to go well and has clearly practiced all the steps of the evening. His wife, however, leaves their apartment lights on, and he has to leave his place to call her up and remind her. Her response is to shrug him off. She forgot, she says, even though he'd reminded her. It's in this interaction that we see to the nth degree how little she listens to him and what it means for some people to disregard the war or live as though it weren't there--thus endangering the lives of everyone else. She lives her life as though everyone were playing at war, which allows her to continue playing at life--hosting bridge parties and making jokes.

During the blackout, his fellow warden and friend is wounded and rushed to the hospital. Earlier we learned that this friend was a single father and had instructed his child on what to do should something like this happen, and so our man goes to pick up the boy from the apartment and envisions a new life for himself. He imagines raising the boy so that his friend can enlist in the war, the boy visiting for summers the rest of his life. And he imagines how he will tell his wife and at first she will not go along with it but eventually she will. It's a story of purpose, and almost like a glimpse into the life of Tom in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit before he is sent off to the war, which explains why his life after the war seemed so purposeless and hollow.

Overall, Alibi for Isabel is an interesting collection full of fresh and clever stories, both deeply rendered or necessarily flat characters, and now provides a useful glimpse into the lives of people during the decades between the world wars. It certainly highlights how passive and distant our own civilian lives have become, despite the many wars ongoing around the globe. It seems that a great many of us are playing bridge from warm apartments.

When out book-looking, I will definitely keep my eye out for more vintage paperbacks by Mary Roberts Rinehart. This will certainly not be my last by her. She clearly has a lot to teach me about writing and life.

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John Kenny on Unexpected Weather Events: "at the centre is the warmth of love and family"

Unexpected Weather Events
cover by L.K. James
book published by AWST

Good news! Over in Dublin, Ireland, writer and editor John Kenny has been reading my newest book, Unexpected Weather Events, and sometime in my night and and his day, he published his thoughts on the book. 

I met John over a decade ago at a writer's convention in Dublin. Since then, John has been a steady supporter of my work. Early on, he read and reviewed The Floating Order, and later included my story "Lightning Tree" in the anthology he edited entitled Box of Delights; that story would later be collected in my book The Whole World at Once. More recently, John helped my story/novella "Water Under a Different Sky" find a home in Albedo One, the science-fiction/fantasy magazine based in Dublin. That story now stands as the final work in Unexpected Weather Events.  

And now that I've published my next book, John has written about it. After he shares a masterfully concise and accurate description of each story, he concludes:

For all that this collection examines the heartache of loss and the destructiveness of the world around us (‘Room Under the Stairs’), it’s important to highlight, though, that at the centre of all these stories is the warmth of love and family, which is made palpable through the keen eye of Pringle’s beautifully crafted prose. 

Please, read the full review here: John Kenny reviews Unexpected Weather Events. 

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• John Kenny reviews Hezada! I Miss You
• John Kenny reviews The Whole World at Once
• John Kenny reviews The Floating Order 

Past writing John Kenny has shared on this website:

• My Regrettable Non-Relationship with Libraries 
• On his reading and recommendation by Clarice Lispector's Hour of the Star 

Sharma Shields on Unexpected Weather Events: "Nostalgia falls here like snow, death like a lightning strike"

Sharma Shields has been reading books again (I don't think she stops), and she's writing about those books in the most recent issue of Trending Northwest. Lucky for me, she has included Unexpected Weather Events in her list. About it, she writes, "In her latest fiction collection, Pringle writes with mesmerizing compassion and clarity about suicide, queer identity, grief, and family. Nostalgia falls here like snow, death like a lightning strike, hope like a break in an evening storm. This is fiction that paints—gorgeously—the full complexity and emotional range of our lives as humans."

Read the full article here: https://trendingnorthwest.com/muse/fall-into-fascinating-reads-must-read-novels-by-northwest-authors/

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• Reserve your copy of Unexpected Weather Events from Awst Press: https://awst-press.com/shop/unexpected-weather-events
• Plan to attend the book release party on October 1st at Shadle Library, 2 PM

Mczyzniejewski on The Whole World at Once: "Pringle writes haunting, stark narratives that send her characters out to investigate"

My time with Erin Pringle’s stories in The Whole World at Once was well spent. Pringle writes haunting, stark narratives that send her characters out to investigate what they can’t understand, be it a snowy ravine, the death of another, or the imminent death of the self. Curiosity is a solid trigger for any story, and Pringle handles her sleuths with an adept hand, getting close enough to look over their shoulder, though not close enough that we know their names. Mortality, and their existential relationship with it, makes for some tremendous pondering. - Michael Mczyzniejewski from his review of The Whole World at Once

I'm not sure how I missed sharing this wonderful review of The Whole World at Once, my last collection of stories. This review came out in 2020, three years after the book's publication and a few months after my novel Hezada! I Miss You was published (which corresponded with the pandemic). 

I remember reading the review and messaging Michael about it. I maybe even promised to send him a copy of Hezada! but I don't think I did. I guess that was the way of life back then. Covid affecting our physical environments led to a shift in how we stored our memories. Or how I did, anyway. 

Regardless, he said some super awesome words about the stories, and it's damn fine luck when your book falls into the hands of someone who can spin such words and wants to.

It's easy to forget that writing a book is for someone to read--to absorb the feelings and thoughts that you carefully created over so many hours and years and find the experience worthwhile in a way that affirms both your experiences of reality. 

Now it's three years since he posted his review, and I'm back at the point of marketing a new book of stories (Unexpected Weather Events); I'm at the Sisyphus part--at the bottom of the hill, pushing the ten-ton boulder called Publicity up Nobody-Cares hill, yelling about it every step so that readers will emerge from hiding and start whisking the book away. If I'm lucky, a reader will find these new stories worthwhile, too. It's a magnificent bonus when awesome words appear a few years later. 

• Read Mczyzniejewski's full review of The Whole World at Once here: https://story366blog.wordpress.com/2020/05/07/may-6-2020-the-lightning-tree-by-erin-pringle/ 

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Ann Tweedy reads Erin Pringle's Unexpected Weather Events

You've likely heard me read a number of poems by Ann Tweedy on Wake to Words. I happily met her work when we read together at a Hugo House reading, and the two of us later read at Last Word Books in Olympia, WA. Now she lives in the Dakotas, so I'll need to make a trek out there to read with her again. One of the best parts of our writership or frienwrit is the support we give each other's work. Although it's not typical for fiction writers to have poets blurb their books, I'm not typical and neither is Ann. So, when I asked if she'd read Unexpected Weather Events and blurb it, she said yes. I had no idea, of course, that she would write something as beautiful as this, and I'm absolutely honored and humbled. Because Ann Tweedy tells the truth, make no mistake.

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Ann Tweedy, on UNEXPECTED WEATHER EVENTS

In prose rich in metaphor, Pringle masterfully and hauntingly narrates the interior lives of children and adults facing life’s greatest struggles. Pringle’s characters are inspiring and courageous as they encounter unthinkable catastrophes. 

In these stories, we see from the eyes of children watching a parent die from cancer, witnessing a parent’s ongoing struggle with mental illness and the debilitating effects of medication, and experiencing a holocaust-like mass killing of residents in their town. We see adult characters who escaped horrific childhoods question the viability of their own happy lives to the point that everything begins to crumble. 

Pringle’s stories deftly and unsentimentally address heartbreaking and sometimes taboo topics like the grief of miscarriage and the destructive force of homophobia. Often, the lines between reality and delusion blur, and the reader becomes unnervingly ensnared in the protagonist’s confusion. 

Many of the stories are quintessentially Midwestern, infused with wide cornfields and an ethos of practicality and personal limitation that is brought into stark relief by Pringle’s uncritical presentation. Pringle’s many gifts as a writer are in full force here. Particularly striking is Pringle’s ability to powerfully and convincingly evoke a child’s point of view. As always, Pringle’s work will break you open and at the same time fortify you.

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• Visit Ann Tweedy's website: http://anntweedy.com/poet/
• Order Unexpected Weather Events: https://awst-press.com/shop/unexpected-weather-events

"At turns deadpan and compassionate, always wise and complex": Sharma Shields on Erin Pringle's Unexpected Weather Events

Good words by friend and fellow writer Sharma Shields on my next book: 

 “In Erin Pringle’s breathtaking story collection UNEXPECTED WEATHER EVENTS ghosts arrive on wintry nights, the sky bleeds red snow, a hole opens up between heaven and hell, and characters learn to grieve, to laugh, to love, even as the harrowing world around them shudders and quakes with loss. The themes and tone in these pages—at turns deadpan and compassionate, always wise and complex—converse beautifully with the fiction of Miriam Toews and Agota Kristof. This book reminded me: We are not alone in our sorrow; there are always new ways—even in a petrifying darkness—to see and to love.”

— Sharma Shields, author of THE CASSANDRA

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Pre-order Unexpected Weather Events from Awst Press. Purchasing books early and from the publisher always helps fund the printing, marketing, and distribution costs along the way. You also receive it at a lower cost. 

> Preorder! https://awst-press.com/shop/unexpected-weather-events

> To be released October 1, 2023

We the Animals by Justin Torres (Yes, you should read it.)

We the Animals by Justin Torres.

Yesterday, I found this book in my house while pausing in the threshold between kitchen and dining room. Up high on a bookshelf. I’m not sure when or how I came about having it, or for how long I’ve been moving it from one shelf to another. It was published in 2011. So for that long? 

But I started reading it and could tell immediately why I’d bought it (or why someone may have leant it, though its pages turned like a first read). And now a day later, I’ve finished.

It’s a smashing fist of a book. Sharp language, smart movement, perfectly considered images. Dark but light. Very short stories that flash from one moment to the next to create the life of three brothers’ childhoods. Exactly the sort of book I want to read.

And so I have.

Thanks to the writer for writing it.

New Review of Hezada! I Miss You: "It's a gorgeous portrait of small town living"

One of the people who won a copy of Hezada! I Miss You from LibraryThing has already read it AND posted a review. So, if you are on Instagram, you can view/like it here: https://tinyurl.com/y6k2r845

Or, you can read it via this screenshot:

 [Text: So much more than a book about a circus, this story weaves together love and tradition and the heartbreaking tragedy of suicide. The story follows Abe and Heza, twin children in love with the circus that arrives in their small town every summer, their mother, a thrift store owner with her own circus history, Frank, a soon to be retired circus worker, and a circus that's down to one elephant and a few acrobats.

Be warned, there are no quotation marks used in this book. I found it a little difficult at first, but as you keep reading it becomes easier and adds to the tone of the conversations. I was not expecting to have my heart shattered by this story but here we are. The topic of suicide is a delicate one to write about, and the writer does this beautiful job of giving the perspectives of everyone involved with inner dialogues and what-if conversations that are so heartbreakingly real I had to read through tears. It's a gorgeous portrait of small town living, with real, nuanced characters, and a circus that dives deep into every reader's memories of their childhood circus experiences.

I received this free copy to review from LibraryThing.]

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As always, if you have read the book and want to share your good thoughts about it with readers, please do! It helps everyone involved, from the press--to the cover artist--to the writer--to the location from where you bought it--to other readers searching for books with the content/tone/perspectives that you've discovered.

Purchase Hezada! I Miss You from any of these locations (click on name for link):

• Awst Press (Austin, Texas)
• Auntie's Bookstore (Spokane, Washington)
• Book People (Austin, Texas)
• Fact and Fiction Books (Missoula, Montana)
• Wishing Tree Books (Spokane, Washington)
• An indie bookstore near you 
• Amazon

"An honest portrayal of people's lives in clear, poetic prose": A Person in Montreal Reads, then Reviews Hezada

"The writing is graceful, elegant, inviting and absorbing. Pringle’s writing style invites you into the book and keeps you there, even as it tears your soul to shreds. At some point towards the end I was scared that the novel would leave me emotionally devastated, but I was left instead with a peaceful sense of closure. It’s like I went through grief but I emerged out of it feeling strong and peaceful. It’s a bizarre feeling. It’s a beautiful feeling." 

-- GoodReads Review by LiteratureSloth 

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The other day, Phoebe from Awst texted me a new review of Hezada!, which someone left as a hiker might hide a beautiful rock on a grassy, tree-lined trail for someone else to find. And as the one who discovers it, I have turned this rock over and over in my hands until it's become quite polished by my mind. I thought I might leave it here now, for you. 

xo

Link to GoodReads review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3213757834

[Should your screen reader not work with the above image, please see the text from the image, below]

Hezada! I Miss You
by Erin Pringle (Goodreads Author)
58412731
LiteratureSloth's reviewMar 17, 2020
it was amazing
bookshelves: favorites, lgbt-queer

I read this book in 4 days. I’ve thought of nothing but this book for 4 days. I’m still thinking about this book. I wish I could forget it right away so that I can reread it and experience everything I did while reading it again.

This novel is unique in many ways. I’ve read many fiction and non-fiction books about suicide, and this book treats the topic like no other. It’s rare to find the perspective of suicide survivors in a novel, when most others talk about the suicide victims.

The writing is graceful, elegant, inviting and absorbing. Pringle’s writing style invites you into the book and keeps you there, even as it tears your soul to shreds. At some point towards the end I was scared that the novel would leave me emotionally devastated, but I was left instead with a peaceful sense of closure. It’s like I went through grief but I emerged out of it feeling strong and peaceful. It’s a bizarre feeling. It’s a beautiful feeling.

I’ve read other novels about small-town America, but this portrayal of the Midwest was so nuanced, so honest. It depicted the terrible things people do to each other, while reminding the readers of why they do them — because of how difficult and devastating their life is. Not excusing them. Not judging anyone. Just an honest portrayal of people’s lives in clear, poetic prose.

This book will stay with me for a long time. It is so rare to have this experience while reading. Thank you to Erin Pringle for writing it, and to Awst Press for publishing it. I’m glad I came across it and I would recommend it to everyone.

🕮

If your library is closed due to community health concerns, please consider purchasing Hezada! I Miss You from the following locations (these locations ship books to your home and need even more support during this time):

• Book People in Austin, Texas has multiple signed copies;
• Auntie's Bookstore in Spokane, WA has a few signed copies left;
• Fact and Fiction Bookstore in Missoula, MT has a few copies remaining from my event there;
• Your nearest bookstore, which you can locate via IndieBound
• Awst Press: The publisher of Hezada! I Miss You

Sharma Shields calls Erin Pringle a "Great Ringleader" and the world seems good again

"Mournful, funny, piercing, and profound, Erin Pringle's Hezada! I Miss You is a stirring, vivid novel about a declining circus and its dynamic denizens. Like a great ringleader, Pringle highlights the most exciting, daring, death-defying, and dangerous aspects of the human condition. Hezada! I Miss You is a breathtaking work of art.”

— Sharma Shields, author of The Cassandra and The Sasquatch Hunters’ Almanac 

🐘

Sharma Shields
(photo by Rajah Bose)

This is the story of how Sharma Shields came to read Hezada! I Miss You. 

Maybe I'd lived in Spokane a year, though probably less, before I was talking to a librarian who asked if I knew Sharma Shields. I did not. I'd never met anyone in my life named Sharma.

Oh, she writes stories, too, said the librarian.

I liked the sound of Sharma. It sounds beautiful enough to be anyone, and fragile enough that one ought not to assume who this person might be.

A kind of fairy-tale beginning, I think. 

I would encounter Sharma at a reading at a different library; she read a story from Favorite Monster while I carried my baby from shelf to shelf, trying to keep him more silent than giddy. Or maybe that was another reading, same shelves. Maybe there was no baby yet.

A few years passed before we would meet. Or maybe it wasn't that long. But in feeling. Years.

It was in the lobby of The Bing Crosby Theatre before Lilac City Fairy Tales, an annual event Sharma curated. She'd found my email, asked me to participate. Our first in-person conversation went something like this:
Sharma?
Erin?
Yes.
She hugged me, and I thought it was very nice that she should hug me, and that people named Sharma must be very nice. 

Several years passed before we'd meet again, which seems impossible when most of the writers in Spokane seem to run into each other monthly. Sometimes, I think they actually live together, share laundry, memories, electricity, and only pretend it's funny to find each other outside their shared home. But that might be the way with writers. They're an interesting species.

One day, Sharma thought aloud on Facebook that she might not make it to an event--an event she seemed to want to attend. She has MS. It takes over her, sometimes. Probably more than sometimes. It reminded me of my best friend Alexa who had similar experiences toward the end of her life, so I immediately wrote to Sharma and said I'd be happy to take her wherever she need go. 

Luckily, artists are immune to quirky people, so she graciously thanked me for offering to carry her on my back. Me, who'd hugged her once in a lobby.

Time passed. A year? A June came, and we found each other in Seattle, doing a reading at the Hugo House with  Gary Lilley and Ann Tweedy. I'd read the same story she'd asked me to write for the Lilac City Fairy Tales--now, it was bound in my book of stories.

After the reading, listen to this: she bought everyone's books right there--her arms full and her face bright. I was so confused. People named Sharma hugged in lobbies, asked for fairy tales, then bought books at readings she was a part of.

Then, damn if she not only read mine, but also wrote about it in Spokane/C'oeur D'lene Living Magazine. 

The rest is either history or bullet points.

• She wrote a piece for Book Your Stocking (read here). 
• I sent Scablands Press (her press) Hezada!  
• Then Awst took it. 
• She congratulated me.
• Later, I would ask her to read Hezada! I Miss You as a potential blurb-writer. She said she would. She said it with enthusiasm. 
• Every few months we summon the energy to schedule a walk, a coffee, a casual time, and then after a round or two of our calendars, we give up.
• Sharma's newest novel The Cassandra came out. 

The Cassandra seemed written for me--not me Erin, but me as a mind. A woman of my grandmother's era, and told in that era, goes to work at Hanford, where the plutonium for the atomic bomb used on Nagasaki was manufactured. But it's set in the past, so no one knows what's going on. The book winked at me unlike books ever do. Like, it expected me to get inside jokes that women looking back into time and forward from the past would understand. Nobody has ever expected this of me as a reader, or given this to me, or showed me how that was missing from merely all of literature. 

But aside from all of this, I think it comes down to Shirley Jackson. Sharma loves her. I love her. So, were this a fairy tale, this is how I would have met Sharma: There she'd be, holding The Lottery in her hands, and I'd wait until she looked up so as not to interrupt.
I'd tell her it was a sunny day.
She'd say it was a longtime ritual.
Then we'd sit together before the story, heads bowed, until the child picked up a stone.
We'd shake our heads as though to say, But isn't that the truth? 

• Follow Sharma on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SharmaShields/
• Buy The Cassandra here: http://www.sharmashields.com/new-index/
• Learn more about Sharma and her work at her website: www.sharmashields.com 

🕮

Quick Review: Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne

GO READ THIS BOOK.
TAKE ALL THE NOTES WHILE YOU READ IT.
WHEN YOU'RE FINISHED, START A STUDY GROUP TO DISCUSS IT WITH  SO YOU CAN READ IT AGAIN.

That's what I did.

It's brilliant.






Link to book on publisher's website: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/down-girl-9780190604981?cc=us&lang=en&

Book Your Stocking with Michael Wolfe

Book Your Stocking: December 19

Welcome back to a new edition of Book Your Stocking, a month-long reading series celebrating books. Every day a new reader shares his/her/their holiday to-give/to-read lists. 

Please welcome today's reader, Michael Wolfe.

📚🎄

Fiction:

Solar Bones by Mike McCormack

The Night Ocean by Paul LaFarge

(Both are strange, unexpected, dreamy) 

Poetry:

Look by Solmaz Sharif

(Urgent, visceral)

Nonfiction:

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

(Devastating)

This is an Uprising by Mark Engler and Paul Engler 

(Essential)

📚🎄

Michael Wolfe,
photograph by Lisa Robinson
(used with permission)

About today's reader: 

Michael Wolfe’s work has appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, Phoebe, Bloom, American Book Review, Cool Thing, and elsewhere. He is a founding editor of Front Porch (frontporchjournal.com) and has taught creative writing at Southwestern University and the University of New Mexico. He lives in Los Angeles and online at www.wolfewrites.com.

🌲

Check out more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors: 

http://www.erinpringle.com/p/book-your-stocking.html

WSJ reviews The Whole World at Once: Words with the "strength of tempered steel"

So, here's some good news that all of us missed in May: The Whole World at Once received a write-up in The Wall Street Journal. And a good write-up, to boot:

(excerpt from "Shelf Help" 

by Sam Sacks, 5/19/17)

 Cheers!

So, I've been reading . . .

My last post was a narrative about my fall-from and return-to reading book-length works. Since writing it, I've since been reading non-stop. The Thanksgiving holiday helped, too. But it has been a good November for reading.

I also stopped annotating while reading, for the first time in nearly twenty years. It can be done, amazingly. I may return to marking lightly, though, because I do remember better when I've made notes.

As I finish each book, I've posted little summaries or thoughts on my Facebook page, which I've now assembled here, beginning with most recently read. My head is now so full of words and worlds that I may need to take a few days to absorb all I've read.

1. Monsters in Appalachia by Sheryl Monks


2. Our Daughter and Other Stories by Wendy Oleson



3. Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward


4. Hollow by Owen Egerton


5. In the Language of Miracles by Rajia Hassib


6. The Blacker the Berry by Wallace Thurman

The Whole World at Once: An Astonishing Collection

Writer, editor, and teacher, John Richard Kenny lives over in Dublin, Ireland and has published a review of The Whole World at Once (Vandalia Press/West Virginia UP 2017). And what a review. Glad I woke up today:

"This is an astonishing collection, beautifully written, heartrending, and deeply affecting."

Read the full review here:
https://johnrichardkenny.com/2017/10/12/book-review-the-whole-world-at-once-by-erin-pringle/

"Narratives That Twist and Shimmer": Kirkus Reviews Reports on The Whole World at Once

"The characters dream intensely, waking in terror, and the stories themselves have a dreamlike intensity heightened by Pringle’s lyrical voice. [. . .] Readers willing to immerse themselves in sorrow, and sometimes in narratives that twist and shimmer before taking definite shape, will find reflected in these stories the unsteady path of coming back to life—or not—after loss." Continue reading at Kirkus Reviews. 

The Whole World at Once will be officially released this May.

Pre-order from West Virginia University Press.

Now available!
Order now!
The Whole World at Once from 
West Virginia University Press 
Your local bookstore (IndieBound)
Amazon
Barnes & Noble

(Updated 5/3/17)

To Shift & Grit: New Review of The Floating Order

"It’s Pringle’s ability to get inside the mind of a child and see the adult world from their perspective that is the real strength of this collection. Another is the shifting nature of reality from this perspective."

Faye Through Glass
by Aislinn Ritchie (cc)

~writes John Kenny, in a new review of The Floating Order. Kenny is a writer, and co-editor of Dublin's Albedo One and Aeon Press. Please find the full review at his website.

From the Child's Shelf: Sendak's No Bumbler

Sendak, Maurice. Bumble-Ardy. New York: HarperCollins, 2011.

Maurice Sendak's new book Bumble-ardy is the story of a pig celebrating his first birthday party, which is his ninth birthday. The backstory, which is told in preface, is that Bumble-ardy's family "frowned on fun", which explains his lack of birthdays hitherto, and his parents were recently killed. Although his parents were butchered, the fact that humans would have been the ones to murder them isn't emphasized. And so, all readers of the book are immediately set up as the antagonists to this world. 

The story begins with Bumble-ardy moving in with his aunt and his decision, against her wishes and knowledge, to throw himself a birthday party. A masquerade party. The party lasts most of the book as the animals, dressed as humans, drink "brine", dance, and celebrate the life of Bumble-ardy--and, as such, life itself. But it's a strange dance to celebrate an equally strange life. Without surprise, as it is with any celebration of life comes life's comrade-in-the-wings: death. 

When any talk of controversy or irritability about Bumble-ardy rears, it's typically in regards to the presence of death (although, a cursory glance at the GoodReads page for the book suggests that adult readers are equally irritable due to Bumble-ardy not being Where The Wild Things Are). 

However, death is not a focus of the story, is never central to any page, stands in the background, and only becomes apparent on subsequent reads. Perhaps it is death's representation as natural and part of the scene that causes some readers to focus and dwell on it, and in dwelling, become concerned that their children are dwelling in the same ways. Perhaps if readers view death as unnatural and something to be feared, heckled, ignored, repressed, and otherwise stricken from reality, then Bumble-ardy works as a counter to those notions.