oconnorlizzy's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
3.75
Content Warnings
Moderate: Domestic abuse, Rape, and Sexual violence
pennyzizzle's review against another edition
5.0
I tried to read slowly and savor these amazing stories, but I couldn't stop reading, sometimes flipping back to re-read a new favorite. Natalie Sypolt's writing is poetic and haunting, sincere and generous. As the blurb on the cover from Wiley Cash says, "This is an important book by an important writer." I couldn't agree more.
My favorites are "Flaming Jesus" and "The Sound of Holding Your Breath" (title story), but I can't stop thinking about so many of the other stories. "Diving" and "My Brothers and Me" won't get out of my head. I feel lucky to have read this collection right when I needed it most.
My favorites are "Flaming Jesus" and "The Sound of Holding Your Breath" (title story), but I can't stop thinking about so many of the other stories. "Diving" and "My Brothers and Me" won't get out of my head. I feel lucky to have read this collection right when I needed it most.
msw's review
5.0
This collection of short stories focuses on family disruption, but especially men and women who begin with passion and end with missed connections and sometimes violent disconnections. The stories are set mostly in the northern Appalachian region among people who often live in those much-maligned mobile homes. Sypolt, however, has no patience with and cuts no slack for readers who don't identify with all people. She opens the second story, "Flaming Jesus" (what a great title) by laying out her landscape: "This is a place where no one cares if you live in a trailer. No one even thinks twice about it....My mother always had wallpaper. We'd replace it every spring....the roadsides are thickly-wooded, branches nearly scraping my car on both sides...Only the roadway is light, golden...."
The community where most of the stories take place is called Warm , and Sypolt's character makes the distinction that while fire is hot, ashes are warm, and the narrator's first boyfriend calls Warm a trap and says if he doesn't get out now, he never will.
While the experiences and growing and realizations come mostly to the women in the stories, the focus is often on men, as in in "Get Up June" where the narrator's father, "a man of addictions," first drinks too much, then for a while makes money trying out drugs for a drug company. His final addiction is, perhaps predictably but profoundly appropriate, is religion. The narrator's mother at the end says, "'I hope you will not forget the good parts of your daddy....take those good parts of him and the good parts of me, and try to push out the bad parts....'" That is perhaps emblematic of what all the stories are about: A lot of bad stuff, but Sypolt pushes through to the good, as best she can, without undermining the truth.
One of my favorite stories is "Home Visit," which takes on a clash between the Establishment, as it were– a teacher doing her visits to all the families of her students-- and the student's father. The family lives in a trailer, of course, and the teacher tries to hide even from herself her contempt for people who live in the trailers. She knows trailers, too: "what it would be like inside, long rooms that always looked a little cramped, a little too full of stuff....Sinks leak into the towel cabinets underneath....Ceilings grow round brown circles..." Of course, the trailer she is describing is the one she grew up in, and she finishes her home visit by falling apart in a horribly embarrassing way.
Several of the late stories are about damage to men: In "Wanting a Baby," a woman, pregnant with her dead husband's child, visits his family and feels conflicting emotions about them and her place in a traditional family Other stories are about men damaged by war, mentally and physically. One has lost his arm in the Middle East and seems to have lost his center as well. One, part of another extended, rooted family, goes looking for a white deer to kill, and in the process fills the yard with dead animals.
Many of the stories are told in the present tense, but that last story with the dead animals, "Stalking the White Deer," takes an interesting long, retrospective view. The narrator is speaking from old age, or near it, and it is about why she and her husband have stayed together. That staying together, for better or for worse, is a theme we don't write about as much as about spectacular break ups and violence.
Sypolt's collection is about a deep loyalty to people and a place. Her approach is open-eyed and complex, but for all that, no less loyal.
The community where most of the stories take place is called Warm , and Sypolt's character makes the distinction that while fire is hot, ashes are warm, and the narrator's first boyfriend calls Warm a trap and says if he doesn't get out now, he never will.
While the experiences and growing and realizations come mostly to the women in the stories, the focus is often on men, as in in "Get Up June" where the narrator's father, "a man of addictions," first drinks too much, then for a while makes money trying out drugs for a drug company. His final addiction is, perhaps predictably but profoundly appropriate, is religion. The narrator's mother at the end says, "'I hope you will not forget the good parts of your daddy....take those good parts of him and the good parts of me, and try to push out the bad parts....'" That is perhaps emblematic of what all the stories are about: A lot of bad stuff, but Sypolt pushes through to the good, as best she can, without undermining the truth.
One of my favorite stories is "Home Visit," which takes on a clash between the Establishment, as it were– a teacher doing her visits to all the families of her students-- and the student's father. The family lives in a trailer, of course, and the teacher tries to hide even from herself her contempt for people who live in the trailers. She knows trailers, too: "what it would be like inside, long rooms that always looked a little cramped, a little too full of stuff....Sinks leak into the towel cabinets underneath....Ceilings grow round brown circles..." Of course, the trailer she is describing is the one she grew up in, and she finishes her home visit by falling apart in a horribly embarrassing way.
Several of the late stories are about damage to men: In "Wanting a Baby," a woman, pregnant with her dead husband's child, visits his family and feels conflicting emotions about them and her place in a traditional family Other stories are about men damaged by war, mentally and physically. One has lost his arm in the Middle East and seems to have lost his center as well. One, part of another extended, rooted family, goes looking for a white deer to kill, and in the process fills the yard with dead animals.
Many of the stories are told in the present tense, but that last story with the dead animals, "Stalking the White Deer," takes an interesting long, retrospective view. The narrator is speaking from old age, or near it, and it is about why she and her husband have stayed together. That staying together, for better or for worse, is a theme we don't write about as much as about spectacular break ups and violence.
Sypolt's collection is about a deep loyalty to people and a place. Her approach is open-eyed and complex, but for all that, no less loyal.
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