A review by foggy_rosamund
Things to Do When You're Goth in the Country: And Other Stories by Chavisa Woods

3.0

This selection of short stories set in rural US is a mixture of absolutely phenomenal writing, and curious blunders. The first story "How to Stop Smoking" typifies this: it begins with a queer, educated woman returning to her home town to spend some time with her two younger brothers. Once home, she is faced with the grinding poverty and crime that typifies her brothers' lives. Woods' observations are excellent here: our narrator struggling to find her feet in this world, and realising that her education doesn't get her very far when faced with the reality of her brothers' lives. Then the story is brought to a close with a bizarre magic-realism ending that feels entirely out of keeping with the rest of the story. This problem keeps coming in Woods' stories: she has an vivid imagination, and is very interested in exploring the weird, but she isn't always in control of it. However, when it works, it really works: the story "Mohawk" was the strongest in this collection, and has the weirdest central concept: a man wakes up one morning with a section of the gaza strip on his head. Woods uses this idea to explore the ways in which we have become inured to violence, and even blase about it, and yet how individual death remains shocking and even inconceivable. Woods is a fresh writer, and it feels like she has a lot of interesting things to say: I'll definitely be seeking out her work in future.