A review by likecymbeline
Things to Do When You're Goth in the Country: And Other Stories by Chavisa Woods
3.0
Goth and punk are kissing cousins when you're in the country and this title captured the attention of my frustrated rural upbringing and complicated return to this place as home. The way we tangle with class and queerness and outsider experiences in a way that constantly shifts back and forth as to who is on the fringes was captured especially well in the first story in the collection. What it is to be arty/educated and to have left, what it is to be seen as cornfed trash in the city but rich and arrogant and out-of-touch in the backwoods, what it is to be connected by blood or geography while being unable to truly relate to one another's lives. When she says her brother and her cousin are "illegal" types and always have been and none of her advice counts for their lives because the circumstances are already stacked in such a way for each of them - I've been there.
"Zombie" was my favourite short story of the lot, again with a feeling of this being a person I might've met, an experience I might've had in parallel ways. Perfectly written right down to the ending. Other stories were a bit too offbeat for my taste, but "Revelations" was a good old-fashioned one in the style of Jackson or O'Connor and most every story had moments that held a particular charge for somebody who's a little bit haunted by life in the country.
"Zombie" was my favourite short story of the lot, again with a feeling of this being a person I might've met, an experience I might've had in parallel ways. Perfectly written right down to the ending. Other stories were a bit too offbeat for my taste, but "Revelations" was a good old-fashioned one in the style of Jackson or O'Connor and most every story had moments that held a particular charge for somebody who's a little bit haunted by life in the country.