Aug 30

Aug 30 Black Light: Stories

Author: Kimberly King Parsons
Publisher: Vintage
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

Kimberly King Parsons exposes desire’s darkest hollows—those hidden places where most of us are afraid to look. In this debut collection of enormously perceptive and brutally unsentimental short stories, Parsons illuminates the ache of first love, the banality of self-loathing, the scourge of addiction, the myth of marriage, and the magic and inevitable disillusionment of childhood.

Taking us from hot Texas highways to cold family kitchens, from the freedom of pay-by-the-hour motels to the claustrophobia of private school dorms, these stories erupt off the page with a primal howl — sharp-voiced, bitter, and wise. Black Light contains the type of storytelling that resonates somewhere deep, in the well of memory that repudiates nostalgia.

TL;DR Review

Black Light is a really solid short story collection. Each story is compelling, well-written, and connected to something deeply human.

For you if: You like short stories — at all!

Full Review

“They have a mom who can’t stand up without a kid under each armpit. She breathes from a tank and is so sick when you look at her you get that creepy feeling like when you see a picture of Earth from outer space.”

Black Light was longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction, and wow was it a stunner. Dark moments, weird moments, extraordinarily human moments. The parts of us that burn brightest thrown into sharp relief, just like under a black light.

My two favorites were “Guts,” about a woman who has a complicated relationship with her body and her doctor boyfriend, and “Foxes,” about a probably alcoholic single mom whose daughter tells gruesome bedtime stores.

This collection reminded me just how great short stories about everyday people can be. How a story can feel totally unique and yet just like real life at the same time.