SUBURBAN DEATH PROJECT

Characters in this collection of grim short stories can’t escape death, isolation, and loneliness.

In “Joe and Irish,” Carla recalls her 25th birthday, which was mere days before her boyfriend’s suicide. The couple visited his mother, a peculiar woman who donned only underwear indoors and served popcorn for dinner. But it was the unnerving “game” the mother and son played that truly haunts Carla. Most of the 12 tales here revolve around death and some of its darkest outcomes. Gillian, for example, is devastated by the loss of her husband, David, in “The Mushroom Suit.” While she lovingly muses on their healthy sex life, Gillian may not have known David as well as she thought. He had been elaborately planning his death for years, the pinnacle being the titular suit for his body—an idea that Gillian finds cringe-inducing. Other stories zero in on isolated characters, be they secluded or forlorn. “What Goes on Near the Water” follows Laney, who lives by the sea with the grandparents who have raised her. They won’t tell her about her long-gone parents, and she has just fading memories of her mother. Laney becomes obsessed with the mysterious girl reputedly hiding in a 19th-century lighthouse who walks in pitch-black cave tunnels at night. The book’s somber tone is relentless, even when humor surfaces. That’s the case in “Ducky,” in which Loren’s father has taught his pet American Pekin duck to smoke. It’s a gleefully absurd visual that the duck’s “pronounced smoker’s quack” amplifies. But the bird’s bizarre habit doesn’t overshadow the central theme of Loren and her father struggling to deal with the fact that her mother succumbed to cancer.

Parkison aptly develops the multistory cast, which persistently engages regardless of characters’ quirks or atypical circumstances. Some readers may be taken aback by one man’s collecting insects in pillboxes and jars but will sympathize when his wife of 37 years suddenly falls ill. Similarly, a babysitter in the South frets she’ll be kidnapped, tortured, or killed by the Mexican cartel she’s testified against. Familiar settings, meanwhile, further aid in drawing in readers. There’s an after-dinner sit-down on the porch as owls hoot; the seemingly abandoned house that fascinates neighbors; and open windows that let in the warm breeze on a “muggy summer afternoon.” This collection touches on several weighty topics, including suicide and sexual assault, all of which the author handles with impressive subtlety. One story even involves a surgeon and her meticulous work with a scalpel. Yet the smoothly detailed narrative easily evades excessive graphicness as well as subverting expectations. Still, these tales practically demand attention from the very first sentence (or two), like “The Forgotten Daughter,” which opens with: “Ansel and I used to date before he went to prison for killing my mother.” It’s a staggering line and a showcase for the fierce prose on display throughout the volume. In “Water,” for example, Parkison writes, “What his nets capture: plastic bottles, weeds like hair, eels, blue fish, long, silver fish shining in moonlight, and a woman’s gown, shredded and bleached pink like sundown.” Readers should savor these marvelous stories, as they are sadly over too soon.

Extraordinary, character-driven tales from a sublime voice that resonates.