Unapologetically confrontational, grimly poignant; a gritty depiction of LA vice and vicissitude.
A collection of short stories explores the dark corners of city life.
Los Angeles is both the setting and the unifying force behind these 11 tales of crime, false hope, and down-and-out disillusionment. Knight writes primarily in the third person, past tense, usually from multiple viewpoints within each story. This narrative omniscience allows readers to experience events from different perspectives and heightens the effect when lives and choices inexorably come together in an ill-fated concatenation. Such interconnectedness is most evident in “Tip the Barkeep” and “White Horse,” tales in which a murderer and drug dealer take refuge from pursuers who have links to the bars they hole up in, and “Night Windows,” about a patsy framed for a homicide who happens to be known to the investigating officer. Two stories are told in the first person, present tense: “Mouth Bay,” in which a self-centered woman fails to make the life changes that would render her a fit parent, and “That Dreaded Undertow,” in which a fisherman turns his life around but is dragged back down by his past. These notions—the power of children to inspire rehabilitation and the difficulty of escaping one’s history—form common, contrasting threads throughout the volume, clashing most notably in “Bleeders Abound,” in which a taxi driver trying to make good picks up a fare linked to his gangland past. Knight employs realistic dialogue and an immersive, staccato-style prose that deals directly with life in all its seedy, sordid details. The characters who emerge may be unlikable but are very real and distinctly memorable, from the reclusive, would-be good Samaritan of “Vin Scully Eyes” to the aging party girl of “Full Bloom” and the rehabbed bartender (“I don’t drink”) of “Angels Live Here.” The last two are wistful vignettes of lives gone astray early and never corrected. The first tale is more plot-driven and emphasizes how wrong it is to shut out the world yet how letting it in can end badly. Indeed, few of these stories have happy endings. The collection’s tales work well together, and Knight’s writing will pull readers in—a kind of literary mugging that will leave them wiser and sadder. Noir enthusiasts will grant their somber approval.
Unapologetically confrontational, grimly poignant; a gritty depiction of LA vice and vicissitude.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 241
Publisher: Down & Out Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
I Who Have Never Known Men ($22.00; May 1997; 224 pp.; 1-888363-43-6): In this futuristic fantasy (which is immediately reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), the nameless narrator passes from her adolescent captivity among women who are kept in underground cages following some unspecified global catastrophe, to a life as, apparently, the last woman on earth. The material is stretched thin, but Harpman's eye for detail and command of tone (effectively translated from the French original) give powerful credibility to her portrayal of a human tabula rasa gradually acquiring a fragmentary comprehension of the phenomena of life and loving, and a moving plangency to her muted cri de coeur (``I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct'').
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-888363-43-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
