BOOKSTORE CLERKS & SIGNIFICANT OTHERS

Violent dads, a lovelorn hedgehog, and a teenage grim reaper are among the engrossing figures showcased in this anthology of fiction, poetry, and essays.

Editors Landfield and Ellerhoff have gathered contributions from 27 authors, many of them current or former clerks at Tsunami Books in Eugene, Oregon. Their works often feature intense regional flavor—Eugene’s blend of college-town hippie and rural orneriness—along with muscular language, fantasy, and genre forms with offbeat twists. Among the many standout pieces, Meli Hull’s essay “Non-Words” takes a delightful romp through her baby’s language acquisition. (“Additions to our lexicon include…asking her if she wants to ‘fly high in the sky’ and then doing a cheerleading count-off of ‘one-two, down-UP!’ as I lift her into the air. She squeals and giggles and opens her round mouth in a big grin.”) Matthew Dickman’s story “Leveling Up” imagines Death as a 15-year-old punk playing Ms. Pacman at a video arcade in prose that mixes cosmic grandiosity with adolescent pique. (“I was in Pompeii, fucking Pompeii, and I can’t get this stupid asshole on the screen to move fast enough not to get eaten by fucking ghosts.”) And Ellerhoff’s adult fable “The Fox and the Hedgehog” has the former consoling the latter when he’s dumped by the Solar Witch in favor of an old flame in a gush of bawdy Irish wisdom. (“That witch already had the big story’f her life goin on before ya showed up….Chapter Fifty-Nine: The Hedgehog Arrives. Chapter Sixty: Feckface Returns ’n’ Gives It to Her in the Arse Again.”) The series opener’s excellent poetry includes Erik Muller’s cycle “A Boy’s Eyes,” a plangent exploration of a father’s brutality told in grim language (“It is not clear why he / strikes our mother. Something snarls, / something drives the Old Man. / Later she bows her head / over a bucket so she doesn’t / bleed onto what she has to clean”). And Jenny Root’s “That Which Lies Beside the Slough” is a searing evocation of a homeless camp. (“The blankets that lay heaped beneath the bridge covered them / head to toe. / The blankets, which once lay folded upon a quiet shelf, trembled in / the scolding wind.”) The result is an enthralling read with literary flair and lots of heart.

A scintillating collection, full of imaginative stories and strong, vivid writing.