1986

In Stepp’s collection of linked stories, a sensitive young boy becomes all too conscious of the ephemeral nature of his existence during one strange and tumultuous year.

Few events in the life of a child are as traumatic as moving to a new place. When a youngster is suddenly uprooted and unmoored, even the most pedestrian of experiences can become opportunities for whatever lurks on the outermost banks of human understanding to exert its shadowy influence into the day-to-day reality of a rapidly developing young mind. Such is the case with Stepp’s unnamed young protagonist. He is an everyman character (possibly autobiographical), terribly unhappy with his situation and resentful of his otherwise beloved mother after being forced, along with his younger sister Rachel, to move into a new apartment complex in a new town. On the surface, the environs couldn’t seem more prosaic and dull for the lad, who is busy with the commonplace concerns and seemingly trivial activities that most kids engage in while growing up. The protagonist is neither heroically courageous nor cowardly, but he most decidedly is a natural explorer, and in these stories he begins to experience all kinds of existential incursions into his otherwise humdrum existence. Stepp’s superbly rendered and consistently heartrending vignettes may dramatize mundane things like class trips, birthdays, checking the mail, and fixing the washing machine with granddad, but they nevertheless brim with genuine profundity and true terror at almost every turn. The narrative is firmly rooted in reality, however—the supernatural is only hinted at here and rarely manifests in ghostly form.

The real source of the uncanny conjured up in Stepp’s episodic tales is life itself, and the most sinister specter of all is time. “The air was stale, and gave off a mildewy stench,” he writes in “YMCA.” “The walls of the corridor had once been painted white, but in the intervening years the paint had peeled off, like petals from a dying flower.” The author describes the same looming horror even more pointedly in “Truck Stop,” an entry that exemplifies his significant powers as both a writer and keen observer of life’s fragility. After surviving an incredible pulse-pounding journey into a sort of fog-enshrouded alternate reality, the protagonist comes away with a truly horrific realization about “the true reality of everything that was alive, or had ever lived.” Reuniting with his father, he understands, “Family was temporary. You will lose them all. In time. Every single person you ever loved, or that ever loved you, will be lost forever. The proof was in my hand.” Who needs sharp-clawed monsters with pointy fangs after that? The author explores somewhat lesser horrors, too, like the letting down the ones we hold the most dear, as described in “New Knife,” and letting ourselves down, as depicted in both “Drainage Pipe” and “Dog and Butterfly.” By the end, the mysteries Stepp chooses to confront may be better known, but they are no clearer understood or less heartbreaking. They remain unexorcised demons, stubbornly clinging to their power to fill us all with existential dread and remorse about the things in life we cannot change.

An absolutely haunting and emotionally charged reading experience.