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Daddy's
Lindsay Hunter tells the stories no one else will in ways no one else can. In this down and dirty debut she draws vivid portraits of bad people in worse places. A woman struggles to survive her boyfriend's terror preparations. A wife finds that the key to her sex life lies in her dog’s electric collar. Two teenagers violently tip the scales of their friendship. A rising star of the new fast fiction, Hunter bares all before you can blink in her bold, beautiful stories. In this collection of slim southern gothics, she offers an exploration not of the human heart but of the spine; mixing sex, violence and love into a harrowing, head-spinning read.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
About the author
Lindsay Hunter
21 books430 followersLindsay Hunter received her MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She co-founded and co-hosted the groundbreaking Quickies! reading series, an event that focused on flash fiction. Her first book, Daddy’s, a collection of flash fiction, was published in 2010 by featherproof books, a boutique press in Chicago. Her second collection, DON’T KISS ME, was published by FSG Originals in 2013 and was named one of Amazon’s 10 Best Books of the Year: Short Stories. Her first novel, Ugly Girls, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in November 2014. The Huffington Post called it “a story that hits a note that’s been missing from the chorus of existing feminist literature.” Her latest novel, Eat Only When You’re Hungry, was a Book of the Month Club selection, a finalist for the 2017 Chicago Review of Books Fiction Award, and a 2017 NPR Great Read. Along with the writer Alex Higley, she runs the podcast I'm a Writer But, a series about writers with kids, jobs, and/or lives, and how they make it all work (or don't). She lives in Chicago with her family.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 75 reviews
June 6, 2012
In my world, reading and meals often go together. I’ll read a bit in the morning while I eat a bowl of raisin bran, read a bit more at my desk between bites of my sandwich. In the evenings, I often find myself trying to finish a chapter as I prepare dinner. Then there are the times when I don’t feel much like reading, and instead I will take a walk to a restaurant by myself, forgo the book and just eavesdrop on the conversations around me. More often than not, I’m surrounded by university students chattering about their classes, or colleagues yammering on about work. Once in awhile I’ll catch a bit of a juicy conversation, but mostly its just a lot of jibber-jabber.
***************
This book reminds me of what it might be like if I dreamed about going out to lunch and eavesdropping on conversations.
In the dream, I order a bowl of boiled entrails with a side of deep fried pigs’ feet. The other customers in the seedy diner are a haggard lot; they smell of pickles and sin. As I sit and eat, I listen. The woman at the table behind me confesses to a friend that she is obsessed with pleasuring herself by taking her dog’s collar and placing it against her panties and then making her way to the boundaries of the electric fence.
Another woman tells a rumor of someone in a nearby town and her very unusual baby. The baby weighed 75 pounds at three months; by 6 months he was almost tall enough to reach the freezer door. He had man hands and liked to suck on pork chop bones. One day she took the boy to the playground and left him there, driving off, watching him get smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror .
************************
The dream me doesn’t seem to think these conversations are at all odd or out of the ordinary. The dream me continues to munch on pigs’ feet and orders a glass of water to wash it down. The glass has an old lipstick mark and some little bits are floating around in the liquid. I put my mouth over the lipstick mark and take a huge gulp of water. I let out an “ahhhh,” then go back to eavesdropping.
****************
I glance up at the man and woman at the table next to me. His nose was recently broken; what once were purple bruises have faded to pale yellow. She has a cast on her arm and her crutches are resting silently against the booth. They say nothing; just stare vacantly out the window with untouched plates of food in front of them.
Two other women chatter on about last night’s one night stand with that guy who smelled like bacon and was missing a tooth. The guy jerked himself off in her bed in the morning while she stood there watching, then wiped himself off with her sheets.
******************
When I wake from this dream, I feel dirty. I have that ache in the pit of my stomach; you know, the one that makes you wonder when the other shoe is going to drop.
“I’ll take amnesia for 500, Alex.”
***************
This book reminds me of what it might be like if I dreamed about going out to lunch and eavesdropping on conversations.
In the dream, I order a bowl of boiled entrails with a side of deep fried pigs’ feet. The other customers in the seedy diner are a haggard lot; they smell of pickles and sin. As I sit and eat, I listen. The woman at the table behind me confesses to a friend that she is obsessed with pleasuring herself by taking her dog’s collar and placing it against her panties and then making her way to the boundaries of the electric fence.
Another woman tells a rumor of someone in a nearby town and her very unusual baby. The baby weighed 75 pounds at three months; by 6 months he was almost tall enough to reach the freezer door. He had man hands and liked to suck on pork chop bones. One day she took the boy to the playground and left him there, driving off, watching him get smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror .
************************
The dream me doesn’t seem to think these conversations are at all odd or out of the ordinary. The dream me continues to munch on pigs’ feet and orders a glass of water to wash it down. The glass has an old lipstick mark and some little bits are floating around in the liquid. I put my mouth over the lipstick mark and take a huge gulp of water. I let out an “ahhhh,” then go back to eavesdropping.
****************
I glance up at the man and woman at the table next to me. His nose was recently broken; what once were purple bruises have faded to pale yellow. She has a cast on her arm and her crutches are resting silently against the booth. They say nothing; just stare vacantly out the window with untouched plates of food in front of them.
Two other women chatter on about last night’s one night stand with that guy who smelled like bacon and was missing a tooth. The guy jerked himself off in her bed in the morning while she stood there watching, then wiped himself off with her sheets.
******************
When I wake from this dream, I feel dirty. I have that ache in the pit of my stomach; you know, the one that makes you wonder when the other shoe is going to drop.
“I’ll take amnesia for 500, Alex.”
March 27, 2013
There’s something about the heat, the pink evening sky, the palm trees undulating in the Wal-Mart parking lot… it’s magic.
— Author Lindsay Hunter on her home state of Florida
I received this book as a gift from a dear friend of mine about two months back, and I've only just now gotten around to reading/reviewing it. Daddy's, a flash collection billed as "a Southern Gothic-infused bait box of temptation," was personally recommended to me on the grounds that it's "a naughty, dirty, wacky awesome book", presumably because that's the kind of shit I'm into.
Well, who was I fooling? She was right of course.
However, I would also add that it's an unsavorily sweet and wholesomely perverted book as well, much of it related with the same kind of dark, wide-eyed wonder we'd usually expect from small, disturbed children, or David Lynch films (Wild at Heart meets Eraserhead, I'm thinking). Each vignette centers on some twisted, hilarious, potentially scarring episode from hick-town America, yet most of the characters are easy enough to relate to and sympathize with, if only for the humorously heartbreaking manner in which their stories are told.
This book could well be the American cousin of Mark Staniforth's Fryupdale, which deals with similar themes across the pond.
— Author Lindsay Hunter on her home state of Florida
I received this book as a gift from a dear friend of mine about two months back, and I've only just now gotten around to reading/reviewing it. Daddy's, a flash collection billed as "a Southern Gothic-infused bait box of temptation," was personally recommended to me on the grounds that it's "a naughty, dirty, wacky awesome book", presumably because that's the kind of shit I'm into.
Well, who was I fooling? She was right of course.
However, I would also add that it's an unsavorily sweet and wholesomely perverted book as well, much of it related with the same kind of dark, wide-eyed wonder we'd usually expect from small, disturbed children, or David Lynch films (Wild at Heart meets Eraserhead, I'm thinking). Each vignette centers on some twisted, hilarious, potentially scarring episode from hick-town America, yet most of the characters are easy enough to relate to and sympathize with, if only for the humorously heartbreaking manner in which their stories are told.
This book could well be the American cousin of Mark Staniforth's Fryupdale, which deals with similar themes across the pond.
April 2, 2011
There is another review I wrote a while ago that talks about how fiction is kind of a response to a feeling that hume metaphorizes as when we live we can only live a sketch, there isn't time for drafting or going back to fill in the missing pieces. And basically in that review I concluded fiction was a way of trying to draft things to go and color in an experience we'd never had and never will have, basically to live a different life. I don't suddenly disagree with that, but reading this book I think it might also be a way of retraumatizing, or even reliving trauma when you can control it. I don't mean to say that I think the things in this book really happened to lindsay hunter because I have no way of knowing that. But I do think this book leaks pain in a way that a lot of books even ones that aren't about terrible things happening don't.
I guess the way I want to review this book is to talk about books it reminds me of.
Famous Fathers and Other Stories
To be honest, I don't remember the actual stories in famous fathers. I do remember feeling like there was a sense of damage. But for me it felt like a sense of resolved damage. Like it had been worked through and dealt with and was being put out the world more in a sense of, this is what I'm past, not this is what I am. Daddy's doesn't feel that way to me, it feels preoccupied with the damage. Maybe that's a working through instead of a presentation, maybe that is something hunter is manufacturing, but I think that for me at least this book is much more emotionally jarring than pia ever was.
Suburban Pornography
Okay honestly this book just came to mind because they are both so sexual. but I mean differently so. While firth tends to be obsessed with the tradition, with the regular, hunter's book obsesses on the strange, the "abnormal" and even the degradation of the sexual object. The sexual object becomes something to mock, to study, to reject if it doesn't turn out to be exact as opposed to the feeling in firth that it is something to be desired a prize to be achieved. This book as tends to make the sexual object the narrational core while in firth the sexual object is outside the narrator. This positioning I think is really interesting and much less common. how often is the focus an object, it definitely creates interesting conflicts between the emotional core of the store and the intense attempt to objectify the narrator.
The Things They Carried
Okay I actually think there is a bit of a war going on in the hunter book. The stories feel like reliving emotional trauma, and like the O'brien I think they aren't being relived in the same physical space but in the same emotional space. Stories about different physical events constantly tend to bring up the same traumatic feelings for me at least which makes me think the more important aspects aren't the events but the senses of depersonalization and abandonment, just like for o'brien what's important isn't necessarily who does what but rejection and guilt.
I guess in short I think this is a really powerful book but also a really difficult book to read.
I guess the way I want to review this book is to talk about books it reminds me of.
Famous Fathers and Other Stories
To be honest, I don't remember the actual stories in famous fathers. I do remember feeling like there was a sense of damage. But for me it felt like a sense of resolved damage. Like it had been worked through and dealt with and was being put out the world more in a sense of, this is what I'm past, not this is what I am. Daddy's doesn't feel that way to me, it feels preoccupied with the damage. Maybe that's a working through instead of a presentation, maybe that is something hunter is manufacturing, but I think that for me at least this book is much more emotionally jarring than pia ever was.
Suburban Pornography
Okay honestly this book just came to mind because they are both so sexual. but I mean differently so. While firth tends to be obsessed with the tradition, with the regular, hunter's book obsesses on the strange, the "abnormal" and even the degradation of the sexual object. The sexual object becomes something to mock, to study, to reject if it doesn't turn out to be exact as opposed to the feeling in firth that it is something to be desired a prize to be achieved. This book as tends to make the sexual object the narrational core while in firth the sexual object is outside the narrator. This positioning I think is really interesting and much less common. how often is the focus an object, it definitely creates interesting conflicts between the emotional core of the store and the intense attempt to objectify the narrator.
The Things They Carried
Okay I actually think there is a bit of a war going on in the hunter book. The stories feel like reliving emotional trauma, and like the O'brien I think they aren't being relived in the same physical space but in the same emotional space. Stories about different physical events constantly tend to bring up the same traumatic feelings for me at least which makes me think the more important aspects aren't the events but the senses of depersonalization and abandonment, just like for o'brien what's important isn't necessarily who does what but rejection and guilt.
I guess in short I think this is a really powerful book but also a really difficult book to read.
March 20, 2015
We wouldn't mention how glamorous it felt to say we were bored, and how in the dark we got chill bumps up and down our arms at the idea that this was life, and life smelled like peach carpet spray and cinnamon chewing gum and cheap-flavored wine, all backwashed up.
The stories in Daddy's are like diamonds (tiny, rock-hard, but dazzling) or sparklers (bright, brief, dangerous if you get too close). They could be summed up by picking any line out at random, but the above - the concluding sentence of the stream-of-consciousness, first-person-plural 'Fifteen' - just says everything about the feel of Hunter's writing. It has a character all its own, one composed of junk food, sex, emptiness, disgust and the sort of things you think are glamorous and beautiful when you're a teenager and you've grown up dirt-poor and don't know any better. It's stupendous; it's disgusting. It feels a bit like it's set in an alternate version of our world, albeit a very similar one, only slightly closer to the apocalypse (and you'd be forgiven for thinking Circle K only exists in Hunter's universe). Hunter's description of her influences here - 'Cormac McCarthy, the Drive-by Truckers, the art of Wes Freed, murder TV shows' - makes perfect sense; she mentions Amelia Gray, too, whose Threats I was reminded of when reading Don't Kiss Me . The subtitle of Daddy's is '24 fictions by Lindsay Hunter', and 'fictions' does indeed seem like a more appropriate term for these fragments of lives that feel like small broken pieces of something much bigger.
November 24, 2010
All of the five star reviews for this are warranted. Hunter is fearless when it comes to content AND the style that she dresses it in. There are moments in this beautifully designed book that threaten to go over the top (and sure, it probably does!)--but sometimes great books do that. The envelope is not just pushed, but it's pulled as well. Torn apart with wild spasms. Hunter should be read widely and she should be watched closely. I will bet that she fucks shit up for a long time. At least I hope so.
March 13, 2021
Dark, damp, and depressing. The show Ozark came to mind with its gloomy landscape and underlying creepiness. Throughout the 24 flash fictions, I never felt like I was grounded with a narrator. Only a few stories stood out (The Fence, Scales, Unpreparing, and Kid) but the rest was borderline unintelligible. The author is skilled at painting a shocking picture, but her language and style isn’t for me.
“Many are the plans. Kid thought, Many are the plans, yo. Many are the pussies fuckbed lipslits pleasure parade cookie kissnuts.”
“Many are the plans. Kid thought, Many are the plans, yo. Many are the pussies fuckbed lipslits pleasure parade cookie kissnuts.”
January 6, 2012
thought girls were to grow out of this phase of angst in their mid/late teens... when they run away from home, drink to justify opening legs to older men then sit in coffeeshops and write in journals about it all. so much of these stories seem from that stereotype of an era, albethem tolerably better written in verbiage if not construct.
and it reinforces the fact that genders should rarely write from the POV of another's... here, they come across as base and insipid. however, and this is why it is not getting one or two stars, this poverty of perspective comes across as a parody--- as intentionally atrocious since there is no way it could be intended to be honest. it is bad--- morally and in the way it is executed.... but so bad that it is interesting. and with a few lines that make the writing stand out more than the nonsense on the page. helps muchly that only a few of the stories are from a male perspective.
that, and the thing that stuck out most was a repeated sense of sex smelling like the sea....? author lives in Chicago and maybe those lakes of greatness pass as seas to some and their smell is different than the oceans i've been around---? because there are a great many great scents to associate with fucking but that one was repeatedly lost on me.
still, for some reason i didn't hate it--- and cannot, for the life of me, really figure out why.
and it reinforces the fact that genders should rarely write from the POV of another's... here, they come across as base and insipid. however, and this is why it is not getting one or two stars, this poverty of perspective comes across as a parody--- as intentionally atrocious since there is no way it could be intended to be honest. it is bad--- morally and in the way it is executed.... but so bad that it is interesting. and with a few lines that make the writing stand out more than the nonsense on the page. helps muchly that only a few of the stories are from a male perspective.
that, and the thing that stuck out most was a repeated sense of sex smelling like the sea....? author lives in Chicago and maybe those lakes of greatness pass as seas to some and their smell is different than the oceans i've been around---? because there are a great many great scents to associate with fucking but that one was repeatedly lost on me.
still, for some reason i didn't hate it--- and cannot, for the life of me, really figure out why.
August 11, 2011
Plan to be at least a bit unsettled when reading these stories, if not downright disturbed. If you aren't, then you should really worry. These stories are gritty, visceral, imaginative, and sometimes creepy. Now, don't get me wrong, I mean all that in the best possible way. These are dynamite stories, dynamite in tiny packages, but they aren't exactly "feel-good" kind of stories. You will feel things, but not necessarily comfortable things. Definitely not something you should miss.
July 21, 2017
I laughed aloud at nearly all of the inappropriatenesses (which abound) in this remarkable collection of short stories.
January 4, 2011
I'd like to lock myself in a room with Goodreads for a week. I've read so many great books in the past year and I want to write about them, to spread the good word. So many books, so little time, and I've let that hugeness and those annoying Goodreads's star ratings overwhelm me.
Star ratings are hard. I prefer to discuss a book rather than rate it, but everyone else has to work with those screaming red blots, so I'll have to suck it up and play along. I'm going to take it book by book and I'm going to start with Lindsay Hunter's, Daddy's, which I just finished, having marveled all the while, and which has left me conflicted and troubled.
Lindsay Hunter's stories in this book are rich with language, with stunning images and with precise details. Much to my delight and awe, every story in this collection touched me. Every story offered something, whether it be on the level of language or character or emotion, and usually, spectacularly, all three. These stories are powerful and illuminating. It's hard to describe, but Lindsay Hunter has managed to strip away any and all layers between the reader and the stories. There's a confidence, beauty, brutality, and honesty to this collection that's gripping.
I've talked before about how troubled I felt during my MFA years at Mills College. I couldn't find any joy in reading. Zip. Zero. Nada. I was depressed, exhausted, and overwhelmed. I had a three-year-old and a newborn and no time for anything outside of mothering, least of all reading. How terrible, as a writer, to find no enjoyment in reading. How wonderful, then, in recent years to refind that love. To enjoy a book so much I don't want to put it down, so much I can't wait to get back to it. In this regard, the other two most recent titles that come to mind, aside from Daddy's, are Paula Bomer's Baby and Other Stories and Alissa Nutting's Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls.
Daddy's opens with "My Brother" and these first three sentences: "My brother tells me monsters set up shop in his closet among his Reeboks and hidden Playboys." Yeah, he says, leaning back and stroking his chin, yeah, you can't see it but something's coming for me. Big whoop, I tell him."
Reading is so personal, isn't it? When I was a girl, my mother believed monsters lurked inside her wardrobe, told me they were coming for her. So you can bet those first lines and that first story got my attention and had deep personal meaning. That said, "My Brother" is perhaps my least favorite story in the collection. In many ways, "My Brother" doesn't go as deep as the other stories, but there was enough in those first pages to hook me, and with each story that followed Lindsay Hunter reeled me right in.
Here's a line from the next story, "Scales," that shows Lindsay Hunter's keen eye and exquisite prose and which is of course even more powerful in context:
"Her spine sticks out and in the bright light of the bathroom little shadows collect under the bones."
So many of these stories are the proof that you can break all the 'rules' you want when you're this gifted a storyteller. From "Love Song" I'd be wary in my own work of using song lyrics to further a story and yet "Love Song" is a heartbreaking read, in the best way. The last page of this story literally took my breath away. I could go on and on about this book. Read this book. Shout about this book.
So why am I conflicted and depressed? There's the perhaps typical anxiety and yearning: How does my story collection compare to this? Can my stories move and affect readers anything close to this? Damn, how'd she get to be so brilliant? But it's much more and I'm not sure how to talk about it.
I don't know anyone in my life that I could hand this book to and say "read this, it's brilliant." I think it's fair to say that everyone I know and love would be shocked and disturbed by this book, and that even if they did enjoy it they'd have a hard time admitting it to the greater community: We can't like that.
When I write, there's a critic on my shoulder: You can't write that. I'm often a frigid, uptight and conservative writer. I have a low threshold for writing about the body, sex, violence, and our baser urges and desires. When I've dared break free of that jail, I've paid a great personal and emotional price.
The "You can't write that" police torment me: What if your daughters' school principal read that? Your parish priest? Your Catholic school community and your neighbors? Your daughters' friends' families? That's disgusting, my inner critic screams. What if these readers are so appalled by what I write it affects my family? One day, my daughters will also become my readers and my stories could potentially have enormous impact on them. These are real and present concerns that exist outside the bubble of our online community.What's good taste? What's vulgar? What's perverse? What's brutal-honest, brutal-beauty and brutal-bad? I'm conflicted. I don't know. I'm shook up.
I wonder if Lindsay Hunter found it an act of courage, an act of faith, to publish some of the more raw and graphic of these stories? "The Fence," for example. I wonder the same of Paula Bomer and Alissa Nutting. Maybe it's my Irish Catholic upbringing, maybe it's that I live in a conservative community, maybe it's fallout from childhood trauma, but there are some places I can't go as a reader or a writer. Hunter, Bomer, and Nutting all took me places in their stories I didn't think I'd ever dare venture and their brilliance kept me there, rewarded me. However, it's a fine balancing act, for them, for me. These stories disturb, but in the best possible ways. Lesser writers might just disturb.
Maybe I'm in the wrong life. Maybe I'm a coward.
Star ratings are hard. I prefer to discuss a book rather than rate it, but everyone else has to work with those screaming red blots, so I'll have to suck it up and play along. I'm going to take it book by book and I'm going to start with Lindsay Hunter's, Daddy's, which I just finished, having marveled all the while, and which has left me conflicted and troubled.
Lindsay Hunter's stories in this book are rich with language, with stunning images and with precise details. Much to my delight and awe, every story in this collection touched me. Every story offered something, whether it be on the level of language or character or emotion, and usually, spectacularly, all three. These stories are powerful and illuminating. It's hard to describe, but Lindsay Hunter has managed to strip away any and all layers between the reader and the stories. There's a confidence, beauty, brutality, and honesty to this collection that's gripping.
I've talked before about how troubled I felt during my MFA years at Mills College. I couldn't find any joy in reading. Zip. Zero. Nada. I was depressed, exhausted, and overwhelmed. I had a three-year-old and a newborn and no time for anything outside of mothering, least of all reading. How terrible, as a writer, to find no enjoyment in reading. How wonderful, then, in recent years to refind that love. To enjoy a book so much I don't want to put it down, so much I can't wait to get back to it. In this regard, the other two most recent titles that come to mind, aside from Daddy's, are Paula Bomer's Baby and Other Stories and Alissa Nutting's Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls.
Daddy's opens with "My Brother" and these first three sentences: "My brother tells me monsters set up shop in his closet among his Reeboks and hidden Playboys." Yeah, he says, leaning back and stroking his chin, yeah, you can't see it but something's coming for me. Big whoop, I tell him."
Reading is so personal, isn't it? When I was a girl, my mother believed monsters lurked inside her wardrobe, told me they were coming for her. So you can bet those first lines and that first story got my attention and had deep personal meaning. That said, "My Brother" is perhaps my least favorite story in the collection. In many ways, "My Brother" doesn't go as deep as the other stories, but there was enough in those first pages to hook me, and with each story that followed Lindsay Hunter reeled me right in.
Here's a line from the next story, "Scales," that shows Lindsay Hunter's keen eye and exquisite prose and which is of course even more powerful in context:
"Her spine sticks out and in the bright light of the bathroom little shadows collect under the bones."
So many of these stories are the proof that you can break all the 'rules' you want when you're this gifted a storyteller. From "Love Song" I'd be wary in my own work of using song lyrics to further a story and yet "Love Song" is a heartbreaking read, in the best way. The last page of this story literally took my breath away. I could go on and on about this book. Read this book. Shout about this book.
So why am I conflicted and depressed? There's the perhaps typical anxiety and yearning: How does my story collection compare to this? Can my stories move and affect readers anything close to this? Damn, how'd she get to be so brilliant? But it's much more and I'm not sure how to talk about it.
I don't know anyone in my life that I could hand this book to and say "read this, it's brilliant." I think it's fair to say that everyone I know and love would be shocked and disturbed by this book, and that even if they did enjoy it they'd have a hard time admitting it to the greater community: We can't like that.
When I write, there's a critic on my shoulder: You can't write that. I'm often a frigid, uptight and conservative writer. I have a low threshold for writing about the body, sex, violence, and our baser urges and desires. When I've dared break free of that jail, I've paid a great personal and emotional price.
The "You can't write that" police torment me: What if your daughters' school principal read that? Your parish priest? Your Catholic school community and your neighbors? Your daughters' friends' families? That's disgusting, my inner critic screams. What if these readers are so appalled by what I write it affects my family? One day, my daughters will also become my readers and my stories could potentially have enormous impact on them. These are real and present concerns that exist outside the bubble of our online community.What's good taste? What's vulgar? What's perverse? What's brutal-honest, brutal-beauty and brutal-bad? I'm conflicted. I don't know. I'm shook up.
I wonder if Lindsay Hunter found it an act of courage, an act of faith, to publish some of the more raw and graphic of these stories? "The Fence," for example. I wonder the same of Paula Bomer and Alissa Nutting. Maybe it's my Irish Catholic upbringing, maybe it's that I live in a conservative community, maybe it's fallout from childhood trauma, but there are some places I can't go as a reader or a writer. Hunter, Bomer, and Nutting all took me places in their stories I didn't think I'd ever dare venture and their brilliance kept me there, rewarded me. However, it's a fine balancing act, for them, for me. These stories disturb, but in the best possible ways. Lesser writers might just disturb.
Maybe I'm in the wrong life. Maybe I'm a coward.
April 1, 2018
It took me a long time to read this, although the entire book is short and each story within it very short. It’s just so repulsive - I felt genuinely sick reading each story. The characters are spiteful, petty, cruel, and I bet they haven’t showered or brushed their teeth for a while. I often read while eating, and this book is absolutely not recommended for that. If this sounds like I didn’t enjoy the book - quite the opposite. I loved it and have dogeared just about every page. Hunter has an incredible and awful mind, and I look forward to reading more from her. I’ll just be sure to read slowly, and not while eating.
March 10, 2011
In the early pages of Daddy’s, Lindsay Hunter’s brain-blistering collection of short stories, a restless wife who endures frequent sessions of rough sex with her husband finds pleasure in their invisible electric fence. She puts their dog Marky in front of the TV to watch Animal Planet, then goes out to the edge of the yard:
I wind the vinyl part of Marky’s collar around my hand, holding the plastic receiver in my palm, and then I press the cold metal stimulator against my underwear, step forward, and the jolt is delivered. Like a million ants biting. Like teeth. Like the G-spot exists. Like a tiny knife, a precise pinch. Like fireworks. I can’t help it—I cry out; my underwear is flooded with perfect warmth. I lie back in the grass and see stars.
Still with me? If that paragraph shocks and jolts you, then believe me when I say that it’s one of the tamer moments in Hunter’s squirm-worthy stories. I’m not trying to push readers away from Daddy’s—quite the opposite, in fact—but I did want to make you aware that this book is not for everyone.
Put another way, do you remember the way we felt the first time we read Flannery O’Connor and marveled at her daring combination of religion and grotesque humor? Daddy’s slaps our face with that same kind of brass-ballsiness. What O’Connor was to Catholicism, Hunter is to sex. And self-mutilation and incest and domestic violence—any number of things we talk about in low voices behind cupped hands.
The explicit stories in Hunter's collection aren't just eye-opening, they're eye-popping. What else can you say about a story that begins with “We dream about throwing baby in the well”? Or this paragraph from “Food Luck”:
Remember how Mom would eat a dozen eggs and a pan of bacon, and remember how that one Christmas she went to stretch and found an old brown napkin wedged in her neckfat, how then we wanted to know what else was hiding in there, a diary, a housekey, a slice of pizza, and hey remember when we joked that Dad was in there somewhere, because that was how we dealt with Dad leaving us and moving in with the man who ran the movie theater.
That’s a good example of the way Hunter pairs latent sadness with the seamy details of her characters’ lives. The dog-collar orgasms, the pie-eating-contest barf, the feral desert dogs that smell like “mothballs and corn chips and old blood,” the lonely chafe of masturbation, the fat fathers who wear bras: at times, Daddy’s is the literary equivalent of a John Waters movie—and you may feel like showering after each story—but where Waters shocks for shock’s sake, Hunter uses the grotesque as a gateway into the loneliness that darkens many of our lives—whether you like your Oreos with melted Velveeta or not.
We may start off reading Daddy’s for many of the same reasons we read Chuck Palahiniuk: it’s a little flaunty, a little daring, a little naughty. Then, somewhere along the line, Hunter brings us to a place where we feel moments of empathy among the Cheeto crumbs. She takes us where we would not normally go willingly, but even among the sordid and grimy, there are moments of breathtaking beauty. In here, stars twinkle “white as little baby teeth,” bits of cherry pie stick to the corners of a mouth “like blood under a neon light,” a mother yearning for her baby has “nipples like lit matchheads” and the ghost of a dead brother pays a visit to his young siblings in this extraordinary paragraph:
Sure enough Davey’s ghost came fluttering in flimsy as a leaf husk and settled on the toilet. We could see right through to the ruby jewel pump in his chest. You want me to I can gather up that navy winking sky and make us a diamondsparkled sail of it, Davey said, and his voice was the same but unnatural, like some busted chorus of bells clattered out his throat along with everything else.
Hunter can get away with heightened metaphorical language like this because the entire collection is bold and fierce. Like a bottled hot sauce you're trying for the first time, there's always that first hesitant moment before you put it on your tongue. Make no mistake: Hunter burns; oh brother, does she burn.
This review originally appeared at The Quivering Pen blog: http://davidabramsbooks.blogspot.com/...
I wind the vinyl part of Marky’s collar around my hand, holding the plastic receiver in my palm, and then I press the cold metal stimulator against my underwear, step forward, and the jolt is delivered. Like a million ants biting. Like teeth. Like the G-spot exists. Like a tiny knife, a precise pinch. Like fireworks. I can’t help it—I cry out; my underwear is flooded with perfect warmth. I lie back in the grass and see stars.
Still with me? If that paragraph shocks and jolts you, then believe me when I say that it’s one of the tamer moments in Hunter’s squirm-worthy stories. I’m not trying to push readers away from Daddy’s—quite the opposite, in fact—but I did want to make you aware that this book is not for everyone.
Put another way, do you remember the way we felt the first time we read Flannery O’Connor and marveled at her daring combination of religion and grotesque humor? Daddy’s slaps our face with that same kind of brass-ballsiness. What O’Connor was to Catholicism, Hunter is to sex. And self-mutilation and incest and domestic violence—any number of things we talk about in low voices behind cupped hands.
The explicit stories in Hunter's collection aren't just eye-opening, they're eye-popping. What else can you say about a story that begins with “We dream about throwing baby in the well”? Or this paragraph from “Food Luck”:
Remember how Mom would eat a dozen eggs and a pan of bacon, and remember how that one Christmas she went to stretch and found an old brown napkin wedged in her neckfat, how then we wanted to know what else was hiding in there, a diary, a housekey, a slice of pizza, and hey remember when we joked that Dad was in there somewhere, because that was how we dealt with Dad leaving us and moving in with the man who ran the movie theater.
That’s a good example of the way Hunter pairs latent sadness with the seamy details of her characters’ lives. The dog-collar orgasms, the pie-eating-contest barf, the feral desert dogs that smell like “mothballs and corn chips and old blood,” the lonely chafe of masturbation, the fat fathers who wear bras: at times, Daddy’s is the literary equivalent of a John Waters movie—and you may feel like showering after each story—but where Waters shocks for shock’s sake, Hunter uses the grotesque as a gateway into the loneliness that darkens many of our lives—whether you like your Oreos with melted Velveeta or not.
We may start off reading Daddy’s for many of the same reasons we read Chuck Palahiniuk: it’s a little flaunty, a little daring, a little naughty. Then, somewhere along the line, Hunter brings us to a place where we feel moments of empathy among the Cheeto crumbs. She takes us where we would not normally go willingly, but even among the sordid and grimy, there are moments of breathtaking beauty. In here, stars twinkle “white as little baby teeth,” bits of cherry pie stick to the corners of a mouth “like blood under a neon light,” a mother yearning for her baby has “nipples like lit matchheads” and the ghost of a dead brother pays a visit to his young siblings in this extraordinary paragraph:
Sure enough Davey’s ghost came fluttering in flimsy as a leaf husk and settled on the toilet. We could see right through to the ruby jewel pump in his chest. You want me to I can gather up that navy winking sky and make us a diamondsparkled sail of it, Davey said, and his voice was the same but unnatural, like some busted chorus of bells clattered out his throat along with everything else.
Hunter can get away with heightened metaphorical language like this because the entire collection is bold and fierce. Like a bottled hot sauce you're trying for the first time, there's always that first hesitant moment before you put it on your tongue. Make no mistake: Hunter burns; oh brother, does she burn.
This review originally appeared at The Quivering Pen blog: http://davidabramsbooks.blogspot.com/...
February 10, 2023
My favorite story in this voice-drenched collection of heartbreaking stories is "Love Song," which begins: "It was my birthday and Daddy picked me up and he was drunk . . . " The story passes though a few scenes of humiliation and then at "Gator's, Daddy's favorite establishment" our unnamed narrator gets her birthday lunch and her present, a ziplock bag with enough quarters for two games of eight-ball with Daddy. And then we have this:
They make a quick exit and Daddy is too drunk to drive so she drives him home to his apartment and drops him off and then leaves and here is the last paragraph:
Yes, that is some kind of writing, and Lindsay Hunter scores again and again in this collection, using words as if they were wooden stakes to pound through a vampire's heart. Some of the pieces come off as extended free-writes, but even in those the voice is sharp and unique enough to cut away at all but the most callous of readers.
A lady walked by and Daddy's eyes lit up and he lurched off the stool and grabbed her elbow. The woman's hair looked fragile with bleach, her face pocked and her eyes lined in blue. She smiled at Daddy and I could see where she was missing one of her bottom teeth. Honey, he screamed, this my girlfriend Sewanee. The lady threw back her head and laughed like her throat was working metal against metal. Is that what we calling it now, she said when her head was righted. Daddy laughed and said, Yeah and it was obvious he hadn't heard what she said. This my child, he told the lady. She's sixteen today. Pleased to meet you, the lady said, holding out her hand like I should kiss the leathery knuckles. She leaned in, said Let me ask you, you a tough bitch yet? You made of chain mail yet? I could smell her cinnamon chewing gum and her powdery perfume. When I didn't answer she said You work on that. Work on getting mean, hear?
They make a quick exit and Daddy is too drunk to drive so she drives him home to his apartment and drops him off and then leaves and here is the last paragraph:
I walked to the bus stop on the corner, thinking about the scruffs on his shoes and how there was nothing on his walls and how if you're lonely and drunken I guess it makes sense that you'd be finding meanings everywhere your eyes fell and believing with your whole body in some hillbilly song about the greener side of the hill. But see then when the bus come I seen what Daddy meant about things at night looking different, to look at it the bus some kind of miracle box of light trundling toward me with an offering of strangers and a lungful of air conditioning and a bell I could ring any time I wanted to, to make it stop, but I guess that's not how no tough bitch would talk.
Yes, that is some kind of writing, and Lindsay Hunter scores again and again in this collection, using words as if they were wooden stakes to pound through a vampire's heart. Some of the pieces come off as extended free-writes, but even in those the voice is sharp and unique enough to cut away at all but the most callous of readers.
February 17, 2011
This is a collection of 24 short stories around issues of family, sexuality and violence. The stories are sort of sad and dirty, and it made me feel like I was carrying around the secrets that Ms. Hunter unloaded on me. I can't decided if it is better to devour this all at once and totally immerse yourself in her world, or if it would be better to draw it out and read one story a day like a IV drip. The stories are fearless and don't hold any punches. There is a careless, wild, careening madness that drew me through the book. Did I like it? It seems difficult to explain my feelings about this book in simple terms such as "like" or "dislike." It had a strange and strong effect on me.
If you are wondering if Lindsay Hunter is for you, many of these stories are previously published and some are available on the web. Get a little sneak peak of Daddy's here and here and here and a personal favorite, here.
If you are wondering if Lindsay Hunter is for you, many of these stories are previously published and some are available on the web. Get a little sneak peak of Daddy's here and here and here and a personal favorite, here.
November 16, 2010
The following review was originally published at The Nervous Breakdown.
http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/rt...
Chuck Palahniuk said something about writing that echoed in my head while reading the debut collection of dysfunctional short stories in Daddy’s (Featherproof) by Lindsay Hunter. I paraphrase, but it goes something like this: “Teach me something, make me laugh, and break my heart.” And that’s what Lindsay Hunter does in this gut-wrenching collection of short fiction, with a sprinkling of hot sex and familial violence on top.
Set in primarily rural areas (inspired by her time in Ocoee, Florida from the years 1986 to 1996), these stories ring true in horrifying detail. If you’ve ever spent any time in the south, tipped some cows, maybe sniffed your sister’s panties out of curiosity, puked in a raggedy hotel room, seen your mama naked, or taken a backhand from your daddy, then you know what I’m saying. And that’s what gives these powerful stories of abuse, longing, and depravity their power: the authority in them.
Lindsay Hunter is fearless in her storytelling, no subject taboo, no moment from the past too dark or questionable to put down on paper. It makes me want to give her a hug, and then I remember, it’s fiction, dummy. She’s making worlds here, worlds where she doesn’t turn the camera away from the dirty parts, the naughty moments with a conquest, or perhaps alone, as in “The Fence,” one of my favorite stories from this collection.
In “The Fence,” the narrator gets off on an electric dog collar, placing it between her legs, slowly inching up to the edge of their property where the invisible fence lies buried, until the shock goes off:
“I wind the vinyl part of Marky’s collar around my hand, holding the plastic receiver in my palm, and then I press the cold metal stimulator against my underwear, step forward, and the jolt is delivered. Like a million ants biting. Like teeth. Like the G-spot exists. Like a tiny knife, a precise pinch. Like fireworks. I can’t help it—I cry out; my underwear is flooded with perfect warmth. I lie back in the grass and see stars.”
And it only escalates. You can’t remain a passive viewer here, as waves of disgust mix with arousal, jealousy with sympathy, at the lengths the narrator goes to in order to feel alive.
In the end, the fence is taken away, her husband Tim asserting that they don’t need it any more, since their dog Marky certainly won’t stray now. But he does. He runs away the moment that fence is turned off, sauntering to the edge of their property line, and then across, and gone, as she watches, in silence.
The final paragraph echoes her loss, this connection she had made with herself, this dramatic monologue that she acted out on a daily basis, collapsing on the wet grass, complete. Her final thoughts, just after the dog, Marky, takes off into the woods:
"I put his water dish in the suds and cleaned that, too, and then I went upstairs and lay on our bed and wept until my ribs were sore. I went into our bathroom and straddled the edge of the tub, and it felt good to have something hard and cold there, but not nearly good enough.”
There are climaxes throughout this collection, both literal and figurative, and it is the latter that makes for some of her most powerful stories. I don’t think I’ll be taking away any of the her power with these stories to show one of these endings here, because the lead up to these moments is a gradual crescendo, building to something that echoes off the page, the imagery in black and white, the flash freezing it in your mind’s eye. You’ll have to experience that journey on your own, the sum larger than the parts.
For example, take “That Baby,” another of my favorites, the story of a baby boy named Levis that grows at a frighteningly rapid rate (to 40 pounds in the first week). His cute behaviors quickly turn into violent, disturbing actions, grasping at his momma’s breasts, teeth sticking out, his hands rough, uttering phrases like “Pickles, honey.” He brandishes a paring knife at his Daddy’s belly, drool running down his chin, and it isn’t long before Daddy runs out of them.
In the final scene where she abandons the boy in a park, either racing away from all of her motherly instincts, or embracing her greater need for survival, the haunting imagery stays with you:
"…and so getting up and walking to the car, Levis saying Honey? Levis standing up to see better, saying Honey…me getting into the car and locking the doors, key in the ignition, Levis just standing there, the late afternoon sunlight giving him a glow, just standing there with his fists at his sides, looking like a fat little man more than anybody’s baby, a little fat man beating his chest now, me pulling out onto the road, Levis wailing Honey, wailing Pickles, getting smaller and smaller in the rearview until I took a turn and he was gone, my heart like a fist to the door and my breasts empty and my nipples like lit matchheads.”
These are powerful stories, the twists and turns that Lindsay Hunter takes, away from the expected, down roads we usually pass up, preferring to avoid that dusty, bumpy ride, wanting to skip the rotting, musky scent of a decomposing skunk by the roadside, instead, staying on the highway, where everything flies by in a blur, and nothing has to hurt. In Daddy’s you’ll notice the possessive, not the plural, and the ownership of the actions in these stories, the dominance and simple belief in life a certain way never falters. This collection of southern gothics is a contemporary look at life in the shadows, the temptations and depravity that lurk behind closed doors and drawn lace curtains, yellowed by cigarette smoke, and torn at the edges. The longing and need for acceptance is evident on every page, reminding us of how far we sometimes have to go to survive the toxicities in our life, to emerge alive and whole.
http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/rt...
Chuck Palahniuk said something about writing that echoed in my head while reading the debut collection of dysfunctional short stories in Daddy’s (Featherproof) by Lindsay Hunter. I paraphrase, but it goes something like this: “Teach me something, make me laugh, and break my heart.” And that’s what Lindsay Hunter does in this gut-wrenching collection of short fiction, with a sprinkling of hot sex and familial violence on top.
Set in primarily rural areas (inspired by her time in Ocoee, Florida from the years 1986 to 1996), these stories ring true in horrifying detail. If you’ve ever spent any time in the south, tipped some cows, maybe sniffed your sister’s panties out of curiosity, puked in a raggedy hotel room, seen your mama naked, or taken a backhand from your daddy, then you know what I’m saying. And that’s what gives these powerful stories of abuse, longing, and depravity their power: the authority in them.
Lindsay Hunter is fearless in her storytelling, no subject taboo, no moment from the past too dark or questionable to put down on paper. It makes me want to give her a hug, and then I remember, it’s fiction, dummy. She’s making worlds here, worlds where she doesn’t turn the camera away from the dirty parts, the naughty moments with a conquest, or perhaps alone, as in “The Fence,” one of my favorite stories from this collection.
In “The Fence,” the narrator gets off on an electric dog collar, placing it between her legs, slowly inching up to the edge of their property where the invisible fence lies buried, until the shock goes off:
“I wind the vinyl part of Marky’s collar around my hand, holding the plastic receiver in my palm, and then I press the cold metal stimulator against my underwear, step forward, and the jolt is delivered. Like a million ants biting. Like teeth. Like the G-spot exists. Like a tiny knife, a precise pinch. Like fireworks. I can’t help it—I cry out; my underwear is flooded with perfect warmth. I lie back in the grass and see stars.”
And it only escalates. You can’t remain a passive viewer here, as waves of disgust mix with arousal, jealousy with sympathy, at the lengths the narrator goes to in order to feel alive.
In the end, the fence is taken away, her husband Tim asserting that they don’t need it any more, since their dog Marky certainly won’t stray now. But he does. He runs away the moment that fence is turned off, sauntering to the edge of their property line, and then across, and gone, as she watches, in silence.
The final paragraph echoes her loss, this connection she had made with herself, this dramatic monologue that she acted out on a daily basis, collapsing on the wet grass, complete. Her final thoughts, just after the dog, Marky, takes off into the woods:
"I put his water dish in the suds and cleaned that, too, and then I went upstairs and lay on our bed and wept until my ribs were sore. I went into our bathroom and straddled the edge of the tub, and it felt good to have something hard and cold there, but not nearly good enough.”
There are climaxes throughout this collection, both literal and figurative, and it is the latter that makes for some of her most powerful stories. I don’t think I’ll be taking away any of the her power with these stories to show one of these endings here, because the lead up to these moments is a gradual crescendo, building to something that echoes off the page, the imagery in black and white, the flash freezing it in your mind’s eye. You’ll have to experience that journey on your own, the sum larger than the parts.
For example, take “That Baby,” another of my favorites, the story of a baby boy named Levis that grows at a frighteningly rapid rate (to 40 pounds in the first week). His cute behaviors quickly turn into violent, disturbing actions, grasping at his momma’s breasts, teeth sticking out, his hands rough, uttering phrases like “Pickles, honey.” He brandishes a paring knife at his Daddy’s belly, drool running down his chin, and it isn’t long before Daddy runs out of them.
In the final scene where she abandons the boy in a park, either racing away from all of her motherly instincts, or embracing her greater need for survival, the haunting imagery stays with you:
"…and so getting up and walking to the car, Levis saying Honey? Levis standing up to see better, saying Honey…me getting into the car and locking the doors, key in the ignition, Levis just standing there, the late afternoon sunlight giving him a glow, just standing there with his fists at his sides, looking like a fat little man more than anybody’s baby, a little fat man beating his chest now, me pulling out onto the road, Levis wailing Honey, wailing Pickles, getting smaller and smaller in the rearview until I took a turn and he was gone, my heart like a fist to the door and my breasts empty and my nipples like lit matchheads.”
These are powerful stories, the twists and turns that Lindsay Hunter takes, away from the expected, down roads we usually pass up, preferring to avoid that dusty, bumpy ride, wanting to skip the rotting, musky scent of a decomposing skunk by the roadside, instead, staying on the highway, where everything flies by in a blur, and nothing has to hurt. In Daddy’s you’ll notice the possessive, not the plural, and the ownership of the actions in these stories, the dominance and simple belief in life a certain way never falters. This collection of southern gothics is a contemporary look at life in the shadows, the temptations and depravity that lurk behind closed doors and drawn lace curtains, yellowed by cigarette smoke, and torn at the edges. The longing and need for acceptance is evident on every page, reminding us of how far we sometimes have to go to survive the toxicities in our life, to emerge alive and whole.
December 22, 2010
I may have picked out my five books of the year a little early. Daddy's is a collection of 23 jagged little micro-fictions set in the rural south. They're dark as hell, even within the context of the genre. Hunter's spare, sharp prose doesn't so much grab you as hold you down and give you a kicking. It's tough stuff about folk so far down on their luck they've long since lost hope of ever hauling it back. Packaged up like a bait box, it tempts you in deeper even though you know you don't really want to. Stand-outs are Food Luck, Finding There and in particular the shockingly unforgettable final story - Marie Noe - Talks To You About Her Kids. I feel a little guilty only handing out four stars. There were just two or three I didn't feel quite hit the mark. And I just reckon her next stuff might be even better.
August 13, 2011
Squirmy, sad, dirty minutiae-encrusted tales filled with private moments and relationship games and all the blood and ooze and exhaustion residing in the corners. The shock of reality, brief blips of relief, perhaps grace. 24 snapshots of characters who don't want you to know them, revealed in words printed sideways, literally, on this pocket-sized book of sharp prose by a fearless writer who should continue writing and continue being fearless.
November 15, 2011
The best thing I can say about this book is that I don't know if I loved it or hated it, but I'm still sitting here thinking about it. This book is haunting in the way Palahniuk's Haunted is haunting. It's not frightening except in the possibility that some of this is true. Hunter's writing leaves a lot to be desired, specifically a lot more of these tales. And while the brevity might leave you unsatisfied, Daddy's will linger with you long after you've put it down.
October 4, 2015
24 brief, cryptic, shardlike stories. Reading them is a discomforting but addictive experience. Recurring motifs include bodily functions, weird sex, gross food, dysfunctional families/relationships, and the terror of childhood. All rendered in some of the most inventive, startling, genuinely 'new' prose I've read in a while. Straight to the head: a different kind of mindfuck.
October 29, 2013
The first five stories knocked me down with their dark little worlds. And then none of the other stories in the book ever captured that magic, and most of them were so similar they just ran together. But those first five stories: five stars each.
August 24, 2011
You know when you’re reading something and you think this is it! this is exactly what you should be reading now? When the stories hit you everywhere – in your guts and in your mind and in your senses – leaving you a bit breathless, a bit bedraggled and a lot dazzled and moved somewhere to the left of yourself? It doesn’t happen often (although it’s not that rare either – I had the same feelings for Alan Heathcock’s Volt, earlier this year) but Daddy’s packs this kind of punch, and more. I’d just finished reading ‘The Bigness of the World’ before this and the stories there were pretty perfect in a literary way, polished, poised, but pushed no boundaries. Lindsay Hunter breaks boundaries and runs free, fearlessly, and invites you to follow. In 'The Fence'(talking of boundaries) the heroine uses a strategically placed dog collar which gives a shock when near an invisible electric fence:
I wind the vinyl part of Marky's collar around my hand, holding the plastic receiver in my palm, then I press the cold metal stimulator against my underwear, step forward, and the jolt is delivered. Like a million ants biting. Like teeth. Like the g-spot exists. Like a tiny knife, a precise pinch. Like fireworks. I can't help it — I cry out; my underwear is flooded with perfect warmth. I lie back in the grass and see stars.
In comparison to some others this is quite a tame story. Here nothing is taboo. Beauty and horror are intertwined, disgust sex and longing, food and vomit wrapped up together, blood and maggots. Babies are reviled by their mother:
Always thought babies were dumb. Always did. Bald globey heads and gums dripping spit. Nothing behind the eyes but want. It made me belly sick to see how they’d reach up for me, needing me to feed em and change em and hold em and hell sometimes just look at em.
Another mother is so fat she has an old brown napkin wedged in her neckfat, how then we wanted to know what else was hiding in there, a diary, a housekey, a slice of pizza, and hey remember when we joked that Dad was in there somewhere, because that was how we dealt with Dad leaving us and moving in with the man who ran the movie theater.
Children are left in the desert with some jelly beans and limeade, a weird toddler is abandoned in a park. Wolves roam. A deer on the side of the road is laying on its back and stretching up its legs in order to admire them better. Most lives here are desperate, poor, pockmarked with longing for things unattainable and pursuing sexual thrills at the expense of relationships, but there is also a kind of love and much beauty. Here’s a girl on her birthday who has put her drunken father, an unsuccessful salesman to bed and left to get the bus home:
How if you’re lonely and drunken I guess it makes sense that you’d be finding meanings everywhere your eyes fell and believing with your whole body in some hillbilly song about the greener side of a hill. But see then when the bus come I seen what Daddy meant about things at night looking different, to look at it the bus some kind of miracle box of light trundling toward me with an offering of strangers and a lungful of air conditioning and a bell I could ring any time I wanted to, to make it stop, but I guess that’s not how no tough bitch would talk.
An exhilarating read: dazzling, haunting, life and blood and sex oozing out of it.
*********************************
Kevin Sampsell says this book fucks shit up and I commented I'm always looking for books that fuck shit up so looking forward to this. Another of those books (like Ten Stories About Smoking) that is un-kindle-able because of its design - like a metal bait box, the spine like hinges, and inside you read it in 'landscape' fashion and there are loads of illustrations.
Short Review also gave this a good write up.
sorry about the poor quality of the following but here's the cover flattened and scanned (the hinges are the spine of the book):
I wind the vinyl part of Marky's collar around my hand, holding the plastic receiver in my palm, then I press the cold metal stimulator against my underwear, step forward, and the jolt is delivered. Like a million ants biting. Like teeth. Like the g-spot exists. Like a tiny knife, a precise pinch. Like fireworks. I can't help it — I cry out; my underwear is flooded with perfect warmth. I lie back in the grass and see stars.
In comparison to some others this is quite a tame story. Here nothing is taboo. Beauty and horror are intertwined, disgust sex and longing, food and vomit wrapped up together, blood and maggots. Babies are reviled by their mother:
Always thought babies were dumb. Always did. Bald globey heads and gums dripping spit. Nothing behind the eyes but want. It made me belly sick to see how they’d reach up for me, needing me to feed em and change em and hold em and hell sometimes just look at em.
Another mother is so fat she has an old brown napkin wedged in her neckfat, how then we wanted to know what else was hiding in there, a diary, a housekey, a slice of pizza, and hey remember when we joked that Dad was in there somewhere, because that was how we dealt with Dad leaving us and moving in with the man who ran the movie theater.
Children are left in the desert with some jelly beans and limeade, a weird toddler is abandoned in a park. Wolves roam. A deer on the side of the road is laying on its back and stretching up its legs in order to admire them better. Most lives here are desperate, poor, pockmarked with longing for things unattainable and pursuing sexual thrills at the expense of relationships, but there is also a kind of love and much beauty. Here’s a girl on her birthday who has put her drunken father, an unsuccessful salesman to bed and left to get the bus home:
How if you’re lonely and drunken I guess it makes sense that you’d be finding meanings everywhere your eyes fell and believing with your whole body in some hillbilly song about the greener side of a hill. But see then when the bus come I seen what Daddy meant about things at night looking different, to look at it the bus some kind of miracle box of light trundling toward me with an offering of strangers and a lungful of air conditioning and a bell I could ring any time I wanted to, to make it stop, but I guess that’s not how no tough bitch would talk.
An exhilarating read: dazzling, haunting, life and blood and sex oozing out of it.
*********************************
Kevin Sampsell says this book fucks shit up and I commented I'm always looking for books that fuck shit up so looking forward to this. Another of those books (like Ten Stories About Smoking) that is un-kindle-able because of its design - like a metal bait box, the spine like hinges, and inside you read it in 'landscape' fashion and there are loads of illustrations.
Short Review also gave this a good write up.
sorry about the poor quality of the following but here's the cover flattened and scanned (the hinges are the spine of the book):
February 24, 2011
This week I felt really under the weather. It all started Monday morning when I woke up with a sore throat. Yesterday was the worst because I couldn't breathe at all and had that medicine head feeling all day long. So, my attention span just wasn't there for a long novel, but I was totally in the mood for some awesome short story action and this book didn't disappoint at all. I read it in between work, eating soup, and sleeping.
This is a great read for those times when you feel down in the dumps, you just don't think things can get worse, but then they do; this book will be your companion in those times of need. The stories are raw, gritty, and surreal. Lindsay Hunter does a great job of pulling back the curtain, giving you the scene in all it's glory (there's no holding back here!) and then leaving you to figure out what the fuck just happened.
I liked Lindsay for her brutal (dis)honesty. I liked that she made me feel uncomfortable and then just moved on to the next story. I didn't know weather I should read the whole book at once for a total mind-fuck or if I should ponder each story and try to digest it in my own way. I guess I did a little bit of both.
This is a great read for those times when you feel down in the dumps, you just don't think things can get worse, but then they do; this book will be your companion in those times of need. The stories are raw, gritty, and surreal. Lindsay Hunter does a great job of pulling back the curtain, giving you the scene in all it's glory (there's no holding back here!) and then leaving you to figure out what the fuck just happened.
I liked Lindsay for her brutal (dis)honesty. I liked that she made me feel uncomfortable and then just moved on to the next story. I didn't know weather I should read the whole book at once for a total mind-fuck or if I should ponder each story and try to digest it in my own way. I guess I did a little bit of both.
December 31, 2014
gritty and raw. loved it. as if bukowski and wallace and palahniuk had a moonshine-fueled orgy with some backwoods toothless crackwhore and her daughter grew up and decided she wanted to become a writer. if so, this would be what that collection of short stories would feel like, and i loved it. to me it was reminiscent of the better stories in Warmed and Bound: A Velvet Anthology, which i also really enjoyed (though not as much, as i felt some of those stories shouldn't have made the cut or needed further editing). but i love this wee little book of stories; they read like poetry to me. if reading poetry makes you feel like you want to pour a gallon of bleach into your eyes to clean out the residue from the glass shards you plucked out of course.
highly recommended.
highly recommended.
February 14, 2010
Lindsay Hunter tells the stories no one else will in ways no one else can. In her down and dirty debut, she draws vivid portraits of bad people in worse places. A woman struggles to survive her boyfriend's terror preparations. A wife finds the key to her sex life lies in her dog’s electric collar. Two teenagers violently tip the scales of their friendship. A rising star of the new fast fiction, Hunter bares all before you can blink in her bold, beautiful stories. In this collection of slim southern gothics, she offers an exploration not of the human heart but of the spine; mixing sex, violence and love into a harrowing, head-spinning read.
August 10, 2011
This is one of those books that sat on my shelf for a long while and then, when I finally started reading it, I kicked myself for waiting so long. What sexual prowess, what daring vignettes, what language wrapped in fist-blows. This is a righteous wonderful poison-tipped book.
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July 16, 2021Lindsay Hunter's fiction makes me smile. This is the type of book I would've passed around on the back of the school bus on a middle school field trip, dog-earing all the pages with the dirty parts and making my friends read.
April 7, 2016
This book got my black heart jealous.
This book got my black lungs pregnant.
This book got my black lungs pregnant.
July 28, 2012
Lindsay Hunter is crazy talented. And nice, too. So nice. But mostly crazy talented.
August 24, 2012
Mean, dirty little stories. I didn't dig it the way I thought I would, none of the tales really went anywhere. But the author is certainly skilled at painting a shocking picture.
March 7, 2014
This blew me away. Just knocked my socks right off. Mmmm.
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