Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Red Light Run
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.bairdharper.com/
CITY: Oak Park
STATE: IL
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Baird-Harper/2096893108 * https://creativewriting.uchicago.edu/faculty/harper
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2017140857
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2017140857
HEADING: Harper, Baird
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370 __ |c United States
372 __ |a Fiction |a Creative writing–Study and teaching |2 lcsh
373 __ |a University of Montana–Missoula |a Art Institute of Chicago. School |a Loyola University Chicago |a University of Chicago |2 naf
374 __ |a Authors |a College teachers |2 lcsh
375 __ |a Males |2 lcdgt
377 __ |a eng
670 __ |a Harper, Baird. Red light run, 2017: |b title page (Baird Harper) book flap (Harper’s fiction has appeared in magazines and books; he teaches writing at Loyola University and University of Chicago)
670 __ |a Creative Writing at the University of Chicago, viewed October 25, 2017: |b faculty page (Harper has an M.A. in English from the University of Montana and an M.F.A. in writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago) |u https://creativewriting.uchicago.edu/faculty/harper
PERSONAL
Married; wife’s name Anastasia; two children.
EDUCATION:University of Montana, M.A.; School of the Art Institute of Chicago, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Loyola University, Chicago, IL, creative writing instructor; University of Chicago, creative writing instructor.
AWARDS:James Jones Short Story Award, 2009; Nelson Algren Award, Chicago Tribune, 2010; Raymond Carver Award for Short Fiction, 2014.
WRITINGS
Work represented in anthologies, including Best New American Voices, New Stories from the Midwest 2016, and 40 Years of CutBank. Short stories published in periodicals, including Glimmer Train Stories, Tin House, Prairie Schooner, StoryQuarterly, Chicago Tribune, Mid-American Review, Another Chicago Magazine, CutBank, Carve, and Printers Row Journal.
SIDELIGHTS
Baird Harper is primarily an author of short fiction. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals, and has won several literary awards. “Most of my characters are collaborations of people I know, or altered or grotesque versions of people I know,” he told Bridget Devine in 2014 in an interview for her eponymous blog. “I usually feel self-conscious about writing about someone I know because there is this guilt associated with doing that.” Some of his characters, though, are based simply on people he has glimpsed on the street, he added. He usually writes a rough draft of a story in two or three days, he said, then returns to the material weeks or even months later to rewrite. With each story, he told Devine, he has a tendency to “rework it to the point of exhaustion.”
Harper’s first published book was Red Light Run: Linked Stories. These eleven related tales all relate to a fatal traffic accident in a fictional town called Wicklow, a far-flung suburb of Chicago. Hartley Nolan, a Chicago stock trader, has served four years in prison for causing the death of Sonia Senn in that accident. He was drunk at the time, but he was not generally a heavy drinker. His wife, Glennis, however, is an alcoholic, and Hartley had been planning to talk with her about her drinking the night of the accident. The stories go back and forth in time. Harper offers a portrait of Hartley as he is about to be released from prison; he does not realize a man who did odd jobs for Sonia is planning to kill him. Other stories focus on Sonia’s life and that of her husband, Victor, who runs the local cemetery; the unanswered questions surrounding her death; the troubles of Victor’s sister-in-law, Allie, whose marriage is falling apart; Glennis’s drinking problem; and the general decay of the town. It is known primarily for once being the home of a serial killer, the Soyfield Strangler; Glennis’s mother was among his victims. Years later, it is being attacked by a plague of beetles feeding on its oak trees. Its main industries are the prison and a gambling casino.
Several reviewers found Red Light Run downbeat but compelling, with a well-drawn setting and cast of characters. “Using a dramatically diverse and maniacally energetic set of characters, Harper examines the lives of those most affected by Sonia’s death through a close, elegant analysis of revenge, hate, desire, and redemption,” observed Dylan Louis, writing online at Tethered by Letters. The stories connect, he continued, “in ways only a mad-genius could foresee.” Another online critic, Rebecca Bowyer at Seeing the Lighter Side, noted that initially the stories “seem only loosely linked, but as they circle around apparently unrelated issues … the pieces start to fit together.” Bowyer called Harper’s writing style “fabulous,” saying he “uses humour and poetic prose in equal measure.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor pointed out that readers may be disoriented by the time jumps from one story to another, “but disorientation is one of Harper’s goals–he wants to establish the town as a place rife with unlikely deaths and near-death experiences, dark secrets, and broken relationships.” In Booklist, Kathy Sexton reported that “Harper’s true success is in writing flawed characters through spare prose and setting,” and she termed the book “a surprising crowd-pleaser.” A Publishers Weekly commentator praised Red Light Run‘s “impressive range of narrative voices and fully imagined lives of yearning, sometimes desperate characters,” adding that it “marks the arrival of a promising new voice in literary fiction.” The Kirkus Reviews contributor summed up the collection as “a somber but consistently intriguing clutch of heartland tales.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, July 1, 2017, Kathy Sexton, review of Red Light Run: Linked Stories, p. 23.
Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 2017, review of Red Light Run.
Publishers Weekly, June 26, 2017, review of Red Light Run, p. 148.
ONLINE
Authorlink Writers & Readers Magazine, https://authorlink.com/ (August 1, 2017), article on Red Light Run.
Baird Harper Website, https://www.bairdharper.com (April 8, 2018).
Bookreporter.com, https://www.bookreporter.com/ (April 8, 2018), brief biography.
Bridget Devine Web log, https://bridgetdevinechicago.wordpress.com/ (February 25, 2014), Bridget Devine, “Baird Harper: Q&A with a Fiction Author.”
Seeing the Lighter Side, http://seeingthelighterside.com/ (April 8, 2018), Rebecca Bowyer, review of Red Light Run.
Simon & Schuster Website, http://www.simonandschuster.com/ (April 8, 2018), brief biography.
Tethered by Letters, https://tetheredbyletters.com/ (April 8, 2018), Dylan Louis, review of Red Light Run.
University of Chicago Creative Writing Program Website, https://creativewriting.uchicago.edu/ (April 8, 2018), brief biography.
Baird Harper
Baird Harper’s fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train Stories, Tin House, Prairie Schooner, StoryQuarterly, The Chicago Tribune, Mid-American Review, Another Chicago Magazine, CutBank, Carve, and Printers Row Journal. His stories have been anthologized in the 2009 and 2010 editions of Best New American Voices, New Stories from the Midwest 2016, and 40 Years of CutBank, and have won the 2014 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest, the 2010 Nelson Algren Award, and the 2009 James Jones Fiction Contest. His first book, Red Light Run, was published by Scribner in 2017. He holds an M.A. in English from the University of Montana and an M.F.A. in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
harperbr@hotmail.com
Faculty Type:
Visiting Faculty
Baird Harper
Baird Harper’s fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, Tin House, StoryQuarterly, and The Chicago Tribune, among other publications, and has been anthologized in New Stories from the Midwest, 2015; 40 Years of CutBank, Stories; and twice in Best New American Voices. The recipient of the 2014 Raymond Carver Award for Short Fiction, the Chicago Tribune's Nelson Algren Award, and the James Jones Short Story Award, Harper lives in Oak Park with his wife and two kids, and he teaches creative writing at Loyola University and the University of Chicago. Red Light Run is his first novel.
About the Author
Baird Harper grew up in Northfield, Illinois. For ten years he wrote the stories that eventually became his first book, Red Light Run, published by Scribner in 2017. Previously, his fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train Stories, Tin House, Prairie Schooner, StoryQuarterly, The Chicago Tribune, Mid-American Review, Another Chicago Magazine, CutBank, Carve, and elsewhere. His stories have been anthologized in the 2009 and 2010 editions of Best New American Voices, New Stories from the Midwest 2016, and 40 Years of CutBank, and have won the 2014 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest and the 2010 Nelson Algren Award. Baird teaches writing at Loyola University and the University of Chicago. He lives in Oak Park, Illinois with his wife, Anastasia, and their two kids.
Baird Harper
Baird Harper’s fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, Tin House, StoryQuarterly and The Chicago Tribune, among other publications, and has been anthologized in NEW STORIES FROM THE MIDWEST, 2015; 40 YEARS OF CUTBANK, STORIES; and twice in BEST NEW AMERICAN VOICES. The recipient of the 2014 Raymond Carver Award for Short Fiction, the Chicago Tribune's Nelson Algren Award, and the James Jones Short Story Award, Harper lives in Oak Park with his wife and two kids, and he teaches creative writing at Loyola University and the University of Chicago. RED LIGHT RUN is his first novel.
Quoted in Sidelights: “Most of my characters are collaborations of people I know, or altered or grotesque versions of people I know, I usually feel self-conscious about writing about someone I know because there is this guilt associated with doing that.”
“rework it to the point of exhaustion.”
Baird Harper: Q&A With a Fiction Author
Bridget Devine
February 25, 2014 4:11 pm
Baird Harper is a short-story fiction writer who’s had his work published in a variety of outlets such as Tin House, Glimmer Train Stories, The Chicago Tribune, Mid-American Review, Another Chicago Magazine, CutBank and Printers Row Journal. In 2009, he won the James Jones Fiction Contest and in 2010 he received the Nelson Algren Award. Aside from being a writer, Harper teaches fiction writing classes at Loyola University Chicago and University of Chicago.
Harper told me via phone interview a little about his writing process and the development of his fiction short-stories.
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Q) Where do your story ideas come from?
“More often than not they just kinda come to me. I keep my iPad next to my bed because it’s surprising how often [ideas] come when you aren’t awake. They often come at the home. Sometimes when I’m out I’ll see a person that seems like an interesting character and just write it down and then look at it later and half the time it makes no sense. It’s just a steam of words. My ideas usually don’t go straight to the paper. They live in a pile of notes until I go look at them all again. My ritual is to take some ideas that I have, like a character or a plot or a twist, and then sit down and try to force them all together. My most reliable trick is pushing two or three ideas together and it creates a story that is odd or off beat. You have to rely on something other than random inspiration because that usually fades away.”
Q) How long does it take you to write a story?
”Being a short-story writer, I try to write it as fast as possible. I won’t start anything until I have two or three days with a lot of hours because I like to write it fast. In two or three days I have a full rough draft. There is tons of crappy writing that I have to go back and fix. Then I shelve it for a week or even months. I then like to return to it fresh, and inevitably, I hate some of it or a lot of it. I’ll just keep opening up files of all these stories until I actually like one of them. For me, time is a really big deal.”
Q) So what happens when you take a story off the shelf and look at it again after taking some time away from it?
“That’s when I spend the most time on a story. Once I have one on the line, I’ll spend weeks and weeks and weeks just doing all of the revisions. From the big ones all the way to the micro and keep going through to make it better on every possible level. It’s like a friend that you see too much – to the point where you have to get away from them. I do that with my stories. Rework it to the point of exhaustion.”
Q) Where does character development fall in your writing process?
“Some writers write like a scaffolding and have to fill in a lot of things later, but I usually do too much character description early on and it’s usually already there for me from the beginning. I usually have to pull some out and tell a little bit less. I’m usually taking out more than I’m putting in. You are always taking out the best stuff too. Friends and editors will always take out the best stuff and the lines you are so in love with.”
Q) Where do your characters come from?
“Most of my characters are collaborations of people I know, or altered or grotesque versions of people I know. I usually feel self-conscious about writing about someone I know because there is this guilt associated with doing that, like it won’t be well received. When I am writing about someone I know I usually change one really obvious or important idea about them. Switching genders is a great way to release me as a writer of potential guilt.”
Quoted in Sidelights: “but disorientation is one of Harper’s goals–he wants to establish the town as a place rife with unlikely deaths and near-death experiences, dark secrets, and broken relationships.”
“a somber but consistently intriguing clutch of heartland tales.”
3/23/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Print Marked Items
Harper, Baird: RED LIGHT RUN
Kirkus Reviews.
(June 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Harper, Baird RED LIGHT RUN Scribner (Adult Fiction) $24.00 8, 8 ISBN: 978-1-5011-4735-7
A serial killer, car wrecks, suicide, alcoholism--everyday life in a prairie town gets dark in this debut set of
linked stories.The 11 stories in this short but emotionally dense collection all take place in a Chicago exurb
that's hit the skids. A trailer park decimated by fire has been converted into a paintball park with a postapocalyptic
theme, but the casino is doing brisk business, as is the prison. That's where Hartley, a successful
commodities trader, resides after having been convicted of vehicular manslaughter, an incident that's had a
broad impact. His wife, Glennis, has descended deeper into an alcoholism that's already been stoked by a
rough past, including the murder of her hard-drinking mother by the "Soyfield Strangler." Victor, whose
wife, Sonia, Hartley killed, sublimates his grief by spraying pesticides on the cemetery he runs, which
eradicates the dreaded oak beetles but kills plenty of birds as well. ("Conventional grief management it ain't,
but it just feels good to waste those little fuckers.") His sister-in-law, Allie, is trying to help Victor while
navigating a flailing marriage. The stories don't follow a linear path--the book begins the day before
Hartley's release but jumps around in time from, say, Glennis as a teenager to an intervention Hartley
attempted shortly before the accident. That indirect approach can make it difficult to discern where we are
in time and relationships, but disorientation is one of Harper's goals--he wants to establish the town as a
place rife with unlikely deaths and near-death experiences, dark secrets, and broken relationships. Harper
occasionally has his characters voice some only-in-a-novel profundities to get that point over, but he's also
accessed a plainspoken but effectively moody prose style that gets into the details of each character's life
while suggesting a larger storm cloud that makes his setting Bad News, U.S.A. A somber but consistently
intriguing clutch of heartland tales.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Harper, Baird: RED LIGHT RUN." Kirkus Reviews, 15 June 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A495427847/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=adb8fff5.
Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A495427847
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Quoted in Sidelights: “Harper’s true success is in writing flawed characters through spare prose and setting,”
“a surprising crowd-pleaser.”
Red Light Run
Kathy Sexton
Booklist.
113.21 (July 1, 2017): p23+.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Red Light Run.
By Baird Harper.
Aug. 2017. 224p. Scribner, $24 (9781501147357).
Wicklow, a fictional small town outside of Chicago that is best known for an obscure serial killer, the
Soyfield Strangler, is home to the myriad down-and-out characters that populate Harper's debut. Hartley
Nolan is getting out of prison after serving four years for vehicular manslaughter resulting in the death of
Sonia Senn. A man is on his way to kill him. Thus, we are thrust into the dark, mostly woeful stories of
Wicklow's residents; their histories and their futures, all affected in their own ways by the accident. The
book's structure, in interconnected stories, doesn't lend itself to a strong plot, but there is still an element of
suspense, of wanting to find out the how and why of not just Soma's death but of several of the characters'
fates. Harper's true success is in writing flawed characters through spare prose and setting. This is a
surprising crowd-pleaser that will appeal to fans of Dan Chaons Await Your Reply (2009) and Nickolas
Butler's Shotgun Lovesongs (2014) as well as to literary book clubs, which will find much to discuss.--
Kathy Sexton
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Sexton, Kathy. "Red Light Run." Booklist, 1 July 2017, p. 23+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A499862704/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=bf3778f8.
Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A499862704
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Quoted in Sidelights: “impressive range of narrative voices and fully imagined lives of yearning, sometimes desperate characters,”
“marks the arrival of a promising new voice in literary fiction.”
Red Light Run
Publishers Weekly.
264.26 (June 26, 2017): p148.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Red Light Run
Baird Harper. Scribner, $24 (224p) ISBN 978-1-5011-4735-7
The linked stories in this debut collection revolve around a drunk driving accident that ends the life of wellloved
Sonia Senn and ironically sends Hartley Nolan--whose wife, Glennis, has a problem with alcohol and
who, as explained in "The Intervention So Far," had been attempting that very night to confront her about it-to
prison. Narrated by Sonia and Hartley, along with their parents, siblings, friends, and lovers, these
stories interrogate not only the circumstances of the central tragedy but the wide-reaching implications it
has on the lives of the network of characters affected by it. In "Time and Trouble," Hartley's mother, Kate,
imagines how she will usher her son back into society on the eve of his release from prison and is forced to
confront her anger toward his newly pregnant wife. In "Patient History," Glennis reveals her own troubled
past and the ways in which she was led down the path toward addiction. The Chicagoland town of Wicklow,
where much of the narrative takes place, is under siege by a mysterious species of beetle that is slowly
devouring all of the community's oak trees from the inside out, and the damage wrought by the beetles
becomes not only the obsession of Sonia's late husband, Victor, as he tries to protect the trees growing in the
cemetery where Sonia is buried (in "We've Lost Our Place"), but also a memorable metaphor for the way
grief works on us all. With its impressive range of narrative voices and fully imagined lives of yearning,
sometimes desperate characters, this collection marks the arrival of a promising new voice in literary
fiction. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Red Light Run." Publishers Weekly, 26 June 2017, p. 148. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A497444199/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=fb129768.
Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A497444199
Note from Trudy: This is not a review but simply a reposting of the jacket copy. I left it in Biocrit but of course didn't quote from it!
Red Light Run by Baird Harper
August 1, 2017
Written by Editorial Staff
Explore More
Red Light Run
Linked Stories
By Baird Harper
Buy This Book
via Amazon.com
Scribner | 224 pages | ISBN 9781501147357 | August 2017
When two cars collide at an intersection in a leafy Chicago suburb, Hartley Nolan is not the person police expect to find behind the wheel. After all, he barely drinks; everyone knows it’s his wife who’s the alcoholic. But the bigger question on people’s minds is what brought Sonia Senn, dead at the scene, back to her hometown in such a hurry that night?
In eleven tightly linked stories, Red Light Run pulls us into the inner lives of Hartley, Sonia, and a host of other characters to untangle the mounting forces that carry them to their fates. Among the ensemble in this prismatic collection are a real estate agent who seeks gossip on the market rather than houses, a trailer park developer whose entire livelihood is laid to waste by a single cigarette, a divorced mother battling her daughter-in-law for hegemony over her kitchen, a widower hell-bent on destroying the invasive species of beetle that’s wiping out his oak trees, and a down-and-out handyman with a desperate plan for revenge. And then there’s Sonia Senn, with a dark secret of her own, and Hartley Nolan, who has risen above his roots to become a commodities trader in Chicago only to end up sentenced to eight years at Grassland State Prison. With infectiously grim humor and wry insight, these characters contemplate their realities in relation to one tragic moment, propelling us toward a startling revelation about the long and sometimes crooked arc of justice.
A brilliant feat of storytelling, Red Light Run is the radiant and stunning debut from Best New American Voices writer Baird Harper.
Quoted in Sidelights: “Using a dramatically diverse and maniacally energetic set of characters, Harper examines the lives of those most affected by Sonia’s death through a close, elegant analysis of revenge, hate, desire, and redemption,”
“in ways only a mad-genius could foresee.”
Book Review: Red Light Run—Baird Harper
by Dylan Louis
The eleven linked stories of Baird Harper’s Red Light Run stitch themselves together by the common thread of tragedy—a death by vehicular manslaughter. When Hartley Nolan, a do-good stock broker from Chicago, is found inebriated at the scene of a car wreck that leaves one woman dead, the people of the small Chicago suburb of Tower Hill are left shaken.
Harley’s wife and father struggle through alcoholism and drug addiction to reunite their family. The victim, Sonia Senn, is grieved by her husband, a well-respected local cemetery owner who struggles to keep his life together amid crippling waves of depression. Sonia’s old, pedophilic handyman turns hellbent on murdering Hartley; and the city’s real-estate agent just wants to help the bereaved move on. Using a dramatically diverse and maniacally energetic set of characters, Harper examines the lives of those most affected by Sonia’s death through a close, elegant analysis of revenge, hate, desire, and redemption. Each story charges forward, acting as fuel to Harper’s overarching plot, gathering momentum and hurling the collection’s cast into the cycle of their individually dark, inevitable fates.
Acclaimed as a novel of the rare, midwestern-gothic genre, the likes of which Sherwood Anderson would be proud, Red Light Run accurately portrays—in an empathic, borderline-spiritual way—what it means to be alive in the nation’s rustbelt. From tree-devouring beetles and reflective-blue highway signs to the unforgiving, apocalyptic-style thunderstorms native to the flat prairie towns of the midwest, Harper’s prose holds true to its setting and uses it to its utmost advantage in creating narrative tension, psychological entrapment, and an overwhelming desire to belong.
Open up to any one story in particular and enjoy—with complete, uninterrupted understanding—a captivating arc constructed from clever, unique, and concrete detail. With each passing story, you’ll find plots interconnecting in ways only a mad-genius could foresee, and you’ll find networks of deeply interwoven characters all growing, thriving, and transforming from the book’s central conflict like so many limbs of a multi-trunk oak tree.
Red Light Run may be Harper’s debut novel, but he’s no newcomer to the literary scene. The stories contained within the collection have achieved praise through publication in journals such as Glimmer Train, Tin House, and StoryQuarterly. Collected here together, Harper has a done a rare, brilliant thing—spinning stand-alone tales around a pinwheel in which every story works together to elucidate his vision. Once the spine of the hardcover is broken, and the pinwheel has been spun, the reader need but stand back and watch the swirling mechanism of truth unfurl before them.
Quoted in Sidelights: “seem only loosely linked, but as they circle around apparently unrelated issues … the pieces start to fit together.”
“fabulous,”
“uses humour and poetic prose in equal measure.”
Red Light Run
By Baird Harper
Red Light Run
Publisher: Scribner
Published: August 8, 2017
Buy from Book Depository (worldwide)
Buy from Booktopia (Australia)
Buy from Amazon (Kindle)
Red Light Run is a story of the complexity of human relationships in small towns, and the lifelong shockwaves a single death can cause.
Hartley Nolan is being released from prison in a few days. He’s served four years for drink driving and causing the death of Sonia, the wife of the local cemetery owner. Except Hartley was a renowned teetotaller so it all seemed a little odd at the time.
From Sonia’s distressed sister – who was the last person to speak to Sonia that night – to Hartley’s notorious drunkard wife, to Sonia’s entirely deranged husband and Hartley’s consistently useless father, we get to hear from almost every person who has been affected by the tragedy.
Their stories seem only loosely linked, but as they circle around apparently unrelated issues – such as the serial killer who murdered Hartley’s wife’s mother – the pieces start to fit together until we finally meet up with Sonia towards the end of the book, and find out exactly what happened the night she died.
What I thought of it
I really enjoyed Red Light Run. The novel rolls from one point of view to another – one per chapter – running like a narrative maypole around the imminent and actual release of Hartley Nolan from jail. Some character points of view feel even and rational; others border on virtual psychotic episodes.
The writing is fabulous and the scope is fairly epic in exploring the lasting effects a single accident can have on such a massive number of lives. Harper uses humour and poetic prose in equal measure to tell the stories of everyday people in an everyday small town whose lives are blown apart by death.
What are ‘linked stories’ anyway?
I was mildly suspicious of this book at first, simply because I’m not usually a huge fan of short stories and this book is billed as ‘linked stories’. However, it didn’t feel like a series of short stories. It feels more like a traditional split narrative with a couple of caveats – there are about a dozen or so points of view and you never get to return to a narrator once you’ve left them.
Disclosure: I received a copy from the publisher for the purpose of review. This post contains affiliate links.