Let’s be honest, when a book with a title as great as Barbara the Slut and Other People comes out, you have to jump on it.
Short stories are the red-headed stepchild of books. Where’s the payoff? The well-honed characters? It’s hard to be swept away in 20 pages. I get it. But sometimes I cheat on my diet of lengthy novels for a candy-sized quick fix. I want something weird and uncanny and I want it fast.
I want to tell everyone about this book, but I especially want to tell them about the title story that rips open the barely-healed wounds of high school (and adulthood, too). Barbara, who has earned her moniker, is all of us trying and failing to navigate the pecking order of high school (and adulthood). She just wants to go to a good college, to leave the pimply boys behind her and be something bigger, to untangle her aspirations from her boredom. But the decisions we make ripple farther then we intend. Especially with sex. If you don’t buy this book, that’s fine. But please come find a comfortable chair in the bookstore and take fifteen minutes to read THIS story. It will break your heart.
And then there is “My Humans.” Told from the perspective of the dog, who spends a good amount of time licking and scratching and eating unusual things, we watch a relationship bloom and flower and wilt without the emotional attachment of someone involved. It is hauntingly familiar.
Like most short story collections, there are always a couple duds–the stories you have such high expectations for but that for some reason or other don’t deliver as hard of a punch. “Desert Hearts” follows a law school graduate as she poses as a lesbian to work at a sex shop in San Francisco. It has all the makings of a good story. Great setting? check. Characters with flaws for days? check. A conflict that is more real for us then we would like? check. But the story falls flat at the end. I don’t want redemption in a story this much in the gutter.
Don’t let this deter you from this collection, because when Lauren Holmes nails it, the nail goes in straight. Our human desire for belonging and intimacy have never had such a keen lens pointed at them as these stories have in the capable hands of Lauren Holmes. She bares us all on the page.
Barbara the Slut just came out this week and is available at Lemuria.
Comments are closed.