Good. Lord. This was amazing. As impressive an experience as a brutalizing one. It's bizarre to find myself so casual about the gory whatnots of thrillers, and true crime...and then here I was cringing throughout your store, looking away, rubbing my eyes, dredging up the courage to keep going forward with it, thinking, "He's gonna do something horrifically selfish." And then he does. And then it gets worse. And then worse.
This story escalates and builds on itself and there's so much dread -- the reading of it was kind of adrenal, and high-stakes in the 80ish% mark, and then left me with such a crushing feel of defeat. I had a sense of what was going to happen as the car started backing out, but wasn't sure the author had the nerve for it. Turns out he does. It was presented so brutally, I still felt wrung out.
Kudos to Pearson, also, on having such a plainspoken prose style that doesn't draw attention to itself. It felt a little more horrific, the way the story just keeps feeding us forward into these horrible decisions/outcomes, like a sheet coming out of a fax.
"Insensate" is a word like "atavistic" or "mendicant" that sorta took me out from the rhythm, felt like the crumbs of a Faulkner/Cormac influence, but I'm almost glad it took me out of the trance at the very end -- cuz it made me appreciate how total/completely entranced I'd been.
Feels weird as a compliment, but kudos -- TMR and Pearson alike -- on presenting something so artfully brutal.
This was a very well-written short story. As someone who lived in and grew up in the South, it felt pretty genuine. The desire for escape and the shame of living in a post–Roe v. Wade world bleed underneath like a current, desperate to be free of this new world we have allowed ourselves to be caught up in.
Flannery O'Connor vibes.
Agreed. Toby is his own worst enemy.
I was thinking the same thing too
Good. Lord. This was amazing. As impressive an experience as a brutalizing one. It's bizarre to find myself so casual about the gory whatnots of thrillers, and true crime...and then here I was cringing throughout your store, looking away, rubbing my eyes, dredging up the courage to keep going forward with it, thinking, "He's gonna do something horrifically selfish." And then he does. And then it gets worse. And then worse.
This story escalates and builds on itself and there's so much dread -- the reading of it was kind of adrenal, and high-stakes in the 80ish% mark, and then left me with such a crushing feel of defeat. I had a sense of what was going to happen as the car started backing out, but wasn't sure the author had the nerve for it. Turns out he does. It was presented so brutally, I still felt wrung out.
Kudos to Pearson, also, on having such a plainspoken prose style that doesn't draw attention to itself. It felt a little more horrific, the way the story just keeps feeding us forward into these horrible decisions/outcomes, like a sheet coming out of a fax.
"Insensate" is a word like "atavistic" or "mendicant" that sorta took me out from the rhythm, felt like the crumbs of a Faulkner/Cormac influence, but I'm almost glad it took me out of the trance at the very end -- cuz it made me appreciate how total/completely entranced I'd been.
Feels weird as a compliment, but kudos -- TMR and Pearson alike -- on presenting something so artfully brutal.
This was a very well-written short story. As someone who lived in and grew up in the South, it felt pretty genuine. The desire for escape and the shame of living in a post–Roe v. Wade world bleed underneath like a current, desperate to be free of this new world we have allowed ourselves to be caught up in.
This is the first story in I don’t know how long that I read straight through and wished I had more left. Really awesome.
Terrific story