Not Everyone is Special, stories by Josh Denslow
from 7.13 Books
Review by Adam Van Winkle
Everyone may not be special, but these stories sure are.
First, it's not a meditation on the current discourse of "snowflakes" we see everywhere. It's much deeper than that. It's a Kafka or Updike style look at oneself and the Other. Like Kafka, it uses a freak or two to drive this home. It's deep and rich. And very good.
For the title, there's quite a carnival of characters here. The tumor boy, the four-foot, seven-inch narrator who plays an elf at Santa's workshop, a murderous wife, Meat Locker, the Shocker, and Snappy.
If I had to pick a favorite in the collection, it'd be "Sonny Boy." Speaking of Updike, "Sonny Boy" is a kind of modern "A&P." Same elements are there-a high school grocery stock boy, a lame manager, a local pretty girl walking the aisles. But where "A&P" stops short at a glorious rebellion and immediate confusion (the stock boy quits in his manager's face and goes after the girl only to find her disappeared from the parking lot already), Denslow's local working boy story is much more humane to all parties: the boy between phases, the old woman who pays with coins, the manager who feels he isn't so much older than his employees. Rather than a storm out fantasy, "Sonny Boy" takes an honest look at an unmotivated working teenager, maturing beyond his peers, but with no certain future or plan after high school. Meat Locker (that's the narrator's nickname at work) admires Sonny Boy, the stock boy who doesn't do childish things like glue quarters to the ground and airhump the old ladies that try t to bend over and pick them up (that'd be Shocker and Slappy), the stock boy who has a plan for after high school. The narrator's nagging wrist injury throughout the story symbolizes the metaphysical limp--told ya it was Kafkaesque too-- he has in moving toward the future, that these stifling surroundings of low wages and immaturity (not to mention the established low economic status of he and his single mom) have hindered any notion of progress. Just brilliant. Stinking brilliant.
I think that about this whole collection. The word-of-the-day-womb-tumor-survivor in "My Particular Tumor" has an ability to hit your gut and tug your circumflex arteries in two pages, as much as the admiring wife in "Consumption" will in one page, as much as the surreal appearance of a special couch in a jail cell will on page seventeen of "Punch."
This one's gonna roll around in my head for a while. Until I read it again. I know I will. It's too good not to. This one's gonna go on the good, good shelf. With the collections from Brown and Pollock, and yea, Updike and Kafka. The collections that I know are the all time good ones. That I'm going to turn to when I need inspiration to write good stories again as I often do.
Not Everyone is Special deserves the same place on your shelf too.
In addition to publishing his debut, Josh is the editor at Smokelong Quarterly and is part of the band Borrisokane. Josh Denslow’s stories have appeared in Barrelhouse, Third Coast, Cutbank, Wigleaf, and Black Clock, among others. Find more here.
from 7.13 Books
Review by Adam Van Winkle
Everyone may not be special, but these stories sure are.
First, it's not a meditation on the current discourse of "snowflakes" we see everywhere. It's much deeper than that. It's a Kafka or Updike style look at oneself and the Other. Like Kafka, it uses a freak or two to drive this home. It's deep and rich. And very good.
For the title, there's quite a carnival of characters here. The tumor boy, the four-foot, seven-inch narrator who plays an elf at Santa's workshop, a murderous wife, Meat Locker, the Shocker, and Snappy.
If I had to pick a favorite in the collection, it'd be "Sonny Boy." Speaking of Updike, "Sonny Boy" is a kind of modern "A&P." Same elements are there-a high school grocery stock boy, a lame manager, a local pretty girl walking the aisles. But where "A&P" stops short at a glorious rebellion and immediate confusion (the stock boy quits in his manager's face and goes after the girl only to find her disappeared from the parking lot already), Denslow's local working boy story is much more humane to all parties: the boy between phases, the old woman who pays with coins, the manager who feels he isn't so much older than his employees. Rather than a storm out fantasy, "Sonny Boy" takes an honest look at an unmotivated working teenager, maturing beyond his peers, but with no certain future or plan after high school. Meat Locker (that's the narrator's nickname at work) admires Sonny Boy, the stock boy who doesn't do childish things like glue quarters to the ground and airhump the old ladies that try t to bend over and pick them up (that'd be Shocker and Slappy), the stock boy who has a plan for after high school. The narrator's nagging wrist injury throughout the story symbolizes the metaphysical limp--told ya it was Kafkaesque too-- he has in moving toward the future, that these stifling surroundings of low wages and immaturity (not to mention the established low economic status of he and his single mom) have hindered any notion of progress. Just brilliant. Stinking brilliant.
I think that about this whole collection. The word-of-the-day-womb-tumor-survivor in "My Particular Tumor" has an ability to hit your gut and tug your circumflex arteries in two pages, as much as the admiring wife in "Consumption" will in one page, as much as the surreal appearance of a special couch in a jail cell will on page seventeen of "Punch."
This one's gonna roll around in my head for a while. Until I read it again. I know I will. It's too good not to. This one's gonna go on the good, good shelf. With the collections from Brown and Pollock, and yea, Updike and Kafka. The collections that I know are the all time good ones. That I'm going to turn to when I need inspiration to write good stories again as I often do.
Not Everyone is Special deserves the same place on your shelf too.
In addition to publishing his debut, Josh is the editor at Smokelong Quarterly and is part of the band Borrisokane. Josh Denslow’s stories have appeared in Barrelhouse, Third Coast, Cutbank, Wigleaf, and Black Clock, among others. Find more here.