Black Light

Starred review from June 10, 2019
Parsons’s debut crackles with the frenetic energy of the women who stalk its pages. In opening story “Guts,” Sheila has just started dating “almost-doctor” Tim, whose particular brand of condescending masculine practicality destabilizes her already-erratic lifestyle. In “Foxes,” a recently divorced mother recounts her courtship and marriage to her ex-husband, whom she calls “the fool,” as she listens to her young daughter spin a story featuring knights and inky enemies, and the two stories begin to intertwine and mimic the cadences of each other. “Foxes” kicks off a dazzling run of stories, including “The Soft No,” in which a pair of siblings must navigate neighborhood politics as well as their unpredictable mother, to “We Don’t Come Natural to It,” in which two women’s pursuit of beauty becomes a vortex of self-inflicted violence, control, and mistrust. In the title story, a young woman watches as her former lover evolves into someone she realizes she never knew, while she must navigate the breakup in a way that doesn’t out her sexuality. Parsons’s characters are sharp and uncannily observed, bound up in elastic and electrifying prose. This is a first-rate debut.

Starred review from November 1, 2019
Stories that can make you believe that doing cocaine all day in a cheap motel is fun or that catching bugs is a great way to spend your childhood. Parsons' debut collection is not long on plot, but wisdom and humor are so thick on the ground you could find a sentence worth quoting on every page. "The first rule of filing is...nothing comes before something." "There are tricks to coping with a surly person you've brought into the world. Focus on the positive." "I have no idea why sports and religion intermingle--they just do. It seems some people take Jesus for a jock." Two characters at the Starlite motel in Houston: "There are only two things people do in places like this....And we've already done all the drugs." Only they haven't--co-workers Jill and Rick are taking a holiday from their lives and from their spouses (code-named Eyelash and Kneecap at a previous happy hour), and new baggies of powder keep turning up right till quittin' time. They are one of many memorable pairs in these stories, several of which are about the blurry line between friendship and love. The narrator of "Glow Hunter" is crazy about her friend Bo, who is just "more brightly lit than the rest of us....I've seen strangers stop what they're doing to watch her shake sugar into her tea." Bo and the narrator have both been involved with a guy named Jeff, but what they really want is each other. The narrator of "Black Light" is in love with a point guard on the girls basketball team; she is counseled, then consoled by her older brother. (" 'Dick, ' he said, done with subtlety. 'She needs dick.' ") Comparisons have been made to Denis Johnson, Karen Russell, Carmen Maria Machado...and we'll add Angela Carter. The Angela Carter of Lubbock, Texas. It has a ring to it. Just keeps getting better as you turn the pages.

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