![]() ![]() Frequently these characters are mothers, or otherwise children reeling in the wake of their neglectful, “unfit,” or traumatized mothers’ choices. They are bartenders and cowboys and phone-sex operators, alcoholics and domestic abuse survivors and drug addicts, each with a distinctive voice tied to their story. ![]() The sun-baked raisin farms, tiny churches, and shimmering highways seem to glint under the influence of Bieker’s astute prose, but its the characters themselves-often men and women in crisis, their children tossed inadvertently into the fallout-who confound and allure. She deploys this curiosity to fascinating results in her new short story collection Heartbroke, which, similar to her excellent debut novel Godshot, plants its protagonists in California’s Central Valley, where Bieker herself spent a frequently chaotic childhood. Chelsea Bieker writes as if sorting through old photographs she knows the images well, but the scenes where they take place are stretched and warped by memory. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |