Goodnight, Beautiful Women

April 18, 2016
In her debut collection of 11 stories, Noyes describes the lives of New England women in silky, lucid prose. In “This Is Who She Was,” a woman goes on vacation with her new boyfriend’s family, only to discover that the boyfriend’s mother is dying; in “Changeling,” a woman follows a stranger off the bus because the stranger looks like her estranged mother. In two different stories (“Glow Baby” and the title story), a young girl reluctantly gets into a car as her mother attempts to leave a partner. A woman copes with the suicide of her father in “Treelaw”; in “Hibernation,” a woman copes with the suicide of her husband. By the third story it becomes difficult to distinguish one voice from another, and certain repeated moments (chain restaurants, wounded vacationing girls, and, most commonly, variations of the same kind yet useless male character) begin to seem less like motifs and more like crutches. Still, Noyes has a fluid, raw, and strikingly original manner with both language and emotion, and much of the writing in this collection is tender and innovative.

April 15, 2016
Noyes explores the lives of girls and women in coastal Maine in her debut collection of short stories. A college student discovers she's pregnant; two sisters argue about whether or not they're "white trash"; a young woman imagines she sees the mother who abandoned her in a stranger on a bus. Noyes writes convincingly about the landscape--"It was three o'clock, but nearly dark outside, and the bus headlights sparkled against the ice-encased birches"--and the working class--"My mom's front teeth had these tiny chips at the bottom, because when she was little she'd chew on bottle caps." Though the stories, told from various points of view, contain threats of violence from rapists and molesters, the greatest menace comes from the harm the young female protagonists seem capable of bringing on themselves. They lie, they steal from friends, they pursue doomed romances and sabotage good ones. In "Drawing Blood," a teenage girl in the early 1900s begins a love affair with the family's maid, then marries the wealthy suitor her parents choose; the maid is summarily fired. The most interesting relationships here are the unlikely alliances that offer unexpected comfort. The college student who learns she's pregnant finds an ally in her boyfriend's dying mother. In the title story, the teenage narrator, home from boarding school, takes a road trip with her mother and stepfather. She's alarmed when the mother abandons him en route, "standing outside the store, our two hot chocolates in his hands." Returning for him later on her own, she fails to find him. Like many of these stories, this one ends obliquely, with the narrator driving alone. The open-endedness, which works better in some stories than others, signals a writer who values nuance over tidy endings. These flawed female characters struggle to survive against threats both external and internal in this well-written debut.

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May 15, 2016
Noyes' first collection follows women, young and old, grappling with the unmoored moments of their lives. Hibernation finds Joni facing her husband's sudden disappearance. Convinced he has drowned in the quarry outside their home, she grasps at the minutiae of their crumbling relationship. Werewolf follows Claire, whose hangover after a night of partying exposes her guilt hinged on a long-ago lie involving her mentally challenged cousin. Characters are often caught off guard, allowing Noyes to explore the unexpected intricacies and contradictions of their situations. The title tale follows a young woman on an impromptu road trip with her mother and her mother's longtime boyfriend, Bert. It's a seemingly innocuous trip until Bert is unceremoniously dumped, leaving all floundering and questioning themselves. In Changeling, a young woman is taken aback when she spots her mother's doppelganger on a bus, though the strange revelation dissolves against the harsh light of day. The characters in Noyes' 11 stories do not shy from their imperfections as they search for those fleeting, ambiguous moments of resolution.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)