Hardly Children

October 1, 2018

Debut Up-and-comer Adamczyk (her story "Girls" won the 2014 Dzanc Books/Disquiet International Literary Program Award) writes imaginatively off-kilter, slice-of-life stories meant to make readers uncomfortable. In the title story, for instance, children deemed bad (if only for hanging out or strutting around in tennis shoes) are being taken away by a mysterious group of men. Angry townsfolk are shocked that the narrator, a disaffected teacher, refuses to get involved, but eventually she joins a demonstration and does a small bit of good, even if the situation remains unresolved. Also unresolved: the story of Ronnie, Frannie, and Mary, who grow "lean and hard, then thin and thinner," given their single mother's abysmal paycheck. We don't know what happens to them but are left with Frannie's uncertainty; when grown, she swears they once met a strange man in a tucked-away room in their grandmother's house, but her sisters don't remember. VERDICT A man hanged from a gallery ceiling, the disposition of a gun in a play, a college professor's untoward relationship with a virginal truck driver--all are creepy stories that don't make for light reading but definitely get under your skin.

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