The History of Vegas

May 30, 2005
The adolescent narrators in this smutty, sad and occasionally violent debut collection are neglected, nearly grown children of the American West. In the title story, a 17-year-old finds himself duped by a "jailbait" hooker and then kidnapped by the very uncle he, his mother and his abused aunt went to Vegas to escape; the cliffhanger ending has the clipped pseudo-profound dialogue of a crime flick. Angel is best when she reveals the disappointment her characters are in for, but can only half see. In "Rounding Third," an unnerving wail interrupts Norma Jean and her boyfriend, Spark, as they attempt to celebrate her 17th birthday in a cheap motel. They discover an abandoned infant in an alley, which Norma Jean takes as a sign that the three of them should "get on the highway and go South." When Spark proves undependable, she makes an ugly bargain with the motel owner for a few more night's lodging. Sexual degradation and loss of innocence are the norm: stories feature light incest, a lesbian hair-grooming scene and wooing by fried chicken. Some of them are oddly tensionless, and though Angel documents the difficulties of family life, particularly sibling responsibility, these stories aren't the ones that readers will turn to for insight.

July 1, 2005
In her debut collection of 10 short stories, Angel portrays the bleak fates of West Coast teenagers who come from broken, cash-strapped families. In a flat, near-documentary style, Angel runs through the gamut of modern ills; incest, casual sex, violence, and drunkenness are the norm. Adults appear as so much background noise or as ruthless predators. In "Portions," high-school-senior Samantha, who has practically raised her younger sister, Jess, must take her shopping for a bathing suit for gym class. Mortified at how Jess looks in the cheap, extralarge Spandex suit, Samantha, attempting to spare her sister's feelings, decides to forge a medical excuse to get Jess out of gym class and then sets about teaching her how to binge and purge. In "Donny," the children of heroin addicts dip joints into a stolen jug of embalming fluid to spice up their high and then talk about killing and eating the family dog. With their stark, horrific premises, laid out in atonal prose, these stories are obviously reaching for tragedy, but, more often than not, they come off as voyeuristic.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)