Big Bad

January 25, 2021
Collins (The Hamster Won’t Die) lays on the verve and wit across the 13 stories in this crisp collection. In “Good Guys,” college student Teddy is troubled by his own inexplicable dislike and merciless ridicule of gentle fellow student Leonard. Young Mabel, the protagonist of “Daddy-O,” can’t stand the optimism of her impossibly cheery father. Spencer walks away from his wife and children in “Three Couches” because he feels numb toward his marriage, and his life. The barrage of metaphors feels deliciously apt rather than judgmental, and though Collins trafficks in familiar tropes throughout the collection, she makes them distinctive by crafting varying worlds. In “Bjorn,” Bianca develops a strange attachment to a disfiguring cyst, even after it’s removed. Seven-year-old Frankie finds solace in “The Nest” with her flamboyant uncle while her infant twin brothers struggle in the ICU, having been delivered 60 days early, “like a pair of feeble insects that doctors promptly secured under glass for observation both scientific and sacred.” “Sunday” mixes Grand Guignol with outrageous humor; the protagonist, Paul Lemmon, has lost his arms in a bologna cutting machine. At times, the stories’ omniscient narration leaves the characters little room to breathe, but the zingy one-liners help make up for it. Collins exhibits a contagious appreciation for the world’s strange horrors, big and small.

March 15, 2021
Magical realism and realism that's not quite realistic mingle in this debut collection of 13 stories. Death reorders the lives of those left behind; that's the idea at the heart of many of the stories in Collins' collection. In "Sunday," Paul, who feels responsible for his son's death, punishes himself first by losing both arms in an "accident" and then by marrying a woman with a "marathon mouth" whose incessant talking distracts him from having to remember his past. In "Drawers," one of the collection's standouts, Lawrence is driving to his grandson's circumcision ceremony when he slams into a horse. Undone by his wife's recent death, which brings back memories of his mother's death and how his father coped, Lawrence begins to reckon with how little he has allowed himself to live. Many of these stories tilt toward magical realism. That's the case in "Big Bad," a feminist revision of "Little Red Riding Hood" in which a woman gives birth to older and older versions of herself, each a little more liberated than the last. Elsewhere, magical plots (one about a woman who keeps finding hearts) come at the expense of character development, and stories like "Stone Fruit" and "Lonelyhearts" feel quite slight. But when Collins flirts with magic, rather than fully embraces it, she captures the myriad ways the real world is mysterious--filled with both wonder and terror. In "The Horse Lamp," another gem, a satellite repairman named Jarrod is seduced by a customer who wants him to help her get pregnant. As she gradually reveals her real reasons for wanting a baby, Jarrod absorbs her trauma, and the story becomes a cautionary tale about the power of storytelling and our very human desire to believe what we hear. Beautifully written, wildly imaginative stories.

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