I Know You Know Who I Am

November 25, 2019
Kispert’s piercing debut collection features characters caught in ambivalence and deceit. Many of the stories undercut humor with pangs of regret, such as “In the Palm of His Hand,” which traces the effects of a 20-something man’s detachment as he pretends to be a devout Christian in order to score a date with a religious man. The darkly satirical “Rorschach” tracks a theater entrepreneur’s anguish over the success of his bizarre stage piece “Crucifixion,” which features public executions of death row inmates onstage. Ten of the 21 stories are short-shorts, serving as palate cleansers between the longer, more ambiguous pieces. “Goldfish Bowl” wryly captures the dysfunctional patterns of a failed relationship in two pages, while the full-length title story follows a man’s desperate attempt to hire an actor to impersonate a friend in order to hide his loneliness from his boyfriend. Often, the protagonists sabotage their potential happiness via obsessive self-reflection. The breezy style occasionally belies the effort required to connect the short, splintered scenes and peripheral characters into a coherent picture, though they leave the reader with juicy questions to chew on. This lively and provocative work crisply reflects the challenges of modern love. Agent: Caroline Eisenmann, Frances Goldin Literary Agency.

Starred review from December 1, 2019
The characters in Kispert's debut collection grapple with chaotic lives, troubled memories, and shifting identities. The narrator of the title story pays a man to act out the role of a fictional friend from the tales he's told his boyfriend about his life before they met. This sets in motion a cascading series of events that prompts a meditation on the paradoxical nature of "true stories," which in turn casts a long shadow over the rest of the book. The next story is "Puncture," whose second sentence feels like a reaction to "I Know You Know": "Clark is color blind, or so he's telling me." Kispert wrestles with grand themes, but he's equally adept at memorable miniatures. In "Signs," he makes effective use of brevity, creating power both in what's told and what's left out. The collection's first section, called "I Know," abounds with scenes of deception, so when the second section, "You Know," opens with a story narrated by an actor, it seems like the logical next step. The final story, "Mooring," plays out with echoes of the opener, not unlike a strange remix. It's all in keeping with Kispert's attention to the border between fiction and reality. While his depictions of contemporary life are wholly immersive, he also displays a talent for the speculative. Kyle, the protagonist of "How to Live Your Best Life," inhabits a marginal existence with his partner, Jerry, and their daughter, Chloe. In between acts of petty theft, he ponders whether they should appear on a game show that's a blend of The Newlywed Game and Family Feud, albeit with potentially lethal consequences. And in "Rorschach," live crucifixions carried out on death-row inmates garbed as Jesus have become a hot ticket around the country. Kispert blends sharp characterization with intriguing premises throughout this memorable collection.

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Starred review from December 15, 2019
Every work of fiction is a sort of lie, but this collection is actually about liars, mostly, and also about the lengths people go to in order to feel less alone. A bakery cashier claims to be a baker to impress a man; an actor embraces the terrible movies he's destined to be in and contemplates his boyfriend's gig taking sexy pics of other men; a family prepares for a game show with deadly consequences; the director of a live crucifixion is psychoanalyzed by a friend; and a man pretending to be a swimmer dives into the ocean. These stories have emotional consequence, but they also playfully subvert expectations. Their protagonists are mostly gay and mostly out, that is they're queer and in the world, navigating degrees of outness as they search for themselves. Kispert's short fiction is a performative lie that reveals truth to readers in subtle, surprising ways that literary fiction lovers will devour. One character writes, We tell lies to make ourselves believe the stories we have, to sink them deeper into us, so we don't forget. Kispert's stories dig deep, and they're far from forgettable.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)