Night Beast
And Other Stories
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A debut collection of doomed love stories and twisted fairytales “perfect for fans of Kelly Link and of Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties” (Booklist).
In Night Beasts, author Ruth Joffre explores the lives of women—particularly queer women and mothers—and reveals the monsters lurking in our daily lives: the madness, isolation, betrayals, and regrets that arise as we seek human connection. Joffre takes readers to places where the sun never sets, where cornfields rustle ominously, and sleepwalkers prowl the night. In “Weekend,” the lead actors of an avant-garde television show begin to confuse their characters’ identities with their own; in “Go West, and Grow Up,” a young girl living in a car with her mother is forced to shed her innocence too soon; and in “Safekeeping,” a woman trapped inside a futuristic safehouse gradually unravels as she waits for her lover, who may never return.
“A cri de coeur for sympathy and understanding,” Night Beast is a mind-bending, genre-hopping debut, a provocative and uncommonly raw examination of relationships and sexuality, trauma and redemption, the meaning of family, and coming-of-age—and growing old—as an outsider (Publishers Weekly).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Most of the 11 stories in Joffre's captivating debut conclude with haunting epiphanies that crystallize the emotions their characters have been grappling with throughout their telling. In "Go West, and Grow Up," an impoverished mother and daughter who have been living out of their car for a year appear finally to escape the desperation of their lives, only to have their car stall out on the road miles from help. "Safekeeping" tells of a woman locked away in a bunker who finally rationalizes her imprisonment as an act of affection from the absent lover who placed her there. In "The Twilight Hotel," a woman struggling to cope with an emotionally devastating miscarriage discovers that her increasingly estranged wife does not share her preferred escape fantasy. Joffre's characters range from everyday moms negotiating the crankiness of their kids to people imprinted with digital clocks that tick down to the time they'll meet their soulmate and, in the title story, a bride who has sex with her husband's sister during her sleepwalking spells. They all experience love and loss in a collection that amounts to a cri de coeur for sympathy and understanding. This is an auspicious debut.
