Now, this is what I'm talking about.
"Where will you go..." has a very Flannery O'Conner feel to it, from the long title to the setting to the resolution with opposing characters never really seeing or understanding each other until it's too late.
Set rural South, the story opens with the Jeepster (aka Leonard), a scoundrel grieving the loss of his former girlfriend, Amy. We already know this isn't going to end well when the Jeepster shows up at a gas station with a 9-mm handgun looking for someone who might have helped Amy's murderer.
From there, the author leads the Jeepster through a haunting rural wasteland of once-prosperous family farms turned into meth labs or the deserted scene of past crimes. Even narratives that describe the bonding of the Jeepster and Amy have a lost and abandoned feel to them. It's almost as if the environment sucks any potential and energy from its characters (the Jeepster recalls the crowd roaring as he makes the winning catch of a high school football game and then finding himself on the empty bleachers a year later).
Instead, characters are left to fill the void with alcohol, drugs, sex, and ultimately guns. The only people who seem to thrive in this world are the police, who seem to be everywhere, trying to keep people from the drugs, sex, and guns. It almost comes as no surprise then that Amy's father is a cop who blames the Jeepster for her downfall and death.
Barred from her funeral, the Jeepster is desperate to have something of Amy. At first, he wants the blood from where she died, but then later, something more. Did Leonard really love Amy or is the dead girl just the next logical step in an already soul-sucking existence?
From a craft persepctive, "Where will you go..." has some amazing imagery in it. When describing desolate family farm of Jeepster's meth creating friend, Emile, the author writes,
"The appalled ghost of Emile's mother haunted these rooms, hovered fretfully in the darker corners. Wringing her spectral hands over doilies beset with beer cans and spilled ashtrays."
To keep my street cred at LitBitch, I do have to say that sometimes the imagery and plot points sound a little like the script outline of a music video or an independent film. Other times the imagery stretches a bit thin, such as when the author writes how the Jeepster... "watched the traffic accomplish itself in a kind of wonder." Huh? I could also argue that the characters are somewhat stereotypical (The Jeepster has LOVE tattooed on the fingers of one hand and HATE on the other? Oh, come on!).
Nonetheless, I really enjoyed the story and recommend that anyone reading the anthology skip through to this story. This is what the BASS should be about.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
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