Subcortical

by Lee Conell

Overview

The off-balance and lively characters in Subcortical use braininess and grit in their attempts to navigate beyond the borders of their homes and histories.

Winner of the Story Prize Spotlight Award of The Story PrizeWinner of the Short Fiction Award of the American Book FestBronze Book Award Short Story Fiction of the Independent Publisher

Recipient of the 2018 Story Prize Spotlight Award

Lee Conell’s linguistically deft stories examine the permeability between the real and the imagined, the stories buried beneath the surface and the stories by which we live our lives.

In the title story of this collection, a young woman who wants to become a doctor is manipulated by an older man into playing a role in one of his medical studies. In “The Lock Factory,” winner of the Chicago Tribune’s 2016 Nelson Algren Literary Award, three women who assemble school combination locks are trapped inside an escalating generational conflict of their own making. A boy who has lost his mother in “The Rent-Controlled Ghost” searches for the spirit of the mistreated tenant who formerly inhabited his apartment. “A Magic Trick for the Recently Unemployed” serves as a three-step how-to guide for reclaiming a sense of self and purpose. In “What the Blob Said to Me,” an elderly woman dwells on her long-ago experience working at a government production site for the atomic bomb. And a mother-daughter Groupon for an upscale afternoon tea goes seriously awry in “Mutant at the Pierre Hotel.”

With humor and verve, Subcortical’s dynamic stories delve into the mysteries of the human mind as these haunted characters struggle with economic disparity, educational divides, and the often-contested spaces in which they live.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421424224
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	11/15/2017
Series:	Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	1,009,305
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Lee Conell has taught for Southern Word, SUNY New Paltz, and Vanderbilt University, where she earned her MFA. Her fiction has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Glimmer Train, Kenyon Review online, Guernica, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere. This is her first book.

Table of Contents

1. The Lock Factory
2. A Suggestion
3. Unit Cell
4. What the Blob Said to Me
5. My Four Stomachs
6. The Rent-Controlled Ghost
7. Subcortical
8. A Guide to Sirens
9. Hart Island
10. Recuerdo
11. The Afterlife of Turtles
12. Guardian
13. Ghost Train
14. The Sextrology Woman
15. A Magic Trick for the Recently Unemployed
16. Mutant at the Pierre Hotel
Acknowledgments

What People are Saying About This

Bret Anthony Johnston

Subcortical is a marvel. In these remarkable stories, Lee Conell pulls off the masks we wear to hide from ourselves and each other, and she explores—with nuance, insight, humor, and deep heart—what science rarely does: the magic and mystery of being human. This is a writer to read, to watch, to follow from one beautiful book to the next.

Tony Earley

Lee Conell's stories are equal parts whimsy, nerve, genius, heart, steely eyes and sharp teeth. One of my all-time favorites lives inside this wonderful book. I'm not going to tell you which one—take your time and choose one of your own. Trust me: It's in here.

Sam Lipsyte

Lee Conell's stories possess a warmth, depth, and humor much needed in our times. Subcortical is a terrific debut.

From the Publisher

Lee Conell’s stories are structurally masterful. With their knowledge of diverse work, regions, and backgrounds, these stories comprise a tremendous portrait of the way we live now. Conell’s theme is curiosity itself, and she goes to unexpected narrative places, lets differences collide, and keeps her readers on their toes. Did I neglect to say she is also very funny? Subcortical is a brilliant collection.
—Lorrie Moore, author of Bark

Lee Conell's stories possess a warmth, depth, and humor much needed in our times. Subcortical is a terrific debut.
—Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask

Bright and appealing studies of mothers and daughters, alongside ventures of the young into the terra incognita of work and love. With a fresh, direct voice, Lee Conell tracks the lives of others with warmth and imagination.
—Jean McGarry, author of Ocean State

Lee Conell's Subcortical is one of the most incredible debut collections that I've ever read. I cannot overstate how mesmerized and cracked open I was by the precision of each story, how Conell links the exterior and interior worlds of her characters in such a way that every sentence feels life-affirming. These stories are overflowing with strange beauty, such weirdness and truth. Conell has made something perfect.
—Kevin Wilson, author of The Family Fang

Subcortical is a marvel. In these remarkable stories, Lee Conell pulls off the masks we wear to hide from ourselves and each other, and she explores—with nuance, insight, humor, and deep heart—what science rarely does: the magic and mystery of being human. This is a writer to read, to watch, to follow from one beautiful book to the next.
—Bret Anthony Johnston, author of Remember Me Like This

Lee Conell's stories are equal parts whimsy, nerve, genius, heart, steely eyes and sharp teeth. One of my all-time favorites lives inside this wonderful book. I'm not going to tell you which one—take your time and choose one of your own. Trust me: It's in here.
—Tony Earley, author of Mr. Tall

Kevin Wilson

Lee Conell's Subcortical is one of the most incredible debut collections that I've ever read. I cannot overstate how mesmerized and cracked open I was by the precision of each story, how Conell links the exterior and interior worlds of her characters in such a way that every sentence feels life-affirming. These stories are overflowing with strange beauty, such weirdness and truth. Conell has made something perfect.

Lorrie Moore

"Lee Conell’s stories are structurally masterful. With their knowledge of diverse work, regions, and backgrounds, these stories comprise a tremendous portrait of the way we live now. Conell’s theme is curiosity itself, and she goes to unexpected narrative places, lets differences collide, and keeps her readers on their toes. Did I neglect to say she is also very funny? Subcortical is a brilliant collection."

Jean McGarry

Bright and appealing studies of mothers and daughters, alongside ventures of the young into the terra incognita of work and love. With a fresh, direct voice, Lee Conell tracks the lives of others with warmth and imagination.

Bret Anthony Johnson

" Subcortical is a marvel. In these remarkable stories, Lee Connell pulls off the masks we wear to hide from ourselves and each other, and she explores—with nuance, insight, humor, and deep heart—what science rarely does: the magic and mystery of being human. This a writer to read, to watch, to follow from one beautiful book to the next."

Editorial Reviews

10/23/2017
Conell brings the characters in her rich debut collection to life in weird, wise, and often poignant ways. In the title story, a young woman begins an affair with a married doctor who dreams of curing homosexuality, and she becomes complicit in his experiments to turn a young gay man straight, even as she increasingly identifies with the doctor’s patient. “What the Blob Said to Me” recounts the experience of a woman who long ago assisted in the building of the atomic bomb; looking back, she regrets not the lives lost due to the bomb, but instead the fate of a young colleague to whom she had been cruel. And in “The Lock Factory,” the narrator recounts her mother’s experience working a summer job and an intergenerational conflict that developed between two coworkers. This story is a surprisingly moving portrait of three generations of women that demonstrates how difficult it is to escape the places that make people who they are. Throughout the collection, the characters’ interior and exterior lives are often in striking conflict, and in this juxtaposition, Conell maps the emotional landscape of people on the periphery who have been waiting to be recognized. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Conell brings the characters in her rich debut collection to life in weird, wise, and often poignant ways.
—Publishers Weekly

Subcortical urges the reader to take fantasy and fiction seriously, to consider how belief in the supernatural or the unlikely is not only an emotional touch point, but also a potential form of salvation . . . Throughout the collection, Conell never loses touch with the reader; the passion and sense of loss in these stories, their beat and pulse, is never distant. Whether transported to New York or Nashville, the 1940s or the present day, she does not lose sight of what lures and hooks our hearts . . . Dreams, hopes, the unreal-made-real and vice versa, weave and tighten these stories together, rewarding the reader with perspectives that captivate and confound, whirl you around and yet fasten you to the solid reality of the human body.
—Cara Dees, The Adroit Journal

With sixteen stories of various lengths, Subcortical is a substantial debut. The shorter pieces, four to five pages each, are elliptical and open-ended, leaving readers wanting more. The longer stories possess the heft of novels, with complex characters who grow in surprising directions. This collection promises a bright future for Conell in longer fictional forms, but here's hoping she returns on occasion to write stories like these, gems of quirky insight and the heartache of difficult lessons. As Conell clearly knows, learning the hard way is the only way we learn anything.
—Sean Kinch, Chapter 16

Conell invites us into our own world with new eyes that capture the extraordinary details of the everyday and experience the extraordinary as merely mundane . . . These stories ask the reader to look closely at our present moment, to uncover its wonders and marvels. These stories are a reflection rather than a solution. They'll do better than break your heart—they'll shake it up and set the pieces cascading like snow in a globe, settling eventually in a familiar but different arrangement.
—Alicia Marie Brandewie, Nashville Review

From the Publisher

Conell invites us into our own world with new eyes that capture the extraordinary details of the everyday and experience the extraordinary as merely mundane . . . These stories ask the reader to look closely at our present moment, to uncover its wonders and marvels. These stories are a reflection rather than a solution. They'll do better than break your heart—they'll shake it up and set the pieces cascading like snow in a globe, settling eventually in a familiar but different arrangement.

Nashville Review - Alicia Marie Brandewie

Subcortical urges the reader to take fantasy and fiction seriously, to consider how belief in the supernatural or the unlikely is not only an emotional touch point, but also a potential form of salvation . . . Throughout the collection, Conell never loses touch with the reader; the passion and sense of loss in these stories, their beat and pulse, is never distant. Whether transported to New York or Nashville, the 1940s or the present day, she does not lose sight of what lures and hooks our hearts . . . Dreams, hopes, the unreal-made-real and vice versa, weave and tighten these stories together, rewarding the reader with perspectives that captivate and confound, whirl you around and yet fasten you to the solid reality of the human body.

The Adroit Journal - Cara Dees

With sixteen stories of various lengths, Subcortical is a substantial debut. The shorter pieces, four to five pages each, are elliptical and open-ended, leaving readers wanting more. The longer stories possess the heft of novels, with complex characters who grow in surprising directions. This collection promises a bright future for Conell in longer fictional forms, but here's hoping she returns on occasion to write stories like these, gems of quirky insight and the heartache of difficult lessons. As Conell clearly knows, learning the hard way is the only way we learn anything.

Chapter 16 - Sean Kinch