Publishers Weekly
07/10/2017
“Approach all unpleasant tasks in life as a performance art piece,” declares an unnamed 16-year-old goth in Woods’s collection of eight uncompromising stories set in rural Illinois. In visceral descriptions of decay, boredom, and limited opportunities, Woods (The Albino Album) besieges her coming-of-age characters with drugs, guns, jail, pedophilia, and teen pregnancy. In “Zombie,” unsupervised tweens care for a homeless, battered woman who’s secretly living in a mausoleum. In “Take the Way Home That Leads Back to Sullivan Street,” a codependent couple tries to make their relationship work amid drugs, schizophrenia, and self-absorbed parents. The most heart-wrenching story, “What’s Happening in the News?”, is a punch-to-the-gut exposé of the hypocrisy of religious zealots who organize consumer boycotts and repress sexuality, and of military recruiters who exploit poor teens with no other options. As Woods’s characters struggle to eke out an identity, they confront the bleak difficulties of their lives and persist in surviving. (May)
From the Publisher
"In the tradition of Shirley Jackson, William Faulkner, and Flannery O’Connor, Woods’s third full-length work, Things to Do When You’re Goth in the Country, explores the haunted terrain of the American psyche ... Woods embraces the complex humanity of her characters even as she explores the tragedy of enculturation, identifying forces that divide us. Think of her as a literary exorcist, calling out certain entities that possess rural America: isolation, working-class poverty, drugs, incarceration, military dogma, and evangelical religion." —The Rumpus
"The stories establish instant, distinct voices, much like Roxane Gay’s recent Difficult Women (2016), and fans of Miranda July's fiction will relish the wily creativity of Woods’ plots. This book is tight, intelligent, and important, and sure to secure Woods a seat on the pantheon of critical 21st-century voices." —Booklist, starred review
"I can’t think of any other book that captures the essence of America the way this collection does—it is nuanced and provocative, heartfelt and funny and wise. Of it, Booklist says, '…tight, intelligent, and important, and sure to secure Woods a seat in the pantheon of critical twenty-first-century voices' and I couldn’t agree more." —Lambda Literary
"Set at the irresistible junction of toxic reality and the truly strange, the electric unexplainable, Chavisa Woods stirs up stories of drugs and dykes, mutant mohawks, the Gaza Strip and green glowing orbs. Here, the outsider becomes truly alien. Murakami meets the meth heads. Woods delivers a nation of cigarettes in language both lyric and thrilling. Reader, you have never before seen anything like this." —Samantha Hunt, author of Mr. Splitfoot
"Chavisa Woods's Things to Do When You're Goth in the Country is part Flannery O'Connor, part Kelly Link: darkly funny and brilliantly human, urgently fantastical and implacably realistic. This is one of the best short story collections I've read in years, and it should be required reading for anyone who's trying to understand America in 2017." —Paul La Farge, author of The Night Ocean
