City of Boys by Beth Nugent
City of Boys by Beth Nugent
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The title story is one which I have often taught, and students respond to the specificity of it, the younger woman in thrall to the older woman, the idea that the speaker wants to inhabit her body for herself, her own way. The story is specific in its physicality at every moment. Nugent writes blunt and hard, always with a sense of movement in the language, the story turning in true directions, as if they are being uncovered rather than written. These are stories that will fix you in place. “At the End of My Life” is a complicated study of what might be a future predator as he takes over the life of his sister, the only person to whom he can respond. Parents are detached, distant, even hostile, not only in this story. “Minor Casualties” frames the world with the love of a new Toyota and the family visit that it brings about. She gives an energy to the writing of short fiction that feels necessary and original; she is one of those writers who has learned to see into the heart of this particular material. These are people I already know, feels like. A bookseller in Iowa City recommend this to me years ago and I’ve read some of these stories a dozen times.