In These Times the Home Is a Tired Place (Volume 12) (Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction)

When an unwed pregnant woman is pressured to get married by her boyfriend, parents, and the entire culture around her, she sees a feverish intensity emanating from the path to domesticity, a “paved path shaded by thick-trunked trees, lined with trim grass and manicured mansions, where miniature houses play mailboxes and animals play lawn ornaments and people play happiness.” Jessica Hollander’s debut collection exposes a culture that glorifies and disparages traditional domesticity, where people’s confusion, apathy, and anxiety about the institutions of marriage and family often drive them to self-destruction. The world in Hollander’s nineteen stories appears at once familiar and vividly unsettling, with undercurrents of anger and violence attached to everyday objects and spaces: a pink room is “a woman exploded,” home smells “of laundered clothes and gas from the grill,” and the sun “is so bright the sky fills with over-exposure, wilting the corners to orange, to red, to black.” Here people adopt extreme and erratic behavior: hack at furniture, have affairs with high school students, fantasize about sex with “monsters,” laden flower bouquets with messages of hate; but these self-destructive acts and fantasies feel strangely like a form of growth or enlightenment, or at least the only form that’s available to them. As characters become girlfriends, wives, husbands, and mothers, they struggle within their roles, either fighting to escape them or struggling to “play” them correctly, but always concerned with the loss of individuality, of being swallowed up by society’s expectations and becoming “a mother” or “a wife” instead of remaining themselves. “Hollander’s debut collection effectively fuses the common (childhood adventures, unhappy adults) with the bizarre (a grandmother obsessed with buttons, a gym full of people refusing to wear clothes) to create an intriguing volume. . . . The details in these stories ring true and are recognizable amid the insanity. A poten Winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction, 2013. When an unwed pregnant woman is pressured to get married by her boyfriend, parents, and the entire culture around her, she sees a feverish intensity emanating from the path to domesticity, a paved path shaded by thick-trunked trees, lined with trim grass and manicured mansions, where miniature houses play mailboxes and animals play lawn ornaments and people play happiness. Jessica Hollanders debut collection exposes a culture that glorifies and disparages traditional domesticity, where peoples confusion, apathy, and anxiety about the institutions of marriage and family often drive them to self-destruction. The world in Hollanders nineteen stories appears at once familiar and vividly unsettling, with undercurrents of anger and violence attached to everyday objects and spaces: a pink room is a woman exploded, home smells of laundered clothes and gas from the grill, and the sun is so bright the sky fills with over-exposure, wilting the corners to orange, to red, to black. Here people adopt extreme and erratic behavior: hack at furniture, have affairs with high school students, fantasize about sex with monsters, laden flower bouquets with messages of hate; but these self-destructive acts and fantasies feel strangely like a form of growth or enlightenment, or at least the only form thats available to them. As characters become girlfriends, wives, husbands, and mothers, they struggle within their roles, either fighting to escape them or struggling to play them correctly, but always concerned with the loss of individuality, of being swallowed up by societys expectations and becoming a mother or a wife instead of remaining themselves. Presents A Collection Of Short Stories About The Lives Of Young Women Caught In Circumstances Often Beyond Their Control. You Are A Good Girl I Love You -- If We Miss The Beginning -- This Kind Of Happiness -- I Would Stop -- What Became Of What She Had Made -- The Year We Are Twenty-three -- Put The Animals To Bed -- March On -- The Good Luck Doll -- In These Times The Home Is A Tired Place -- How To Be A Prisoner -- Like Falling Down And Laughing -- I Now Pronounce You -- Buttons -- January On The Ground -- Ruckus, Exhaustion -- Staring Contests -- The Problem With Moving -- Blooms Lined Up Like This. By Jessica Hollander. Katherine Anne Porter Prize In Short Fiction, 2013