Shut Up / Look Pretty - Anthology
193 Pages
Publisher: Tiny Hardcore Press
Released: 2012
Guest Reviewed by Lavinia Ludlow
In 2012, Lauren Becker, Erin Fitzgerald, Kirsty Logan, Michelle Reale, and
Amber Sparks released
Shut Up/Look Pretty, a collection of short stories
and micro fictions about everything from bad break ups, vampires, to classic
familial dysfunction. The contrast of narrative voices brought a charming feel
to the compilation, and collectively, made for a unique reading experience.
Becker opens with a story called
A Simple Explanation, which reads
more like a low self-esteemed angst-ridden unhinged teenage girl than a mature
woman struggling with her reality—think every single Fiona Apple song. A
reoccurring personality who takes (or maybe invites) emotional abuse by the
stereotypical emotionally void asshole, pining over the wrong men who ignore
and abuse her, and leave her self-hating and loathing because she doesn’t fit a
certain mold: “You marvel aloud at your luck in meeting me. I like you and want
to warn you, but it’s really your own fault. Don’t envision a history with me.
Just take me home tonight and don’t call tomorrow. I will cry and think
‘always’ and ‘never’ and it will feel right to me.”
Independent Living
was a glimpse into the black hole of an old folks’ home. The well-written piece
exposed Becker’s true talents as a writer as she conveyed complex emotions of
the dismal environment in mere sentences. Becker’s prose is often fragmented,
but she’s mastered the art of expressing the darkest emotions of the human
experience, which most choose to bury, drink away, and forget.
__
Erin Fitzgerald imaginative stories of hospital stays and unemployment take
place in small-town college dorm rooms and doctors’ offices.
Where Did It All Go Wrong is a heartbreaking tale of giving up the
daily comforts, quite possibly necessities, in the heart of the economic
recession. Fitzgerald hits hard with blatant one-liners, but also conveys a
slew of somber emotions, as exhibited in the opening of
Fed Up In Phoenix,
“You started getting the newspaper right after you got married, because Laurie
thought it would be cute for the two of you to read the paper over breakfast. Then
both of your shifts changed and you ate together less and it stopped for a
while.” A story with such a powerful twist that it sucker punched me in the gut
and I walked around for the rest of the day with an inexplicable ping in my
side.
This Morning Will Be Different is a humorous and engaging story
about coming home from a surgery to an empty house after a fresh break up. “I
will start taking ibuprofen three times a week, even if nothing hurts that
ibuprofen would fix...If I can’t find someone to talk to that early in the
morning, I will invent an eccentric friend in an artist’s colony in Taos, where
it will be 4am. She will not have been able to sleep, she is so filled with
inspiration.” As the collection presses on, Fitzgerald’s prose and content
increase in eccentricity, from stories of fraud to inmate snail mail in a “To
Lindsay Lohan from Erin,” a one-way dialogue with no other than Lindsay Lohan.
Nonetheless, a great collection of short stories.
__
Kirsty Logan’s novella
Local God is about a Scottish rock band and
its stereotypical womanizing sociopath of a lead singer, Francis Faskally. Logan’s
dynamite writing never wanes, particularly when she’s introducing a character:
“Before I met Tibor, I thought I knew what Christians looked like—this was
vital information so that I could avoid them. Then I met Tibor, with his shaved
head, nose ring, and muscled arms, like a threatening extra from a prison
movie. Several local god girls at uni are feverishly, obsessively, frantically
in love with Tibor. They are all beautiful and insane. Tibor is not bad-looking
and he’s in a band—which is plenty for some girls—but he also has a secret
weapon. Tibor is saving himself for marriage.” Logan has the matchless ability
to set the scene and draw out her characters so precisely that I feel as if I’m
there in the room listening to the dialogue unfold and tensions rise. Though
the short story starts off slow and cliché, it morphs into an entertaining,
engaging, and fantastical mind fuck. My only gripe is that I can’t read it
again with a virgin pair of eyes.
___
With a dream-like writing style, Michelle Reale uncovers the barbaric and
ugly side of suburbia, culture clashes, dysfunctional relationships, and even
blind dates in flash-length stories. In
Folk,
the connection between two people fizzles just as quickly as the 200-word piece
reads: “We tried to
be fascinated by one another in the car on the way to the folk festival. We’d
met over e-mail. He wrote with dashes like Emily Dickinson and I fell for it.
He picked me up at a Denny’s on the highway, asked me not to smoke when I slid
one from the pack. We had things to say, like the fact that he petrifies citrus
fruits on windowsills and has a lime back from the summer of ’87. I told him
about my fascination with the two drums of Ireland, the Lambeg and Bodhran and
how my loyalties can become easily divided. The air-conditioning was on full
blast. My eyes went dry. We ran out of things to say. At the festival we saw
each other, but he just looked straight ahead like he didn’t know me after all
we shared. On the way home we passed by a ramshackle house with a statue of a
big wooden bear, his claws out. On one side was: ‘Welcome.’ On the other side:
‘Go Away.’ I lit my cigarette and didn’t care. ‘Imagine that,’ I laughed. He
rolled down the window and looked the other way.” In
What Passes For Normal, a young girl
watches and listens to her callous mother verbally abuse a child with a mental
disability: “‘God gives them strength since they have nothing upstairs to work
with!’ She taps her head with a French-tipped fingernail. My mother blows a
stream at Belinda. She laughs when the girl sputters. Belinda’s mouth looks
like the downward grimace of the tragedy mask of theater. The smoke from my
mother’s cigarette drifts forming a corona around Belinda’s head that looks too
small for her body.” I had to re-read a few of Reale’s more poignant stories,
but the second round was a literary adventure in itself and I was able to gain
a better understanding of her vision.
__
Amber Sparks’ poetic and ethereal stories of life, death, and the gristly
transitions in between remind us mortals of our inevitable (and grim) battle
with mortality. Sparks fuels her stories with darkly comical details, which
become increasingly graphic throughout her collection. She opens with
A
Great Dark Sleep, one man’s
portrayal of living among ghosts and their playground. Haunted by some isolated
trauma, the man is unable to let anyone new into his life, and devotes his time
and energy to keeping the “ghosts” content. He even bans his daughter from
using any technologies such as the internet, TV, and phone under the belief
that “the signals would interfere with those the ghosts give off, with the live
trails they leave looping through the air.”
The
Stages of Human Decay is none other than a play-by-play narrative of the
human body decomposing: “After only five days it seem impossible she wouldn’t
recognize you, but you are not you. You have transmogrified; you are a monster,
a shiny, blistered human skin sack stuffed with liquefying tissue, leaking
juice and gases from every orifice. You would be embarrassed to be seen in this
condition. You were always so tidy and clean.” From cola guzzling vampire
hunters to a murdered husband who somehow returns to life and sprouts wings,
Sparks’ well-written content draws on the imaginative occult.
_
At times, navigating through a 300-page collection of intense and heavy
material from five of the scene’s powerful and artistic writers was
overwhelming; however, the generous sampling allows each contributor to
highlight herself as an individual and as an essential voice in
Shut Up/Look
Pretty’s multifaceted
illustration of the human condition. Available for purchase as an e-book at
Amazon.
Lavinia Ludlow is a musician, writer, and occasional contortionist. Her debut
novel alt.punk
can be purchased through major online retailers as well
as Casperian Books’ website. Her sophomore novel Single Stroke Seven
was signed to Casperian Books and will release in the distant future. In her
free time, she is a reviewer at Small Press Reviews
, The Nervous
Breakdown
, American Book Review
, and now The Next Best Book
Blog
.
