cover image Hurry Home

Hurry Home

Ann Scott Knight. Four Way Books, $14.95 (212pp) ISBN 978-1-884800-24-5

The stories in Knight's debut collection are like rosebuds: compact, crisp and often lovely, but a step away from full flower. Broken family relations, troubled fathers and the loss of innocence are recurrent themes, and in the title novella, 15-year-old Faye grapples with all of them when she moves into the home of her father and stepfamily. Soon after, her father leaves, telling the family that he has volunteered to fight in Vietnam. As the wool is slowly pulled from her eyes, Faye, at the pinnacle of adolescent confusion, must reckon with her fractured reverence for her hero. The novella is serious and sad, but it has a rushed, too neatly packaged ending. The most provocative of Knight's 10 short stories are those that stray from home and experiment with more magical settings. In ""A Business Trip,"" a man realizes how empty his life is after an old friend takes him on a mysterious jaunt through Japan's underworld. ""Impossible with Nancy"" has a nearly palpable sense of place--a ""shimmery hot"" afternoon in the South where two teenage girls ""swim their horses"" and sunbathe while Nancy stirs up adventure with a libidinous local boy. Many of Knight's stories lack plot resolution, but the best of them explore sensuality, guilt and longing in lucid prose and quietly apt images. (May) FYI: Hurry Home is the first publication in the Nicola Tatiana King series, established in memory of King, who was a painter and ""avid reader of short fiction.""The series will publish short story collections and novellas by emerging writers.