cover image SENTIMENTAL, HEARTBROKEN REDNECKS

SENTIMENTAL, HEARTBROKEN REDNECKS

Greg Bottoms, . . Context, $21.95 (216pp) ISBN 978-1-893956-15-5

Bottoms (author of the critically acclaimed memoir Angelhead) chronicles the lives of narrators living on the margins of urban life in this collection of 13 spare and beautiful stories, most set in Virginia. Violence, whether in the form of police shootings, child abuse or suicide, invades the tales, but what emerges strongest is the narrative voice. Adeptly shifting between first and third person, Bottoms instantly engages readers with the honest and simple (but not uncomplicated) voices of his characters. In the title story, he skirts the line between fiction and nonfiction, reimagining the life of another Virginia writer, Breece D'J Pancake. This lovely, tragic piece describes actual events in Pancake's life, weaving in facts about the narrator, locating points of similarity while gently attempting to uncover a rationale for Pancake's apparent suicide at 26. "The Metaphor" is principally told by a struggling writer who spends his time in a crumbling neighborhood observing the inhabitants and recording the police shooting of a crack addict. The white writer's status as "other" gives him an outsider's perspective, counterbalanced by a local's version of the events; the two visions meld in a probing exploration of race and class. In "LSD in Raleigh," Bottoms writes in sharp, lucid and disconcertingly spiritual prose of a two-day hallucinogenic haze. Pain and sadness underlie the day-to-day activities of ordinary Southerners in these stories, but Bottoms is unafraid to let a few rays of hope breach the clouds in this sensitive and impressive fiction debut. (Sept.)

Forecast:The clever title, plus a '70s-chic jacket, should attract browsers to this small-press gem.