Antipodes
Stories
by Holly Goddard Jones
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Pub Date May 10 2022 | Archive Date May 10 2022
University of Iowa Press | University Of Iowa Press
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Description
SHORT STORIES
A harried and depressed mother of three young children serves on a committee that watches over the bottomless sinkhole that has appeared in her Kentucky town. During COVID lockdown, a thirty-four-year-old gamer moves back home with his parents and is revisited by his long-forgotten childhood imaginary friend. A politician running for a state congressional seat and a young mother, who share the same set of fears about the future, cross paths but don’t fully understand one another. A woman attends a party at the home of a fellow church parishioner and discovers she is on the receiving end of a sales pitch for a doomsday prepper.
These stories and more contemplate our current reality with both frankness and hard-earned hopefulness, realism and fabulism, tackling parenthood, environment, and the absurd-but-unavoidable daily toil of worrying about mundane matters when we’ve entered “an era of unknowability, of persistent strangeness.”
Advance Praise
“Erase every qualifier: American, living, southern. Holly Goddard Jones is one of our greatest storytellers—period—and Antipodes is a testament to her continued mastery, wit, and grace. Brimming with unparalleled empathy for their characters, these stories prove, once again, that Goddard Jones knows us better than we know ourselves.”—David James Poissant, author, Lake Life
“As always, Holly Goddard Jones writes like a force of nature; her prose is strong, solid, and full of power. Even more so, her stories are endlessly inventive and witty, showcasing characters who are fully realized and complex human beings holding mirrors up to our own faces—or making us thankful we are not them. Her voice is miraculous in its ability to be singular even while she takes on eclectic premises and themes. Goddard Jones is one of our best writers, and Antipodes is her best book yet.”—Silas House, author, Southernmost
“Antipodes is rich with characters whose lives have been upended—by pregnancy or menopause, by aging or love, or even by uncanny world events. Holly Goddard Jones captures her characters’ liminal states with deftness and skill, illuminating their uncertainties, hopes, and deep humanity. These stories are beautifully constructed.”—Kim Edwards, author, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
“Fasten your seat belts and hold on. Holly Goddard Jones is an extraordinary talent and the stories in Antipodes are brilliant, spellbinding examinations of looming threats—sinkholes, floods, illness, assault—firmly rooted in the comfort of routine domesticity. One minute the suspense is terrifying, and the next we are lulled into childhood memory and the miracle of birth. This is a stunning collection by an amazing writer.”—Jill McCorkle, author, Hieroglyphics
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781609388294 |
| PRICE | $16.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 238 |
Links
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Donna H, Reviewer
I'm not a big fan of short stories, but I really enjoyed Holly Goddard Jones's The Salt Line when my post-apocalyptic book club read it a couple of years ago. I hadn't read any of her other works, but I know she often writes about motherhood. So I expected that to be the theme of her short stories.
I looked up the definition of antipodes because I wasn't exactly sure what it meant. It means the exact opposite of something or it is a reference (when used by people in the Northern Hemisphere) to New Zealand and Australia.
My thought that the stories would revolve around the theme of motherhood was pretty accurate. Many of the stories had a mother as the main character and the few stories that didn't were still about family in some sense.
The stories are, for the most part, slice-of-life kind of stories. Some of the stories were a bit stranger than I like. For example, in "Distancing" which is set during the early days of the pandemic when everyone was staying home. The mother takes a daily walk in the woods and one day she starts eating dirt. When she tells her doctor friend she mentions that it might be the change - meaning menopause. They act like this is normal, and the main character recalls that when her mother went through the change she disappeared for a while. I thought she meant metaphorically, but I think she meant it literally.
I found "Swallows" to be a sweet story about new love. Whereas the story that preceded it, "Machine " served as a counterpoint in a sense. I found it kind of depressing. The main character is a struggling writer who has taken on a short-term visiting lecturer position. She's sharing the guest house with the visiting artist and she fantasizes about the three weeks they will spend together. Nothing goes as planned. I could only muster a little sympathy for her.
Ironically, "Machine" was originally published under the title "The Right Way to End a Story " and I felt like a few of the stories did not have an ending. Like the title story "Antipodes". It felt like it just stopped. At first, I thought perhaps that this was a collection of short stories where in the end they all tie together with a conclusion. That wasn't the case.
But not have a true resolution wasn't always bad. I enjoyed "Exhaust" though the ending is somewhat open-ended. It had all the makings of the urban legends we told around the campfire when I was a kid.
I thought all the stories where well written, even the ones I didn't particularly enjoy. If you are a fan of short stories, then this is a great collection with a bit of variety among the stories.
My review will be published at Girl Who Reads on Thursday - https://www.girl-who-reads.com/2022/05/antipodes-stories-by-holly-goddard.html
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