Things to Do When You're Goth in the Country

July 10, 2017
“Approach all unpleasant tasks in life as a performance art piece,” declares an unnamed 16-year-old goth in Woods’s collection of eight uncompromising stories set in rural Illinois. In visceral descriptions of decay, boredom, and limited opportunities, Woods (The Albino Album) besieges her coming-of-age characters with drugs, guns, jail, pedophilia, and teen pregnancy. In “Zombie,” unsupervised tweens care for a homeless, battered woman who’s secretly living in a mausoleum. In “Take the Way Home That Leads Back to Sullivan Street,” a codependent couple tries to make their relationship work amid drugs, schizophrenia, and self-absorbed parents. The most heart-wrenching story, “What’s Happening in the News?”, is a punch-to-the-gut exposé of the hypocrisy of religious zealots who organize consumer boycotts and repress sexuality, and of military recruiters who exploit poor teens with no other options. As Woods’s characters struggle to eke out an identity, they confront the bleak difficulties of their lives and persist in surviving.

Starred review from March 15, 2017
This fiery collection of fiction does justice to growing up during the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Woods' (The Albino Album, 2013) latest startles and sings. The eight stories vary in tone and in clip but will not soon be forgotten. A transgender artist in Brooklyn wakes up one morning to find that a living diorama of the Gaza Strip has appeared on his head. Two 12-year-old girls take care of a sweet, playful meth addict who has been living in a local mausoleum. A young woman and her schizophrenic girlfriend drop acid at a MENSA party thrown by the schizophrenic woman's parents. Woods' writing is deep and dynamic. Her characters are complex and never sink into the ease of generalizations. She spares no experience in her representation of modern America; it is a rare work of literary fiction that fully showcases the rich and diverse American populace. The stories establish instant, distinct voices, much like Roxane Gay's recent Difficult Women (2016), and fans of Miranda July's fiction will relish the wily creativity of Woods' plots. This book is tight, intelligent, and important, and sure to secure Woods a seat in the pantheon of critical twenty-first-century voices.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)