Town of Shadows

Fiction. That the fresh and haunting new voice Lindsay Stern exercises in TOWN OF SHADOWS is difficult to classify ought to serve only to make it impossible to ignore. Rife with arch urgency, brief density, and fruitful disregard for traditional genre bounds, Stern's debut is an important addition to the recent rejuvenation of the novella form. Through its razor-sharp technique, translucent diction, and elliptical vignette structure, TOWN OF SHADOWS peels layer from layer to reveal a complex, perspicacious author who is unafraid to trouble the water where poetry and prose mingle. Stern's youth and precocity are certainly striking, but don't let them dupe you: here is a young Lydia Davis or Anne Carson unspooling only the beginning of a corpus all her own. Lindsay Stern defines the term 'one to watch.'--Laura Goode

TOWN OF SHADOWS is Winesburg, Ohio coated in arsenic, stippled with word math, and carved on a butterfly's body. What Lindsay Stern creates here is throttling and gorgeous, a child's hand grasping for a lightning storm trapped in a white balloon.--J. A. Tyler