Darling Endangered by Carol Guess
The voice narrating Carol Guess’ newest book is that of a playfully effusive but meticulous cataloguer of our darker inquiries and oddities, a suburban former dancer with the inner life and vision of an epic librettist. Darling Endangered is nothing short of exceptional, a rare breed of hybrid that works between the “flash” of short fiction and the swift bite of the lyric. From the dizzying, battered nostalgia of youth remembered to the experiential trappings of maturity, Guess’ collection maps the journey of a singular, sensitive existence through an ever-illuminating world of wayward hawks and track star meth addicts, avalanches and hot dog carts, zombie buildings, the works of Balanchine and Pachelbel, and the promises of love and love’s disorders. You will not read another book quite like it.
by Carol Guess
Pub Date: November 1, 2011
82 pages
Print ISBN-13: 9781936767014
Ebook ISBN-13: 9781936767106
Cover Art by Jonathan Allen
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It’s commonly posed that history unwinds itself, that the events of a people or life reveal themselves to the eye, that the fibers of a story are made loose with investigation and discovery. The opposite, however, is true in Guess’s Darling Endangered, in which as you read you are closed tighter, sewn closer, bound better to the life and lives of the narrator, the narrators, the speakers of these stories. The words and images of these pieces—the stairs and stages and studios, the kisses and misses—accumulate like coats, heavy and harrowing and grave, yet all the while precise, lovely, and true.
It’s commonly posed that history unwinds itself, that the events of a people or life reveal themselves to the eye, that the fibers of a story are made loose with investigation and discovery. The opposite, however, is true in Guess’s Darling Endangered, in which as you read you are closed tighter, sewn closer, bound better to the life and lives of the narrator, the narrators, the speakers of these stories. The words and images of these pieces—the stairs and stages and studios, the kisses and misses—accumulate like coats, heavy and harrowing and grave, yet all the while precise, lovely, and true.
Hand-over-heart, with pink beds, green plastic guns, clicksliver needles, and cardboard-giving milk, the fictions of Carol Guess’s Darling Endangered are the most darling gifts. Even with their parasitic twins, they are not to be endangered. A lovely, lyrical must.
Hand-over-heart, with pink beds, green plastic guns, clicksliver needles, and cardboard-giving milk, the fictions of Carol Guess’s Darling Endangered are the most darling gifts. Even with their parasitic twins, they are not to be endangered. A lovely, lyrical must.
I love this collection of very short fictions. Carol Guess builds the most wondrous word-nests, each one holding something precious, each one surrounded by the world-at-large, afire. In remarkable lyrical fiction after another, Carol Guess writes her darling heart out.
I love this collection of very short fictions. Carol Guess builds the most wondrous word-nests, each one holding something precious, each one surrounded by the world-at-large, afire. In remarkable lyrical fiction after another, Carol Guess writes her darling heart out.
Review from Sink Review
Review from New Pages
Review from JMWW
Review from The Gay and Lesbian Review
Interview with Heavy Feather Review
Interview with Flash Fiction Chronicles
Interview with The Rejectionist
Carol Guess is the author of twenty books of poetry and prose, including Darling Endangered, Doll Studies: Forensics, and Tinderbox Lawn. A frequent collaborator, she writes across genres and illuminates historically marginalized material. In 2014 she was awarded the Philolexian Award for Distinguished Literary Achievement by Columbia University. She teaches at Western Washington University and lives in Seattle.
PDF of 10 Lyrical Shorts by Carol Guess.
