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You Only Get Letters from Jail
Jodi Angel’s second story collection, You Only Get Letters from Jail, chronicles the lives of young men trapped in the liminal space between adolescence and adulthood. From picking up women at a bar hours after mom’s overdose to coveting a drowned girl to catching rattlesnakes with gasoline, Angel's characters are motivated by muscle cars, manipulative women, and the hope of escape from circumstances that force them either to grow up or give up. Haunted by unfulfilled dreams and disappointments, and often acting out of mixed intentions and questionable motives, these boys turned young men are nevertheless portrayed with depth, tenderness, and humanity. Angel’s gritty and heartbreaking prose leaves readers empathizing with people they wouldn't ordinarily trust or believe in.
288 pages, Paperback
First published June 24, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 59 reviews
July 30, 2013
Jodi Angel captures the voices of eleven boys on the cusp of childhood as they passively hack to pieces their innocence and identity. In “A Good Deuce”, the narrator and his best friend find numbing sex after his mother’s funeral. In “Cash or Trade”, the narrator and his father are both mesmerized by a blonde bombshell in cutoffs so short that her “the front pockets [hang] under the ragged bottoms like rabbit ears.” In “Field Dressing”, the narrator and his unhappy aunt find themselves in “about the deepest shit there could be” in the middle of a hunting trip. And in the title story, the narrator witnesses his friend’s grandeur war stories shrivel down to their real size. In all these stories, the reader encounters an abandoned, horny, aggrieved, teenage boy with a fantastic imagination despite being stuck in an unsolvable problem.
Her stories are quintessential examples of everything natural about storytelling. Each story starts in the middle of action, pulling the reader in to the very core of the narrator’s interiority before the breath reading the first sentence is completely exhaled at the period. Then introduces backstory, moves into climax, and ends by flashing forward to a time beyond the narrative moment.
She knows how to weave a sentence, a paragraph, and the story seamlessly flows out of a smart conscious—a conscious, perhaps more aware of itself than a teenager might be. Wise and witty lines such as “plans have as much substance as daydreams” age the narrators by giving them a subtle kind of wisdom only experience might teach. Other times, the teenager’s naiveté works in Angel’s favor, especially in places where she does not have to explicitly state what happens, but can, instead, suggest the action. For example, sexual affairs between a parent and a stranger are implied with subtle imagery rather than explicit statements:
“My mother was leaning into the open yawn of the hood of my car, pointing at colored wires with a filed nail, careful to poke without touching so she wouldn’t spoil her manicure with sticky grease. I didn’t have to look at her to know that she was doing this. There was a man standing beside her, a tall man in dirty jeans, and I knew what kind of show she’d be putting on for his benefit. I knew she was asking questions in her high-fret guitar-string voice, and that she wasn’t listening for the answers. What she knew about cars I could fit into the corner of my eye, pick out with my finger, and wipe across my pants…”
What she manages to show with such grace in her voice is emotional restraint. The narrators are calm, but not stoic; passive, but not without desires; both observant and judgmental.
Because the tonality of the stories is so consistent, each story can be read as a variation of the same story or a product of a slightly altered universe. In this way, it’s not difficult to imagine a cinematic version where each story is a dramatic scene in a completely different narrative arch. The writing is evocative and dramatically inspiring to consider a movie somewhere in the near future.
This is what brings about the major point of criticism for the collection. There seems to be no real artistic reason for keeping these stories disconnected. Individually, the stories wrap the reader in an intensely and deeply imagined world, but gathered together in a collection, the stories collapse in close proximity. The stories are not dissimilar enough to warrant being disconnected, and they are not the similar enough to be considered truly connected. Connecting this collection to some degree might have worked to deepen this world even more and make each individual story stronger by its association and dialogue with the other stories.
Nonetheless, with dead rabbits, borrowed underwear, nude mothers, and one too many guns, cars, cars and more cars, Angel’s stories leave the reader anxious, satisfied, and heartbroken.
Her stories are quintessential examples of everything natural about storytelling. Each story starts in the middle of action, pulling the reader in to the very core of the narrator’s interiority before the breath reading the first sentence is completely exhaled at the period. Then introduces backstory, moves into climax, and ends by flashing forward to a time beyond the narrative moment.
She knows how to weave a sentence, a paragraph, and the story seamlessly flows out of a smart conscious—a conscious, perhaps more aware of itself than a teenager might be. Wise and witty lines such as “plans have as much substance as daydreams” age the narrators by giving them a subtle kind of wisdom only experience might teach. Other times, the teenager’s naiveté works in Angel’s favor, especially in places where she does not have to explicitly state what happens, but can, instead, suggest the action. For example, sexual affairs between a parent and a stranger are implied with subtle imagery rather than explicit statements:
“My mother was leaning into the open yawn of the hood of my car, pointing at colored wires with a filed nail, careful to poke without touching so she wouldn’t spoil her manicure with sticky grease. I didn’t have to look at her to know that she was doing this. There was a man standing beside her, a tall man in dirty jeans, and I knew what kind of show she’d be putting on for his benefit. I knew she was asking questions in her high-fret guitar-string voice, and that she wasn’t listening for the answers. What she knew about cars I could fit into the corner of my eye, pick out with my finger, and wipe across my pants…”
What she manages to show with such grace in her voice is emotional restraint. The narrators are calm, but not stoic; passive, but not without desires; both observant and judgmental.
Because the tonality of the stories is so consistent, each story can be read as a variation of the same story or a product of a slightly altered universe. In this way, it’s not difficult to imagine a cinematic version where each story is a dramatic scene in a completely different narrative arch. The writing is evocative and dramatically inspiring to consider a movie somewhere in the near future.
This is what brings about the major point of criticism for the collection. There seems to be no real artistic reason for keeping these stories disconnected. Individually, the stories wrap the reader in an intensely and deeply imagined world, but gathered together in a collection, the stories collapse in close proximity. The stories are not dissimilar enough to warrant being disconnected, and they are not the similar enough to be considered truly connected. Connecting this collection to some degree might have worked to deepen this world even more and make each individual story stronger by its association and dialogue with the other stories.
Nonetheless, with dead rabbits, borrowed underwear, nude mothers, and one too many guns, cars, cars and more cars, Angel’s stories leave the reader anxious, satisfied, and heartbroken.
November 16, 2013
Theme starts to get repetitive, but the stories are engaging.
August 5, 2013
Damn, this woman can write. Jodi Angel's YOU ONLY GET LETTERS FROM JAIL is an absolutely heartbreaking collection. The teenage boys at the center of these stories are rendered with such empathy and generosity, and the pieces add up to a world of boys and cars and longing and confusion and disappointment and hope...all that good stuff of life, yeah? Written with Angel's arresting quality of attention. And on the sentence level? I must confess I actually moaned with pleasure at more than one point. (Yes, I'm a huge, unapologetic lit geek, it's true.) Jodi Angel can write the hell out of a sentence. So, so good. Read it.
June 8, 2013
Just flat out great short fiction in the vein of Richard Ford's Rock Springs. Jodi Angel is a powerhouse.
August 2, 2013
My love affair with Jodi Angel’s writing start about 3 years ago now, I had to get a copy of her first collection (read the review here) for the Tomales Bay Writer’s Conference because I was going to be in her fiction class. My friend, Sarah, was a huge fan of hers and could not have been more jealous that I was going to be in the class, which made me reluctant to read the book because so much build-up can only disappoint. Well, I was wrong in making such an absurd assumption. The first collection blew me away, I had never read such raw and real short fiction, and so many (well written) stories in one book was a short fiction reader’s paradise.
It was at that conference that I became witness to the conception of “You Only Get Letters From Jail”. Jodi read “A Good Deuce” in front of one of the largest crowds of the weekend, read a version of the story that she had the audacity to write en route to said conference, a story that she had not even edited. Rob Spillman (Editor of Tin House) was present at the reading and walked up to Jodi afterward and offered to publish her story on the spot, she just needed to write ten more pieces for a collection.
My point in that intro is twofold; one, I have been waiting almost three years for this collection to be printed and two, I know Jodi personally and this is my disclaimer of that fact.
The first story, the aforementioned “A Good Deuce”, serves as an appetizer to what follows. It resonates with the angst of youth that is so masterfully written in “The History of Vegas” that I could not help but be transported back to that muggy October weekend on the California coast where a bottle of whisky served as refreshment and Jodi’s writing my companion; well more accurately, her characters kept me company.
That is what first struck me after starting “Cash or Trade”, the second story in the collection; these aren’t the same characters, there was something “different” about them, something that it took me some time to identify. Sure, they were young kids still, dealing with a variety of family and/or emotional problems, but they didn’t seem as...tragic. The angst that filled the core of earlier characters was absent, replaced by a maturity that I had never missed before. Now that the maturity was there though, now that these characters had grown up they seemed more real than they ever had.
Don’t misunderstand me, these aren’t continuations of the stories in “The History of Vegas”, Jodi doesn’t write a story with an ending, I do not imagine she would write one that picked up where another left off or have a character carry over into another one’s tale. It is just the way that she writes, the life she breathes into her “people” that makes me refer to them the way that I do. This collection is very unique because every story features a male protagonist, written with such clarity that you question the gender of the author or the complexity (or simplicity) of being a male.
Jodi continues to amaze me, and will you, with her stories, even as her writing has “matured” and gotten away from some of the themes of her earlier collection (drugs, running from cops, sex), she creates settings that are alive, that have such depth that they battle with the people for attention. From a grandfather clock without a face to a patchwork quilt tightly wrapped around a young boy, if a writer needs concrete items to make a reader feel reality in the words, Jodi writes in hyperreality.
In a book filled with muscle cars, drinking, abuse and death, Jodi Angel brings to life the youth of middle America, gives a voice to Opie Taylors that were unfortunate enough to not be born in Mayberry. This book should be dedicated to every high school nympho going down on men in the walk-in, every unnamed blonde floating face down in a hidden pond, to every cut-off wearing bombshell taking Corvettes off of used car lots.
Now we just have to wait for the novel to come out*.
*Though I am still waiting for some poetry I was promised two years ago.
It was at that conference that I became witness to the conception of “You Only Get Letters From Jail”. Jodi read “A Good Deuce” in front of one of the largest crowds of the weekend, read a version of the story that she had the audacity to write en route to said conference, a story that she had not even edited. Rob Spillman (Editor of Tin House) was present at the reading and walked up to Jodi afterward and offered to publish her story on the spot, she just needed to write ten more pieces for a collection.
My point in that intro is twofold; one, I have been waiting almost three years for this collection to be printed and two, I know Jodi personally and this is my disclaimer of that fact.
The first story, the aforementioned “A Good Deuce”, serves as an appetizer to what follows. It resonates with the angst of youth that is so masterfully written in “The History of Vegas” that I could not help but be transported back to that muggy October weekend on the California coast where a bottle of whisky served as refreshment and Jodi’s writing my companion; well more accurately, her characters kept me company.
That is what first struck me after starting “Cash or Trade”, the second story in the collection; these aren’t the same characters, there was something “different” about them, something that it took me some time to identify. Sure, they were young kids still, dealing with a variety of family and/or emotional problems, but they didn’t seem as...tragic. The angst that filled the core of earlier characters was absent, replaced by a maturity that I had never missed before. Now that the maturity was there though, now that these characters had grown up they seemed more real than they ever had.
Don’t misunderstand me, these aren’t continuations of the stories in “The History of Vegas”, Jodi doesn’t write a story with an ending, I do not imagine she would write one that picked up where another left off or have a character carry over into another one’s tale. It is just the way that she writes, the life she breathes into her “people” that makes me refer to them the way that I do. This collection is very unique because every story features a male protagonist, written with such clarity that you question the gender of the author or the complexity (or simplicity) of being a male.
Jodi continues to amaze me, and will you, with her stories, even as her writing has “matured” and gotten away from some of the themes of her earlier collection (drugs, running from cops, sex), she creates settings that are alive, that have such depth that they battle with the people for attention. From a grandfather clock without a face to a patchwork quilt tightly wrapped around a young boy, if a writer needs concrete items to make a reader feel reality in the words, Jodi writes in hyperreality.
In a book filled with muscle cars, drinking, abuse and death, Jodi Angel brings to life the youth of middle America, gives a voice to Opie Taylors that were unfortunate enough to not be born in Mayberry. This book should be dedicated to every high school nympho going down on men in the walk-in, every unnamed blonde floating face down in a hidden pond, to every cut-off wearing bombshell taking Corvettes off of used car lots.
Now we just have to wait for the novel to come out*.
*Though I am still waiting for some poetry I was promised two years ago.
January 1, 2017
This is a thoroughly entertaining collection of short stories, all of which revolve around teenage boys facing pivotal moments. These are stories of grit; they are realistic and, at times, unpleasant to read because the hardships of life are captured so well. Jodi Angel is a wickedly talented writer, and I can't wait to check out her other story collection.
A fine note to end 2016 on!
A fine note to end 2016 on!
October 27, 2013
I heard her read at a gallery during LitQuake last week. One story, and I had to buy her book and shake her hand.
These stories stir the soul, and awaken the spirit.
Read them in order, or at random. The stark imagery surrounding the young boy protagonists breathes like a character in itself. So many lines I want to tattoo my heart with.
Heard she is working on a novel. Now, that is something to look out for.
Definitely a living inspiration.
These stories stir the soul, and awaken the spirit.
Read them in order, or at random. The stark imagery surrounding the young boy protagonists breathes like a character in itself. So many lines I want to tattoo my heart with.
Heard she is working on a novel. Now, that is something to look out for.
Definitely a living inspiration.
August 14, 2016
DNF - only made it through the first five stories. Angel's writing is gloriously pithy and evocative and her characters are simultaneously distinct and universal. While I enjoyed the language, the stories were so grim and ambiguous that I didn't feel the need to continue. Highly recommended for literary short story readers.
September 28, 2013
Brutally good. Goddamn.
July 25, 2019
Junot Diaz is frequently quoted distinguishing between the structural demands of the short story versus novel. He favors story going so far as to say (Lit Hub, October 7, 2016), “I hate the endless shade thrown at the short story.” The novel, he argues, is “roomy enough to absorb slack and minimize error while the story is not.” The precision of story, he contends, bears its beauty. Here he is in Lit Hub again, “And while novels can dawdle for chapters before sparking into brilliance, the short story needs to be about its business from its opening line. Short stories are acts of bravura, and for a form junkie like me, to read a good one has all the thrill of watching a high-wire act. When the writer pulls it off sentence by sentence scene by scene page after page from first touch to last, you almost forget to breathe.” I held my breath at every page turn of You Only Get Letters from Jail (Tin House, 2013).
A few years after YOGLFJ came out I was among the audience when Angel appeared at a Sacramento bookstore in conversation with Rob Spillman editor of the now retired Tin House magazine. Spillman praised Angel for her unflinching examination of class and circumstances; of teenage boys squeezed in the terrible compression between strata of lower-middle and upper-lower classes; of people ground to dust by the limited opportunity that comes with poverty, lack of adequate education or access to broader choices. In the harsh lives she portrays, the narratives end in disappointment or its twin disillusion.
Or do they?
It’s true YOGLFJ trains a steady beam on drug addiction, punitive child rearing, abandoned youths, sexual predation, the meanness that comes when money is scarce, and other rough initiations into a class specific adult world where mistakes are handed down from one generation to the next. American literature is rife with such work, however. Whatever you may think of Diaz, he is right about the short story—it’s not the what, it’s the how. Unflinching does not even begin to capture the range and power of Jodi Angel.
Harsh circumstances are backdrop to the exquisite beauty of Angel’s characters and the places, physical, emotional, or spiritual they inhabit. The stories are further distinguished by the unsparing love Angel has for her characters. And even where love must admit a bad choice, a calculated cruelty, appreciation of character remains. And beyond appreciation is respect. Respect for all her characters does not flag. Once. Ever.
Angel goes deep into the alchemy of two lane roads, smashed cigarettes and spent lighters, warm beer, tools and motors, guns, wild hope, and desperate gambles to reveal the inner lives of the young men she portrays. YOGLFJ is always in the POV these protagonists. She confers on them extraordinary powers of observation and association, “Kenny reached into the car and there was sudden light and everything that had been dissolving into shadows was pulled back into place.” Or, “The air was crisp and it snapped at my clothes in long sighs.” Every time the protagonist assesses where he is or what’s going on he reveals a deeply sensitive nature combined with mature, graceful intelligence. A soulful awareness typically unnoticed by the parents, stepparents, teachers, and miscellaneous adults who control his life. The beauty she pulls from her scenes will steal your breath. Angel approaches genius in describing atmosphere and environment and then placing that exquisite, sensitive voice in a teenage boy whom many would consider a throw away. The pathos of these stories derives from brilliance constrained, never fully unleashed except as internal thought. The tension derives from knowing it is there and could lever a child man free if he would take the risk.
By the middle of the collection, Angel had established what she can do with a teenage male protagonist. I longed to see her turn her attention to the middle aged women and teenage girls who hover at the edges of these stories.
A few years after YOGLFJ came out I was among the audience when Angel appeared at a Sacramento bookstore in conversation with Rob Spillman editor of the now retired Tin House magazine. Spillman praised Angel for her unflinching examination of class and circumstances; of teenage boys squeezed in the terrible compression between strata of lower-middle and upper-lower classes; of people ground to dust by the limited opportunity that comes with poverty, lack of adequate education or access to broader choices. In the harsh lives she portrays, the narratives end in disappointment or its twin disillusion.
Or do they?
It’s true YOGLFJ trains a steady beam on drug addiction, punitive child rearing, abandoned youths, sexual predation, the meanness that comes when money is scarce, and other rough initiations into a class specific adult world where mistakes are handed down from one generation to the next. American literature is rife with such work, however. Whatever you may think of Diaz, he is right about the short story—it’s not the what, it’s the how. Unflinching does not even begin to capture the range and power of Jodi Angel.
Harsh circumstances are backdrop to the exquisite beauty of Angel’s characters and the places, physical, emotional, or spiritual they inhabit. The stories are further distinguished by the unsparing love Angel has for her characters. And even where love must admit a bad choice, a calculated cruelty, appreciation of character remains. And beyond appreciation is respect. Respect for all her characters does not flag. Once. Ever.
Angel goes deep into the alchemy of two lane roads, smashed cigarettes and spent lighters, warm beer, tools and motors, guns, wild hope, and desperate gambles to reveal the inner lives of the young men she portrays. YOGLFJ is always in the POV these protagonists. She confers on them extraordinary powers of observation and association, “Kenny reached into the car and there was sudden light and everything that had been dissolving into shadows was pulled back into place.” Or, “The air was crisp and it snapped at my clothes in long sighs.” Every time the protagonist assesses where he is or what’s going on he reveals a deeply sensitive nature combined with mature, graceful intelligence. A soulful awareness typically unnoticed by the parents, stepparents, teachers, and miscellaneous adults who control his life. The beauty she pulls from her scenes will steal your breath. Angel approaches genius in describing atmosphere and environment and then placing that exquisite, sensitive voice in a teenage boy whom many would consider a throw away. The pathos of these stories derives from brilliance constrained, never fully unleashed except as internal thought. The tension derives from knowing it is there and could lever a child man free if he would take the risk.
By the middle of the collection, Angel had established what she can do with a teenage male protagonist. I longed to see her turn her attention to the middle aged women and teenage girls who hover at the edges of these stories.
March 24, 2023
These were interesting stories. Like is normal with short story books, I liked some a bit more than others. All of them held my interest though. There were some good bits of humor. I liked the characters.
September 21, 2017
3.5 stars. Glad I went outside of my reading comfort zone with this one. These raw, visceral stories drew me in unexpectedly. I only skipped two because I wasn't crazy about the beginning.
Favorite quotes: "People are quick to judge because sometimes it is easier to not understand."
Favorite quotes: "People are quick to judge because sometimes it is easier to not understand."
July 30, 2013
You Only Get Letters From Jail takes you into the hearts and minds of teenaged boys. They are mostly lower middle class and dealing with issues that are age-related. Many have problems with their families, come from broken homes, and drink more than is good for them. While the stories are theme-related, there is always a darker background to them. They offer a 'story' but the real story is behind the scenes, what is not said, and what is not detailed.
A Good Deuce is about a young man whose mother dies from and overdose and he's left virtually homeless at seventeen. He and a friend go to a bar and pick up two women older than them. When he takes one of the women to his car for sex, he thinks, " soon Phillip would be at the car, and he would want inside, and I would have to come to the surface again. I didn't know for just how long I could stay."
Cash or Trade is about the son of a used care salesman. His mother has left them a long time ago and he lives with his father. He has a fun day with Nadine, a young woman who has crashed at their house. However, things don't end up as he had hoped they would.
Catch the Grey Dog is about Sonny who is 16 years old. He and his mother are on a road trip cross-country with Sonny's new car when it breaks down. They end up in the yard of a Vietnam vet, Casper, who says he's a mechanic. Casper has a twelve year old daughter named Ruby. Sonny's mother likes it there but Casper has serious anger issues and a drinking problem which Sonny's mother appears to share. Supposedly, he and his son are going to fix the car but Ruby says that's a myth.
In Field Dressing, a teen-aged boy's mother dies of alcoholism and he goes to live with his uncle Nick and his wife Shirley. Shirley is a breast cancer survivor and isn't very keen on having the boy live with them but she acquiesces for the time being. They go out deer hunting and a tragedy ensues.
In Game-Bred, Nolan owes a bookie money that he does not have. He comes up with a plan to rob people at knifepoint at ATM machines. His first 'victim' happens to be his eighth grade girlfriend and an adventure begins from this point.
Gap is about Bobby and his friend who start a marijuana growing operation with seeds they ordered from a magazine. They are not sure that the seeds are really marijuana. While walking in the hall, Bobby's friend sees Bobby's mother naked and she is aware of this the whole time that he is looking at her.
The diving reflex is about two teen-aged boys who find a dead girl in a local slough.
In The Last Mile, a teen-aged boy and his younger pregnant girlfriend leave home to start a new life. The girl's father had offered the boy $1000 to leave his daughter alone but he turned down the money. They end up staying with mechanic and his wife who have lost their son.
Firm and Good is about a high school boy who is riding in a car with his friend when they hit and kill a cat. His penance is doing yard work for the dead cat's owner. What follows is a surreal experience.
In Snuff, Shane goes to a friend's house to see a snuff movie and later asks his sister Charlotte for a ride home. On the way, they hit a pregnant deer and Charlotte unsuccessfully tries to deliver the baby.
The title story, You Only Get Letters From Jail, is about Ricky who is a local legend, a crazy man who says he's been to Vietnam but probably has not. He and some high school kids go looking for snakes to give to a minister for a service. They break up a hole of rattlers and Ricky gets bit. Overlying this whole story is Ricky's stint in jail for stalking girls and exposing himself to them. Recently, a girl has disappeared and one of the high school boys wonders if Ricky is involved in her disappearance.
The stories remind me a bit of Raymond Carver. The people have bad luck and lose a lot of things and themselves. The stories are dark and enervating. I read them all with a sense of dread. Despite a straight story line, the stories are back dropped with a darkness and sadness that the reader knows will not change.
A Good Deuce is about a young man whose mother dies from and overdose and he's left virtually homeless at seventeen. He and a friend go to a bar and pick up two women older than them. When he takes one of the women to his car for sex, he thinks, " soon Phillip would be at the car, and he would want inside, and I would have to come to the surface again. I didn't know for just how long I could stay."
Cash or Trade is about the son of a used care salesman. His mother has left them a long time ago and he lives with his father. He has a fun day with Nadine, a young woman who has crashed at their house. However, things don't end up as he had hoped they would.
Catch the Grey Dog is about Sonny who is 16 years old. He and his mother are on a road trip cross-country with Sonny's new car when it breaks down. They end up in the yard of a Vietnam vet, Casper, who says he's a mechanic. Casper has a twelve year old daughter named Ruby. Sonny's mother likes it there but Casper has serious anger issues and a drinking problem which Sonny's mother appears to share. Supposedly, he and his son are going to fix the car but Ruby says that's a myth.
In Field Dressing, a teen-aged boy's mother dies of alcoholism and he goes to live with his uncle Nick and his wife Shirley. Shirley is a breast cancer survivor and isn't very keen on having the boy live with them but she acquiesces for the time being. They go out deer hunting and a tragedy ensues.
In Game-Bred, Nolan owes a bookie money that he does not have. He comes up with a plan to rob people at knifepoint at ATM machines. His first 'victim' happens to be his eighth grade girlfriend and an adventure begins from this point.
Gap is about Bobby and his friend who start a marijuana growing operation with seeds they ordered from a magazine. They are not sure that the seeds are really marijuana. While walking in the hall, Bobby's friend sees Bobby's mother naked and she is aware of this the whole time that he is looking at her.
The diving reflex is about two teen-aged boys who find a dead girl in a local slough.
In The Last Mile, a teen-aged boy and his younger pregnant girlfriend leave home to start a new life. The girl's father had offered the boy $1000 to leave his daughter alone but he turned down the money. They end up staying with mechanic and his wife who have lost their son.
Firm and Good is about a high school boy who is riding in a car with his friend when they hit and kill a cat. His penance is doing yard work for the dead cat's owner. What follows is a surreal experience.
In Snuff, Shane goes to a friend's house to see a snuff movie and later asks his sister Charlotte for a ride home. On the way, they hit a pregnant deer and Charlotte unsuccessfully tries to deliver the baby.
The title story, You Only Get Letters From Jail, is about Ricky who is a local legend, a crazy man who says he's been to Vietnam but probably has not. He and some high school kids go looking for snakes to give to a minister for a service. They break up a hole of rattlers and Ricky gets bit. Overlying this whole story is Ricky's stint in jail for stalking girls and exposing himself to them. Recently, a girl has disappeared and one of the high school boys wonders if Ricky is involved in her disappearance.
The stories remind me a bit of Raymond Carver. The people have bad luck and lose a lot of things and themselves. The stories are dark and enervating. I read them all with a sense of dread. Despite a straight story line, the stories are back dropped with a darkness and sadness that the reader knows will not change.
July 30, 2016
I really enjoyed this collection of stories about young men trying to cross into adulthood. I think my favorites were "Field Dressing" and "Snuff."
But what I often enjoyed was the prose - the way author Jodi Angel would write these long sentences that gained speed and made me feel like I was tumbling down a hill, trying to chase words just barely out of my reach, the smile on my face growing as we quickened together and I felt like I might lose control and fall over them at any moment. It was a magic trick, for sure.
But what I often enjoyed was the prose - the way author Jodi Angel would write these long sentences that gained speed and made me feel like I was tumbling down a hill, trying to chase words just barely out of my reach, the smile on my face growing as we quickened together and I felt like I might lose control and fall over them at any moment. It was a magic trick, for sure.
October 12, 2013
Short stories seem to confuse me. There always seem to be some huge over lying stories/feelings that I can never grasp or I feel like it's a big secret that I'll never know.
That being said I enjoyed these. Coming of age boy-to-man stories.
That being said I enjoyed these. Coming of age boy-to-man stories.
December 27, 2013
really well written and very dark and - wow i can't believe i am typing this but - a little too dark? no. that's wrong. just too much of the SAME KIND OF dark over and over again. yes.
but worth the read
but worth the read
September 5, 2013
not a fan of the short story...but not a bad read
November 3, 2013
Collection of short stories, each seems like a normal story but them something really messed up will happen.
November 7, 2014
If you want to know what it feels like to be a teenage boy, all the wonder and fear and danger and love, read this book.
July 26, 2017
Dusty forgotten small towns, kids at the brink of adulthood and a lot of grit & grime.
November 26, 2025
3 1/2 stars
For me, a poetic , almost musical quality to these stories. Jodi Angel repeats certain themes and plays them as notes in melancholy songs. Hitting a deer with the car doesn’t always kill the driver, but it looms in the composition of multiple stories in this compilation with the same tonal doom. Forlorn and drunken oppressive father figures provide the same value. Dead girls. Muscle cars. Weed and shitty beer. The songs are all from an earnest teenage male performer, and the author captures a gentle depressed air. Well composed, though sad and sometimes menacing.
For me, a poetic , almost musical quality to these stories. Jodi Angel repeats certain themes and plays them as notes in melancholy songs. Hitting a deer with the car doesn’t always kill the driver, but it looms in the composition of multiple stories in this compilation with the same tonal doom. Forlorn and drunken oppressive father figures provide the same value. Dead girls. Muscle cars. Weed and shitty beer. The songs are all from an earnest teenage male performer, and the author captures a gentle depressed air. Well composed, though sad and sometimes menacing.
June 19, 2020
A fabulous little collection from Jodi Angel - stories that really get under your skin, with prose that keeps you turning the pages. What I loved about it is that they are stories about life, stories that are detailed and full of emotion, no huge set pieces but grounded in emotive constructs. All the grey areas of life brought into the light for the world to see, a strong collection that needs your attention!
September 19, 2023
I don't usually like short story collections all that much, but this one really got me.
All the stories were compelling, eerie, haunting, unsettling, and near perfect lengths. The author really set a vibe and painted a picture and with every one you really felt like you were visiting a fictional yet very real place.
Like all the best short stories do, these leave a lot to the reader to fill in his or her own gaps. The darker your mind, the scarier these will be.
All the stories were compelling, eerie, haunting, unsettling, and near perfect lengths. The author really set a vibe and painted a picture and with every one you really felt like you were visiting a fictional yet very real place.
Like all the best short stories do, these leave a lot to the reader to fill in his or her own gaps. The darker your mind, the scarier these will be.
June 17, 2021
Pretty close to perfect story collection. Why isn’t Jodi Angel more famous? I love her sentences and found myself lost in every story. I didn’t want any of them to end, but she also drew them closed at the exact right moments. No story felt too long. Only a few felt too short.
January 18, 2023
Haunted - trapped - unfulfilled dreams. Kind of a real downer.
April 10, 2014
I came to Jodi Angel's short stories through the little excerpt of A Good Deuce posted on Electric Literature. I read and it and went back to read it again a few times, and then the whole story. It was that first breathless paragraph that reeled me in, full of the texture of a life that isn't mine, but maybe of a friend, or that guy I met on vacation. It was California, but not the California people think about when they say the name of the state. It was my California, a state whose Northern regions smell like "star thistle and baked red dirt."
But it wasn't just that – I felt like I knew these guys in the stories. Okay, maybe not the particular boys, but boys not unlike them. Boys they would have gone to school with all over Northern California. The girls, too, had a familiar combination of vulnerability and sharp edges that made them feel like true portraits, drawn from life.
All the stories were good, and of course I had my favourites: Catch the Grey Dog, The Diving Reflex, and Field Dressing. That last one I absolutely loved, although I think partly for personal reasons (the uncle in the story wasn't so unlike a combination of a couple of uncles I had, who were good men – though more together than the man in the story). There was hunting and there was a tough woman who knew all about survival and tough choices. Everything about this story hit me in just the right spot. Maybe there's the fact too that the tension in the story breaks through the surface instead of bubbling underneath all the while. There were a few times I wanted other stories in the collection to do that – to go there, wherever there might be. Like some other people here, I also noticed that sometimes the stories shared a few more similarities (particularly in voice) than I would like in a collection. But life isn't all about what I would like all the time, is it.
There are these little observations that I swear I've never seen someone make on the page before, that are so vivid:
"At first I felt unsure about where I was, the strange smell of the pillow under my head and the heavy bulk of blanket did not belong to me." (Catch the Grey Dog)
That said, Jodi Angel writes these paragraphs that raise goosebumps on my arms (really!):
"I would be sixteen before fall, maybe get my driver's license, start the high school year that counted for college, and probably be a better swimmer to take on crossing the slough by next summer. Across the water beyond the far shore was the freeway, and I could see the steady roll of lights and hear the drone of trucks shifting gears they they prepared to make the long turn toward north and the distant edge of the state beyond." (The Diving Reflex)
"I was on my second bag of Doritos and my lips were stained emergency orange when my best friend, Phillip, said he knew a bar in Hallelujah Junction that didn’t card, and maybe we should go there. We had been sitting in my living room for eighteen or nineteen hours watching Robert Redford movies, where Redford had gone from square-jawed, muscled, and rugged to looking like a blanched piece of beef jerky, and we had watched it go from dark to light to dark again through the break in the curtains. The coroner had wheeled my mother out all those hours ago and my grandma Hannah had stalked down the sidewalk with her fists closed and locked at her side, insisting that a dead body had every right to stay in the house for as long as the family wanted it there. My mother was no longer my mother; she had become Anna Schroeder, the deceased, and my grandma Hannah had been on the phone trying to track my father down. The best we had was a number for the pay phone at the Deville Motel, and only one of two things happened when you dialed that number—either it rang and rang into lonely nothing or someone answered and asked if this was Joey and hung up when the answer was no. My grandma called the number twenty-two times, and the only thing that changed was the quality of the light, and my mother went out, and Phillip came in, and my sister, Christy, packed her things so she could go, and I did not." (A Good Deuce)
But it wasn't just that – I felt like I knew these guys in the stories. Okay, maybe not the particular boys, but boys not unlike them. Boys they would have gone to school with all over Northern California. The girls, too, had a familiar combination of vulnerability and sharp edges that made them feel like true portraits, drawn from life.
All the stories were good, and of course I had my favourites: Catch the Grey Dog, The Diving Reflex, and Field Dressing. That last one I absolutely loved, although I think partly for personal reasons (the uncle in the story wasn't so unlike a combination of a couple of uncles I had, who were good men – though more together than the man in the story). There was hunting and there was a tough woman who knew all about survival and tough choices. Everything about this story hit me in just the right spot. Maybe there's the fact too that the tension in the story breaks through the surface instead of bubbling underneath all the while. There were a few times I wanted other stories in the collection to do that – to go there, wherever there might be. Like some other people here, I also noticed that sometimes the stories shared a few more similarities (particularly in voice) than I would like in a collection. But life isn't all about what I would like all the time, is it.
There are these little observations that I swear I've never seen someone make on the page before, that are so vivid:
"At first I felt unsure about where I was, the strange smell of the pillow under my head and the heavy bulk of blanket did not belong to me." (Catch the Grey Dog)
That said, Jodi Angel writes these paragraphs that raise goosebumps on my arms (really!):
"I would be sixteen before fall, maybe get my driver's license, start the high school year that counted for college, and probably be a better swimmer to take on crossing the slough by next summer. Across the water beyond the far shore was the freeway, and I could see the steady roll of lights and hear the drone of trucks shifting gears they they prepared to make the long turn toward north and the distant edge of the state beyond." (The Diving Reflex)
"I was on my second bag of Doritos and my lips were stained emergency orange when my best friend, Phillip, said he knew a bar in Hallelujah Junction that didn’t card, and maybe we should go there. We had been sitting in my living room for eighteen or nineteen hours watching Robert Redford movies, where Redford had gone from square-jawed, muscled, and rugged to looking like a blanched piece of beef jerky, and we had watched it go from dark to light to dark again through the break in the curtains. The coroner had wheeled my mother out all those hours ago and my grandma Hannah had stalked down the sidewalk with her fists closed and locked at her side, insisting that a dead body had every right to stay in the house for as long as the family wanted it there. My mother was no longer my mother; she had become Anna Schroeder, the deceased, and my grandma Hannah had been on the phone trying to track my father down. The best we had was a number for the pay phone at the Deville Motel, and only one of two things happened when you dialed that number—either it rang and rang into lonely nothing or someone answered and asked if this was Joey and hung up when the answer was no. My grandma called the number twenty-two times, and the only thing that changed was the quality of the light, and my mother went out, and Phillip came in, and my sister, Christy, packed her things so she could go, and I did not." (A Good Deuce)
December 31, 2024
Young men and women navigating adolescence. Cars, sex, longing, and dreams of escape. Humorous, heartbreaking, hopeful, and hopeless. But real and full of humanity.
March 24, 2014
There's been a lot of talk lately about this being the age of the short story. With collections like "You Only Get Letters From Jail" it's hard to see that as a bad thing. As with any short story collection, some pieces fail to totally deliver on their promise. In this collection I would put "The Last Mile" and "Firm and Good" into that category. But in spite of their shortcomings, just on the sentence level these stories are a pleasure to read. "You Only Get Letters From Jail" also manages to have a thematic unity lacking in other short story collections. The main characters are all teenage boys feeling lost, angry, and confused. But, this unity doesn't come at the expense of repetitiousness. The narrators may all be coming from simliar places, but they display a real range of emotions and reactions to their problems. I really wish there were more collections of such consistent quality writing with such accuracy of voice.
From "The Last Mile"
"I probably got her pregnant on purpose and she probably let me get her pregnant on purpose, and we both did it for the same reasons - because the line was somewhere and there was a before and an after and we both wanted to know on which side we stood."
From "The Last Mile"
"I probably got her pregnant on purpose and she probably let me get her pregnant on purpose, and we both did it for the same reasons - because the line was somewhere and there was a before and an after and we both wanted to know on which side we stood."
August 2, 2014
Short story collections are getting more appealing for me. I get too tired at night most times so I can only read for a certain amount of time, so reading Jodi Angel's "You Only Get Letters From Jail" was good because I could one short story before going to sleep and feel like I have accomplished something. But, the stories in this collection are brutal and can sometimes be so affecting that I end up thinking more. That's a good thing - great books make you think, make you reflect, they give you a better understanding of yourself. The stores here are connected by a theme: male teenagers who experience something that makes them cross to manhood. Some of them get thrust to it quickly, suddenly, while others percolate to it. Most of the stories are memorable, although at times they drive same exact points. But Angel has a good voice, and can essay different points of view. Some of these stories are quite heartbreaking, and worth a read.
http://luhathoughts.blogspot.com/2014...
http://luhathoughts.blogspot.com/2014...
January 3, 2014
3.5 stars
All of these stories are written from the perspective of adolescent boys during the 1970’s. Jodi Angel’s writing is marvelous. All of the stories have a certain mood…a moment in time that breathes of fragility, instability and desperation in the lives of these boys. I felt most of the stories had a nice build-up, but were too brief, leaving the reader to wonder where the story could have gone. I wanted more, but I understand that for the most part, this is the art and essence of a short story. I hate to admit that there were some stories I just didn’t “get.” While others really clicked for me. “Catch the Grey Dog” was my favorite. The ending just got to me…creepy and ominous with an edge of horror. I also like the last two stories which included the one named for the title of this collection. I would definitely read more by this author.
All of these stories are written from the perspective of adolescent boys during the 1970’s. Jodi Angel’s writing is marvelous. All of the stories have a certain mood…a moment in time that breathes of fragility, instability and desperation in the lives of these boys. I felt most of the stories had a nice build-up, but were too brief, leaving the reader to wonder where the story could have gone. I wanted more, but I understand that for the most part, this is the art and essence of a short story. I hate to admit that there were some stories I just didn’t “get.” While others really clicked for me. “Catch the Grey Dog” was my favorite. The ending just got to me…creepy and ominous with an edge of horror. I also like the last two stories which included the one named for the title of this collection. I would definitely read more by this author.
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