Quarry Light

by Claudia Smith

Girls sleep on the balcony overlooking the water. Men wait by the bonfire, green bottles in the sand, coral necklaces. A rat scratches behind the walls a father has painted and left. A man sends his daughter a friend request. A woman thinks her heart should be beating fast, but it isn’t. A man draws a woman pictures she doesn’t want, of her hair wound around her neck. She sleeps in a closet with the dog she found on the porch.

In the stories of Claudia Smith’s debut collection Quarry Light, women search for life after darkness and breath after violence. They listen to the song with the line about the cat in the dark. Their mother swims in quarry water the coolest, deepest green they have ever seen.

134 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 2013

About the author

Claudia Smith's fiction has appeared in several journals and anthologies. Her collection of short shorts, The Sky is a Well and Other Shorts, was released in July 2007. The first printing sold out, but was reprinted as part of the book A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness: Four Chapbooks by Four Women.

Her second collection of short-shorts, Put Your Head In My Lap, was published in fall 2009 by Future Tense Books.

Her debut book of short stories, Quarry Light, is now available from Magic Helicopter Press.

Reviews

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review at The Lit Pub: Quarry Light

[Ravi · Rating 5 out of 5]

For those who only know Claudia Smith as a flash writer, this collection showcases the true breadth of her talent. A devastatingly lovely collection of stories.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The opener, Catgirl, has a nice dreamlike quality to it. After that, Claudia gets a little more concrete with some gritty realism that is sometimes sweet and sometimes sad. Some of the stories remind me of the quiet strength of Michael Oondatje or Russell Banks. The story Lucy reminded me of the movie Wendy and Lucy.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

A so-so collection of stories. Many elements recur in different stories-- rat infestation, small town Texas, characters raised by the grandmother when a promiscuous runs off-- though the stories are not otherwise related, and sometimes occur in very different registers-- so a story like "Lucy" is mostly realistic, whereas a story like "As if someone had polished the air" is closer to a fairy tale or at least has elements of magical realism. So though some of the elements recur, the type of stories is varied.

I guess Smith has previously published two volumes of shorts-- two of the stories here might qualify as long shorts, but most of these here are fuller, though I'm not sure they always work-- some of them seemed stuffed with stuff, either to be longer or because Smith is compelled to repeat. I don't mean that in a bad way, but the form of some of these felt baggy, and parts didn't quite gel.

[Avital · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful writing about the hidden, neglected and abandoned, about sensitive women and girls who struggle to emotionally and sometimes physically survive.