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Goodnight, Nobody
This new collection from Michael Knight—PEN/Hemingway citation recipient and B&N Discover Award finalist whom Esquire praises as “a writer of the first rank”—thrills and pierces with stories of men and women of breathtaking conviction, pathos, and humor.
The stories in Goodnight, Nobody demonstrate Michael Knights’ exquisite and “rare power to make a setting breathe, to invest it with a vitality that seems as authentic and intense as the pulsebeats of his characters.” (The New York Times Book Review) This luminous collection astutely explores rediscovered love, reconciliation, and peace amid the trials of everyday life.
The denizens of Goodnight, Nobody are, like so many of us, bewildered by the circumstances in which they find themselves. The unexpected twists of their lives—rendered with expert humor and pathos in Knight’s dark-light style—test the limits of the personalities they have known as their own.
In “Birdland,” published in The New Yorker, a beautiful Northerner visits a small Alabama town to research the bizarre migration habits of a flock of African parrots from Rhode Island. “Feeling Lucky” finds a desperate man kidnapping his own daughter. In the most daring and haunting of these stories, “Killing Stonewall Jackson,” which was published in Story, a hardened band of Confederate soldiers resorts to surprising measures to survive on the battlefield. “The End of Everything,” published in GQ, weaves together a tender love story and an edge-of-your-seat urban legend, while “The Mesmerist,” published in Esquire, is an eerie fairy tale about a man who hypnotizes a stranger and makes her his wife. In “Keeper of Secrets, Teller of Lies,” published in Virginia Quarterly Review, a man causes more havoc the harder he tries to help a young mother and her son. In “Mitchell’s Girls,” a stay-at-home dad battles the disrespect of youth and a paralyzing bad back. “Ellen’s Book” hilariously describes the yearning a man feels for his estranged wife. In “Blackout,” a suburban neighborhood’s pent-up jealousies and fears explode under the cover of darkness.
Knight’s sensibility is potent and unique, stirring tenderness in equal parts with violence. While the settings, chronologies, and characters vary widely throughout the collection, they remain bound by Knight’s simple, elegant prose, his graceful sense of humor, and an unfailing empathy with the self-destructed.
The stories in Goodnight, Nobody demonstrate Michael Knights’ exquisite and “rare power to make a setting breathe, to invest it with a vitality that seems as authentic and intense as the pulsebeats of his characters.” (The New York Times Book Review) This luminous collection astutely explores rediscovered love, reconciliation, and peace amid the trials of everyday life.
The denizens of Goodnight, Nobody are, like so many of us, bewildered by the circumstances in which they find themselves. The unexpected twists of their lives—rendered with expert humor and pathos in Knight’s dark-light style—test the limits of the personalities they have known as their own.
In “Birdland,” published in The New Yorker, a beautiful Northerner visits a small Alabama town to research the bizarre migration habits of a flock of African parrots from Rhode Island. “Feeling Lucky” finds a desperate man kidnapping his own daughter. In the most daring and haunting of these stories, “Killing Stonewall Jackson,” which was published in Story, a hardened band of Confederate soldiers resorts to surprising measures to survive on the battlefield. “The End of Everything,” published in GQ, weaves together a tender love story and an edge-of-your-seat urban legend, while “The Mesmerist,” published in Esquire, is an eerie fairy tale about a man who hypnotizes a stranger and makes her his wife. In “Keeper of Secrets, Teller of Lies,” published in Virginia Quarterly Review, a man causes more havoc the harder he tries to help a young mother and her son. In “Mitchell’s Girls,” a stay-at-home dad battles the disrespect of youth and a paralyzing bad back. “Ellen’s Book” hilariously describes the yearning a man feels for his estranged wife. In “Blackout,” a suburban neighborhood’s pent-up jealousies and fears explode under the cover of darkness.
Knight’s sensibility is potent and unique, stirring tenderness in equal parts with violence. While the settings, chronologies, and characters vary widely throughout the collection, they remain bound by Knight’s simple, elegant prose, his graceful sense of humor, and an unfailing empathy with the self-destructed.
- GenresShort StoriesAmerican
176 pages, Paperback
First published February 9, 2003
2 people are currently reading
118 people want to read
About the author
Michael Knight
10 books13 followersMichael Knight is the author of the novels The Typist and Divining Rod, the short story collections Eveningland, Goodnight, Nobody, and Dogfight and Other Stories, and the book of novellas The Holiday Season. His novel, The Typist, was selected as a Best Book of the Year by The Huffington Post and The Kansas City Star, among other places, and appeared on Oprah’s Summer Reading List in 2011. His short stories have appeared in magazines and journals like The New Yorker, Oxford American, Paris Review and The Southern Review and have been anthologized in Best American Mystery Stories, 2004 and New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best 1999, 2003, 2004 and 2009. Knight teaches creative writing at the University of Tennessee and lives in Knoxville with his family.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
September 29, 2017
Somebody set the order of this collection of 9 short stories, I would like to ask them Why?.
The first story up is Birdland and it's so good I will give it The 5 Star rating. The writing fit so well with characters and flowed with a true southern charm.
Then something changed. It wasn't the writing, the writing was still very good.
But for 6 stories in a row I did not connect with not one character. Nor did I care for the story being told.
What did I miss... did all 6 stories flash by over my head?
If so, I didn't hear a thing, no zoom, no swoosh, I didn't even see the shadows pass by.
Now either one 5 star story will sustain me through a lot or I'm just as hard headed as I've heard people say.
But I'm happy that I stayed with the read cause the last 2 stories were both fun, 4 star tales.
Unfortunately when I do the math, as a whole my rating on this book is 3.333.
Though I will recommend Birdland, Ellen's Book and Blackout to anyone.
In Ellen's Book, Ellen has left her husband, Keith.
Among other things, Keith is writing a book about his wife in order to win her back.
This story takes place in my home town, with shout outs to the Dew Drop Inn and Bienville Square.
Keith narrates
page 108
"Ellen found my fiction bland and deliberately remote. The men in my stories, she said, leaned too far toward emotional distance."
page 127
"'This is sad," Ellen said.
I followed her gaze to the window, hoping she was referring to something in the backyard,...
I knew what she meant. We had been biding time. This was three months since the hospital.
"Everything's fine," I said. "Nobody's happy all the time."
I'll need to handle this moment carefully in the book. Had I only recognized the importance of the morning, had I only known that an hour later she would be packing, an hour after that she would be gone, I would have penciled myself in a better man."
page 131
"Ellen left while I was still at work. Taped to the refrigerator was a note: "I'll call Wednesday. You break my heart."
That was easily the most terrifying piece of prose I'd ever read."
The first story up is Birdland and it's so good I will give it The 5 Star rating. The writing fit so well with characters and flowed with a true southern charm.
Then something changed. It wasn't the writing, the writing was still very good.
But for 6 stories in a row I did not connect with not one character. Nor did I care for the story being told.
What did I miss... did all 6 stories flash by over my head?
If so, I didn't hear a thing, no zoom, no swoosh, I didn't even see the shadows pass by.
Now either one 5 star story will sustain me through a lot or I'm just as hard headed as I've heard people say.
But I'm happy that I stayed with the read cause the last 2 stories were both fun, 4 star tales.
Unfortunately when I do the math, as a whole my rating on this book is 3.333.
Though I will recommend Birdland, Ellen's Book and Blackout to anyone.
In Ellen's Book, Ellen has left her husband, Keith.
Among other things, Keith is writing a book about his wife in order to win her back.
This story takes place in my home town, with shout outs to the Dew Drop Inn and Bienville Square.
Keith narrates
page 108
"Ellen found my fiction bland and deliberately remote. The men in my stories, she said, leaned too far toward emotional distance."
page 127
"'This is sad," Ellen said.
I followed her gaze to the window, hoping she was referring to something in the backyard,...
I knew what she meant. We had been biding time. This was three months since the hospital.
"Everything's fine," I said. "Nobody's happy all the time."
I'll need to handle this moment carefully in the book. Had I only recognized the importance of the morning, had I only known that an hour later she would be packing, an hour after that she would be gone, I would have penciled myself in a better man."
page 131
"Ellen left while I was still at work. Taped to the refrigerator was a note: "I'll call Wednesday. You break my heart."
That was easily the most terrifying piece of prose I'd ever read."
January 8, 2017
LOVE this author!!!!......
Short story collection perfection!
A little of everything.....wives, ex-wives, ex-husbands,
rebel teenage stepdaughter, toddlers and children , Parrots, ornithologist, bad choices, a dog and a finger, and intruder, a nutty neighborhood, a family kidnap, struggles and chaos, a down and out writer, a bump on the head, bossy people, secrets, coughing fits, etc.
The characters have spunk and shortcomings.
Fun...hilarious and tremendous!
Michael Knight has it going on!!!!!
Short story collection perfection!
A little of everything.....wives, ex-wives, ex-husbands,
rebel teenage stepdaughter, toddlers and children , Parrots, ornithologist, bad choices, a dog and a finger, and intruder, a nutty neighborhood, a family kidnap, struggles and chaos, a down and out writer, a bump on the head, bossy people, secrets, coughing fits, etc.
The characters have spunk and shortcomings.
Fun...hilarious and tremendous!
Michael Knight has it going on!!!!!
September 16, 2018
First off, you're lucky to find Goodnight, Nobody by Michael Knight because there are at least a few books with the same title. A professor mentor recommended Knight's book. It's good, but it took some time to warm to. By the fourth story, "The End of Everything," I was on board. What makes Knight unique among writers is his ability to use a wild scenario and explore it to the limit. For instance, "The End of Everything" begins with an urban legend about a woman taking her sick dog to a vet and the vet finding a human finger in the dog's stomach, and by the end of the story you've got the end of a relationship. "Mitchell's Girls" is told entirely from the floor from a stepdad whose back gave out on him. "Ellen's Book" is a bit of metafiction, a short story that's a book impostor, an attempt by a man to tell a story about his ex-wife. I enjoyed this collection of stories a lot.
April 1, 2011
I came to know Michael Knight through his novels, Divining Rod: A Novel and the more recent The Typist: A Novel, which I very much enjoyed. This short story collection I found equally entertaining and it's just more evidence of his considerable talent. There are stories here that give a richly evocative sense of place ("Birdland"); one that shows he can experiment with technique (the narrator of "The End of Everything" gives an ongoing commentary on the genre of story he's telling, even though the story breaks from that genre); a quick and fun short-short ("The Mesmerist"); and then a piece that is as richly comic and offbeat as Martin Scorcese's After Hours ("The Blackout"). Most of the stories feature young adult males who are not that successful or ambitious and who are struggling to get what they want from the women in their lives.
The characters are all well-developed, the writing is clean and clear and evocative. Definitely the kind of collection you can kick back in a comfortable chair with and simply enjoy. The nine pieces in the collection are:
1. Birdland (17 pp) - A rich man in Pawtucket, RI, at the turn of the century releases African parrots into the wild, where they begin an annual migration between Pawtucket and Elbow, Arizona. Their migration brings a beautiful, female ornithologist - "the Blond" - to Alabama, where she enters a relationship with her landlord, who inherited a house from his grandmother and who subsists on the small amounts he earns selling driftwood sculptures of parrots to the tourists. The town of Elbow, with its population of just 12, is as much a character in story as the people - and they're colorful: the 80-something mayor who still uses the "N" word when cussing out the fullback for the University of Alabama football team during the games everyone in town gathers at his store to watch. Oddly, the old man's best friend - and sometimes adversary - is the 70-year-old man who sweeps his store and who starred for Alabama in the early sixties when Bear Bryant reluctantly began integrating his team. Admit that backdrop, the ornithologist reluctantly forms an abiding connection to her landlord/lover.
2. Feeling Lucky (12 pp) - A man kidnaps his daughter from his ex-wife. With little money (and before the age of cell phones), he spends the night holed up in a hotel with his feverish daughter and gets into a battle with the hotel clerk over making change for the pay phone he needs to use to contact his new girlfriend, who has had a change of heart about getting involved with raising a kid. With another unwise choice, this sad sack who's never had anything go his way suddenly feels he might get lucky.
3. Killing Stonewall Jackson (12 pp) - A foot soldiers' view of life in the army of the highly eccentric, lemon-chopping, deserter-killing Stonewall Jackson. The soldiers are no less quirky than their leader - one heavily battle-scarred soldier, "Ghost Story," is best friends with a midget with a beard that falls to his feet. To make sure he doesn't run off at night, Ghost Story ties the beard to a post. Another soldier is so ugly that the rest of his troop refuses to believe the love letters he shares with them are actually from a girlfriend and not his sister.
4. The End of Everything (14 pp) - A story that comments on itself as it begins in the style of an urban legend - a woman comes home to find her dog choking on something it's swallowed. She brings the dog to the vet then goes home and gets an alarming call from the vet warning her that they discovered the dog swallowed a finger and that there's an intruder in her house and she needs to leave her apartment. She discovers the intruder is her philandering ex-husband who is desperate to win her back. This "technique-y" story actually becomes a powerful tale on the mistakes we make with the people we care about.
5. The Mesmerist (3 pp) - A hypnotist finds a mate by hypnotizing her into being his lover - a technique that works for him even when there's a chance his ruse might be uncovered.
6. Keeper of Secrets, Teller of Lies (14 pp) - A man in a hospital emergency waiting room with a suspected concussion befriends a young boy by telling him - and every medical person he subsequently has to interact with - tall tales about how he got the bump on his head.
7. Mitchell's Girl's (16 pp) - Mitchell - a stay-at-home dad with a Ph.D. - spends a painful day sprawled on the floor of his house after throwing out his back. With his wife not expected home from work until early evening, he can't get any help from his 3-year-old daughter or his rebellious 16-year-old step-daughter, who refuses to come to his rescue because their relationship has been so tense.
8. Ellen's Book (27 pp) - A struggling writer loses his wife when she returns home to her parents after delivering a stillborn baby. The writer begins spying on her during her lunches out and shopping trips with her mother. He decides the best way to win her back is to write a book about her and his love, and he gets humorous, but not very helpful, advice, from the members of his writing group. Oddly, his only real ally in the fight to win her back is his good ole boy father-in-law.
9. Blackout (24 pp) - Craziness ensues when a neighborhood loses its power. A young couple burnt out from their unsuccessful attempts to have a baby get caught up in hijinks with their crazy neighbors - a wife who wants her husband to believe she's having an affair, even though she's not, so he'll move her back to her beloved Texas, and her husband, a muscle-bound dimwit who causes all kinds of havoc - and inflicts all kinds of misery - as he prowls the darkened neighborhood in his night vision goggles because "Flashlights are for chumps."
The characters are all well-developed, the writing is clean and clear and evocative. Definitely the kind of collection you can kick back in a comfortable chair with and simply enjoy. The nine pieces in the collection are:
1. Birdland (17 pp) - A rich man in Pawtucket, RI, at the turn of the century releases African parrots into the wild, where they begin an annual migration between Pawtucket and Elbow, Arizona. Their migration brings a beautiful, female ornithologist - "the Blond" - to Alabama, where she enters a relationship with her landlord, who inherited a house from his grandmother and who subsists on the small amounts he earns selling driftwood sculptures of parrots to the tourists. The town of Elbow, with its population of just 12, is as much a character in story as the people - and they're colorful: the 80-something mayor who still uses the "N" word when cussing out the fullback for the University of Alabama football team during the games everyone in town gathers at his store to watch. Oddly, the old man's best friend - and sometimes adversary - is the 70-year-old man who sweeps his store and who starred for Alabama in the early sixties when Bear Bryant reluctantly began integrating his team. Admit that backdrop, the ornithologist reluctantly forms an abiding connection to her landlord/lover.
2. Feeling Lucky (12 pp) - A man kidnaps his daughter from his ex-wife. With little money (and before the age of cell phones), he spends the night holed up in a hotel with his feverish daughter and gets into a battle with the hotel clerk over making change for the pay phone he needs to use to contact his new girlfriend, who has had a change of heart about getting involved with raising a kid. With another unwise choice, this sad sack who's never had anything go his way suddenly feels he might get lucky.
3. Killing Stonewall Jackson (12 pp) - A foot soldiers' view of life in the army of the highly eccentric, lemon-chopping, deserter-killing Stonewall Jackson. The soldiers are no less quirky than their leader - one heavily battle-scarred soldier, "Ghost Story," is best friends with a midget with a beard that falls to his feet. To make sure he doesn't run off at night, Ghost Story ties the beard to a post. Another soldier is so ugly that the rest of his troop refuses to believe the love letters he shares with them are actually from a girlfriend and not his sister.
4. The End of Everything (14 pp) - A story that comments on itself as it begins in the style of an urban legend - a woman comes home to find her dog choking on something it's swallowed. She brings the dog to the vet then goes home and gets an alarming call from the vet warning her that they discovered the dog swallowed a finger and that there's an intruder in her house and she needs to leave her apartment. She discovers the intruder is her philandering ex-husband who is desperate to win her back. This "technique-y" story actually becomes a powerful tale on the mistakes we make with the people we care about.
5. The Mesmerist (3 pp) - A hypnotist finds a mate by hypnotizing her into being his lover - a technique that works for him even when there's a chance his ruse might be uncovered.
6. Keeper of Secrets, Teller of Lies (14 pp) - A man in a hospital emergency waiting room with a suspected concussion befriends a young boy by telling him - and every medical person he subsequently has to interact with - tall tales about how he got the bump on his head.
7. Mitchell's Girl's (16 pp) - Mitchell - a stay-at-home dad with a Ph.D. - spends a painful day sprawled on the floor of his house after throwing out his back. With his wife not expected home from work until early evening, he can't get any help from his 3-year-old daughter or his rebellious 16-year-old step-daughter, who refuses to come to his rescue because their relationship has been so tense.
8. Ellen's Book (27 pp) - A struggling writer loses his wife when she returns home to her parents after delivering a stillborn baby. The writer begins spying on her during her lunches out and shopping trips with her mother. He decides the best way to win her back is to write a book about her and his love, and he gets humorous, but not very helpful, advice, from the members of his writing group. Oddly, his only real ally in the fight to win her back is his good ole boy father-in-law.
9. Blackout (24 pp) - Craziness ensues when a neighborhood loses its power. A young couple burnt out from their unsuccessful attempts to have a baby get caught up in hijinks with their crazy neighbors - a wife who wants her husband to believe she's having an affair, even though she's not, so he'll move her back to her beloved Texas, and her husband, a muscle-bound dimwit who causes all kinds of havoc - and inflicts all kinds of misery - as he prowls the darkened neighborhood in his night vision goggles because "Flashlights are for chumps."
September 10, 2022
The first story was the only one that could have been good, with a bird-watching European lady in small town Alabama and the love story she has with a local. But even here the author bows to the hackneyed "Alabama is so racist" tripe and completely destroys it.
Elsewhere we have a story climax when a man pisses himself while lying on the floor, after his stepdaughter refused to help him and his wife showed up late
We have a random beatdown of a neighbor in another neighbor's house, after a panic induced heart attack in a blackout.
Nothing to recommend this
Elsewhere we have a story climax when a man pisses himself while lying on the floor, after his stepdaughter refused to help him and his wife showed up late
We have a random beatdown of a neighbor in another neighbor's house, after a panic induced heart attack in a blackout.
Nothing to recommend this
November 20, 2017
Since reading this author's collection of short stories (Eveningland) and am hooked.
February 11, 2022
Such an enjoyable read. As with all short story collections I wonder how much I will remember over time. I look forward to reading this authors other works.
February 7, 2011
Goodnight, Nobody, Michael Knight's second collection is clearly a departure from his brilliant first collection, Dogfight and Other Stories, but while different, it didn't disappoint in the end.
After just a couple stories, it was obvious that Knight was trying something different, pushing the boundaries of the form out and away from the more traditional story forms in Dogfight. Honestly, because I liked Dogfight so much, it took some time to get used to the stories in Goodnight, Nobody. It seems Knight was exploring the theme of storytelling in several stories in the collection. "The End of Everything," "Keeper of Secrets, Teller of Lies," and "Ellen's Book" (and perhaps even to a certain extent "Killing Stonewall Jackson," "Blackout," and "Birdland,") all employ, through various means, storytelling as a theme. In "The End of Everything" it's Knight's use of form; in "Keeper of Secrets, Teller of Lies" it's a character who lies; and in "Ellen's Book" the narrator revises his life in order to create scenes for book he's writing for his wife.
There are a couple of stories that didn't work for me, namely "The Mesmerist" and "Feeling Lucky," but on the whole the collection delivered, especially in "Keeper of Secrets, Teller of Lies" (my favorite story in the collection), and "Ellen's Book."
To say nothing else of Goodnight, Nobody, it was interesting and worth reading if only to study the way Knight crafted these stories.
See my blog for more: http://thestoryisthecure.blogspot.com/
After just a couple stories, it was obvious that Knight was trying something different, pushing the boundaries of the form out and away from the more traditional story forms in Dogfight. Honestly, because I liked Dogfight so much, it took some time to get used to the stories in Goodnight, Nobody. It seems Knight was exploring the theme of storytelling in several stories in the collection. "The End of Everything," "Keeper of Secrets, Teller of Lies," and "Ellen's Book" (and perhaps even to a certain extent "Killing Stonewall Jackson," "Blackout," and "Birdland,") all employ, through various means, storytelling as a theme. In "The End of Everything" it's Knight's use of form; in "Keeper of Secrets, Teller of Lies" it's a character who lies; and in "Ellen's Book" the narrator revises his life in order to create scenes for book he's writing for his wife.
There are a couple of stories that didn't work for me, namely "The Mesmerist" and "Feeling Lucky," but on the whole the collection delivered, especially in "Keeper of Secrets, Teller of Lies" (my favorite story in the collection), and "Ellen's Book."
To say nothing else of Goodnight, Nobody, it was interesting and worth reading if only to study the way Knight crafted these stories.
See my blog for more: http://thestoryisthecure.blogspot.com/
August 30, 2009
Knight is a pretty good miniaturist, and while I don't tend to like slice-of-life short stories too much, I do enjoy his, partly because he draws characters so well and fully, and partly because I like the way he depicts relationships with their attendant rocky patches. That said, I think I preferred his other collection of short stories, Dogfight, to this one. Also, the first story - the one about the parrots and such - kinda sucked, and put me off of the rest of the book for 6 months or so.
August 6, 2013
There are stories that take root in my head and are impossible to ever forget. I cannot, without fail, hear mention of Alabama football without thinking of the parrots in "Birdland." This is a wonderful and compelling collection.
February 20, 2008
Thought I should try one more before I gave up on the whole chick lit genre. Yeah, I don't like chick lit.
February 22, 2008
As great a collection of short fiction since the Lemon Table by Barnes.
May 28, 2012
Knight is a fantastic author, and a kind and generous mentor and friend. This collection was my first introduction to his work, and his stories here are moving and captivating.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews