Sibs

by Nathan Leslie

Fiction. The thematically intertwined stories in Nathan Leslie's SIBS, the author's seventh collection, center around brothers and sisters. Often gritty and vivid, we see siblings bond, scrap, and everything in between. Many of these intense stories revolve around childhood and the stresses that siblings must overcome; others are concerned with brothers and sisters doing their best to make do with often tenuous, dysfunctional situations. Playing chess in a local park, two brothers are confronted by a strange young girl. Two sisters struggle with shopaholic behavior. A brother and sister defy spousal abuse. In 1970s America, two sisters move to a hippie commune and experience the unexpected. SIBS is set in remote corners of California, run-down Western Maryland towns, and in post-Industrial this is America barely clinging to its sense of family and purpose. Stories from SIBS were originally published in North American Review, Gargoyle, Prick of the Spindle, StorySouth, JMWW, and Scribble.

323 pages, Paperback

First published April 17, 2014

About the author

Nathan Leslie’s ten books of short fiction include Sibs, Three Men and Root and Shoot. He is also the author of Night Sweat, a poetry collection. His first novel, The Tall Tale of Tommy Twice, was published by Atticus Books in 2012. His short stories, essays and poems have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines including Boulevard, Shenandoah, North American Review, South Dakota Review, and Cimarron Review. He was series editor for The Best of the Web anthology 2008 and 2009 (Dzanc Books) and edited fiction for Pedestal Magazine for many years. He writes a regular music column for Atticus Review and was interviews editor for Prick of the Spindle. He is also the host of Reston Readings--a monthly reading series featuring three authors/month. Check him out at nathanleslie.com, on Facebook and Twitter.

Reviews

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

My book blurb: Sibs is a fascinating exploration of an often undermined relationship in literature, that of brothers and sisters in our American landscape. Leslie finds a way into each community, from respectable suburbs to drug-infused communes, but more important, he finds a way into each mind and heart. There are no easy answers to the characters’ quandaries here, but it won’t matter. You’ll be drawn along each one’s journey to find her or his place in life, that bit of hope as symbolized in the writer’s lasting images of dishwashing gloves, charm bracelets, shady houses, and message machine clicks, and in those all-important gestures of connection and protection made with arms and hands and eyes. A haunting collection.