Where Alligators Sleep

by Sheldon Lee Compton

Sheldon Lee Compton offers us another stunning collection of short fiction. Where Alligators Sleep is Compton at his best--piquant, compelling, and profound. The collection's dozens of stories bring readers fraught, masterfully crafted tales, seasoned with the good news of destiny, redemption, and catharsis.

Genres: Short Stories

160 pages, Paperback

First published August 22, 2014

About the author

Sheldon Lee Compton is a short story writer, novelist, prose poet, and editor from Pike County, Eastern Kentucky.

He is the author of the short story collections The Same Terrible Storm (Foxhead Books, 2012), Where Alligators Sleep (Foxhead Books, 2014), Absolute Invention (Secret History Books, 2019) and Sway (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2020).

Compton is also the author of the novels Brown Bottle (Bottom Dog Press, 2016) and Dysphoria (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2019).

His poetry chapbook Podunk Lore was part of the Lantern Lit series (Dog On a Chain Press, 2018) and his first full-length poetry collection, Runaways, was published in 2021 by Alien Buddha Press.

Compton's novel, Alice, was named one of the Best Books of 2023 as selected by the Independent Fiction Alliance.

In 2021 Cowboy Jamboree Press published The Collected Stories of Sheldon Lee Compton and followed that in 2022, on the anniversary of author Breece D'J Pancake's tragic death on April 8, 1979, Compton's memoir The Orchard Is Full of Sound, which the publisher describes as a book that "reflects on his [Compton's] own life, his struggles with poverty and divorce and violence and addiction and fatherhood and an early heart attack and trying to make it as a writer in rural Kentucky, all the while trying to trace the life and tragic ending of one of his literary heroes, Breece D'J Pancake."

In 2012, Compton was a finalist for both the Gertrude Stein Fiction Award and the Still Fiction Award. His writing has been nominated for the Chaffin Award for Excellence in Appalachian Writing, the Pushcart Prize, and longlisted for Wigleaf's Top 50. He was cited twice for Best Small Fictions, in 2015 and 2016, before having his short story "Aversion" included in Best Small Fictions 2019 and his short story "The Good Life" included in Best Small Fictions 2022.

Since 2020, he has taught in the Master of Fine Arts program at Concordia University, St. Paul. He also edits the Poverty House Collective and writes the interview series Chaos Questions for Hobart.

Reviews

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, yes, yes, here’s a book that restores my faith that literary fiction can be more than just the repurposing of long exhausted themes, more than another trope for a previously disenfranchised group, and more than a game of sentence-making mumblety-peg played by a narrow swath of writers. Of course, Compton does all that, and he’s oblique where he needs to be, makes readers expend calories to enter his fictional world and reach that literary nirvana called empathy. He also, in the sixty-six pieces of flash fiction in this collection, lays waste to form, surely endearing and alienating readers in equal numbers, and that, too, makes this a worthy collection. The real accomplishment here, however, is that Compton owns his language. You could pick up hundreds of books and not find anything that resembles the way these words are assembled. Too much of literary fiction is simply a different story told with the same style of language. Sometimes it seems only the names of the characters have changed. Not so with Where Alligators Sleep. Entering Compton’s fictional world and giving yourself over to his language is like waking up in the middle of the night and finding yourself in a swamp. Fight or flight? Fight. Read it!

[Steph Post · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought I knew flash fiction. I felt pretty comfortable with its range and scope, its genre boundaries and limitations. And then I read Sheldon Lee Compton’s Where Alligators Sleep. And everything I thought I knew and loved about flash fiction went sailing out the front door, hit the curb and was run over by a pickup truck. This is the sort of collection that reaches deep into your chest, grabs hold of your heart and twists. It is raw, visceral, daring, risky and, at the end of the day, rock-solid writing. I have never so whole-heartedly recommended a collection of flash fiction- Where Alligators Sleep needs to be in your hands and before your eyes. Now.

[Brian Tucker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sheldon Lee Compton writes flash fiction as good as any writer I've found. For example, the story Phantom Limb ends with the line "This was my brother's bike, and now it is mine," and this haunting quality looms throughout each piece in the collection. Brevity is a definite gift of Compton's. I recommend this one, if you haven't read this fine Kentucky author before.

[Sophie van Llewyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved 'Where Alligators Sleep.' It was one of those collections I didn't want to rush through -- I enjoyed each story at leisure.
Especially the showstoppers. "Assignment" quickly became one of my all-time flash favourites. The the assignment itself (and the sheer originality of the idea with the wheelchair) is intertwined with the botched love story and the narrator's obsession with Katie-- truly amazing. The voice is fantastic and that last line is a killer: 'how far I'll take things.' Wow.
Another big favourite was 'The Stars Are a Birthmark for Me.' Such a powerful story. Those details, like the bedspring, are there just to haunt you.
I also loved 'Metaphor' for its apparent playfulness. And so many more, which I'm sure you'll want to discover by yourselves.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pieces of flash and fiction, that linger in your brain, but then as a whole become something more, a picture of what it means to be a man, full of violence, work, death, relationships, children, and what it means to be alive and part of the world.

More - http://bentanzer.blogspot.com/2014/09...

[Liam · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5* DNF 31%

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sheldon Lee Compton never disappoints. My only complaint about these works of short fiction is they left me wanting more.

[Rachel Drenning · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot believe more people have not read this author.If you enjoy Donald Ray Pollack or David Joy, Ron Rash...please give Sheldon a read. So proud that he is from my neck of the woods.