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Monsters in Appalachia: Stories
The characters within these fifteen stories are in one way or another staring into the abyss. While some are awaiting redemption, others are fully complicit in their own undoing.
We come upon them in the mountains of West Virginia, in the backyards of rural North Carolina, and at tourist traps along Route 66, where they smolder with hidden desires and struggle to resist the temptations that plague them.
A Melungeon woman has killed her abusive husband and drives by the home of her son’s new foster family, hoping to lure the boy back. An elderly couple witnesses the end-times and is forced to hunt monsters if they hope to survive. A young girl “tanning and manning” with her mother and aunt resists being indoctrinated by their ideas about men. A preacher’s daughter follows in the footsteps of her backsliding mother as she seduces a man who looks a lot like the devil.
A master of Appalachian dialect and colloquial speech, Monks writes prose that is dark, taut, and muscular, but also beguiling and playful. Monsters in Appalachia is a powerful work of fiction.
We come upon them in the mountains of West Virginia, in the backyards of rural North Carolina, and at tourist traps along Route 66, where they smolder with hidden desires and struggle to resist the temptations that plague them.
A Melungeon woman has killed her abusive husband and drives by the home of her son’s new foster family, hoping to lure the boy back. An elderly couple witnesses the end-times and is forced to hunt monsters if they hope to survive. A young girl “tanning and manning” with her mother and aunt resists being indoctrinated by their ideas about men. A preacher’s daughter follows in the footsteps of her backsliding mother as she seduces a man who looks a lot like the devil.
A master of Appalachian dialect and colloquial speech, Monks writes prose that is dark, taut, and muscular, but also beguiling and playful. Monsters in Appalachia is a powerful work of fiction.
180 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2016
14 people are currently reading
893 people want to read
About the author
Sheryl Monks
5 books51 followersSheryl Monks is the author of Monsters in Appalachia, published by Vandalia Press, the creative imprint of West Virginia University Press. She holds an MFA in fiction from Queens University of Charlotte. Her stories have appeared in Rkvry Quarterly, Electric Literature, The Butter, The Greensboro Review, storySouth, Regarding Arts and Letters, Night Train, and other journals, and in the anthologies Surreal South and Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods: Contemporary West Virginia Fiction and Poetry, among others. Monsters in Appalachia is a Weatherford Award finalist, a Southern Independent Bookstore Alliance Award finalist, and a Foreword Indies Book finalist. She writes short stories and novels and blogs on a variety of topics from her home in North Carolina.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
December 2, 2016
This is a stunning collection. The breadth and variety of stories will knock your socks off. I read one story, Rasputin's Remarkable Sleight of Hand, out loud to my husband as I was reading it because I couldn't contain my enthusiasm.
I also picked a good time to read this book, with the election still hot on my mind. The story Clinch has double impact now, showing us just how far we haven't come.
The detail in these stories is meticulous. The care and selection of each word precise and passionate. There is one story I didn't care for, but I'm not going to tell you what it is. Because the rest are just that good.
Lovely work.
I also picked a good time to read this book, with the election still hot on my mind. The story Clinch has double impact now, showing us just how far we haven't come.
The detail in these stories is meticulous. The care and selection of each word precise and passionate. There is one story I didn't care for, but I'm not going to tell you what it is. Because the rest are just that good.
Lovely work.
May 31, 2017
A haunting, dark, visceral collection of 15 short stories. These short works of fiction about people in Appalachia offer glimpses into the struggles, the light, and the cultural landscape that is a world apart from the fast-paced, tech-imbued, materialistic modern city cultures.
The stories in this collection are not only raw and thought provoking but
I feel like this book could also be good university Lit material ;)
The stories in this collection are not only raw and thought provoking but
I feel like this book could also be good university Lit material ;)
November 6, 2021
Appalachian inhabitants, human and inhuman
Although ‘Monsters in Appalachia’ is the first collection of stories from Sheryl Monks, there is nothing apprentice-like about it. Monks has obviously been writing for quite a while and done extensive research on the area. However, her primary resource is her own life. She grew up in coal mining country and listened to stories from her parents and those around her, soaking in the flavor of the region.
The common factor of the geographic region unifies these stories into a fictional anthropological document. Monks does not limit herself to present day settings. She can just as easily capture the world of the sixties when Lyndon Johnson spoke on TV about his ‘great society’, Bee Gees-loving teenage girls (and their lustful mothers) in the seventies and disgruntled mill workers (anytime within the last 20 years) carping about foreigners taking their jobs or, better yet, collecting disability payments for ‘trauma’ and bringing in more money than the men who’ve worked the looms for decades. Monks also depicts elderly characters as well as she does teenagers (of both sexes), young mothers and dissipated men that are old before their time.
Poverty is a currency that runs through many of the characters’ lives in these stories and transcends the decades.
Although there are a few substandard stories in the collection, the majority of them are first rate. I will cite a few that stand out.
In the first story, “Burning Slag”, a woman who killed her abusive husband and spent time in a psych ward while her children were farmed out to foster homes still holds out hope that her eldest son, the one that defended her against his father and the one most likely to remember her now, will rejoin her.
‘It was the kerosene burns on the babies what found her negligent, sores where they’d crawled through raw fuel that one of the older ones had sloshed when filling the heater. Most people said she’d lost her sense from being beaten so often in the head, but they showed no pity on her. Now here she was wandering the hillsides like a revenant.’
The next story, “Robbing Pillars”, illustrates the industry that creates those burning slags and is a harrowing account of the extremely hazardous work of men that are literally buried alive while they work the coal mines, ‘robbing the pillars’ i.e. tearing down the posts holding up makeshift ceilings behind them as they exit the areas they’ve just mined.
“Clinch”, the ‘great society’ story, is one of the best in the collection. As a mother attempts to buy only what she needs and calculating a budget based on food stamps, her son is attempting to earn money the best way he can by turning in glass bottles at the country grocery store. LBJ’s “Great Society’ speech is playing on the television in the store, forming an ironic soundtrack to this local illustration of how great this society really is. Belligerent store owners take no pity on mother or son while a local constable campaigns for re-election in the store, even talking up the glass bottle hustling boy.
“Merope” and “Nympho” are both razor sharp depictions of the psychology of junior high school boys who start rumors about girls, both the alluring and the plain. Hormones have just begun their assault so these boys seek release through physical outlets, such as a school bully, “suddenly throwing his lanky white arms into wild frog punches that would’ve given grown men Charley horses.” The narrator of “Merope” is ashamed of his attraction to a plain girl that he would be embarrassed to be seen with. He quickly abandons her once they’ve been discovered.
The two mill workers in “Crazy Checks” suffer from poverty of brain cells as they each concoct ‘accidents’ that will render them eligible for disability checks, just like those foreigners (“Government ought to ship his sorry ass to North Korea and send all these foreigners with him.”). The foreigners are not the only object of their ire:
“Damn shame a man’s got to walk clear across the parking lot to stand in the rain and smoke. Smoke-free workplace, my ass. Damn communist country.”
Although Sheryl Monks has drawn comparison with Flannery O’Connor, her style and general approach is more akin in my mind with Raymond Carver. Although Carver set most of his stories in the Pacific Northwest while Monks focuses on Appalachia, both authors refrain from passing judgment and get in the skin of characters afflicted with poverty and somewhat limited in intellectual resources that are driven to extreme actions in efforts to assert their autonomy and freedom.
I look forward to seeing more from Sheryl Monks. She is currently working on a novel. Regardless of the size of her canvas, I feel that she will apply the same empathy and skill that is apparent in the stories in this collection.
Although ‘Monsters in Appalachia’ is the first collection of stories from Sheryl Monks, there is nothing apprentice-like about it. Monks has obviously been writing for quite a while and done extensive research on the area. However, her primary resource is her own life. She grew up in coal mining country and listened to stories from her parents and those around her, soaking in the flavor of the region.
The common factor of the geographic region unifies these stories into a fictional anthropological document. Monks does not limit herself to present day settings. She can just as easily capture the world of the sixties when Lyndon Johnson spoke on TV about his ‘great society’, Bee Gees-loving teenage girls (and their lustful mothers) in the seventies and disgruntled mill workers (anytime within the last 20 years) carping about foreigners taking their jobs or, better yet, collecting disability payments for ‘trauma’ and bringing in more money than the men who’ve worked the looms for decades. Monks also depicts elderly characters as well as she does teenagers (of both sexes), young mothers and dissipated men that are old before their time.
Poverty is a currency that runs through many of the characters’ lives in these stories and transcends the decades.
Although there are a few substandard stories in the collection, the majority of them are first rate. I will cite a few that stand out.
In the first story, “Burning Slag”, a woman who killed her abusive husband and spent time in a psych ward while her children were farmed out to foster homes still holds out hope that her eldest son, the one that defended her against his father and the one most likely to remember her now, will rejoin her.
‘It was the kerosene burns on the babies what found her negligent, sores where they’d crawled through raw fuel that one of the older ones had sloshed when filling the heater. Most people said she’d lost her sense from being beaten so often in the head, but they showed no pity on her. Now here she was wandering the hillsides like a revenant.’
The next story, “Robbing Pillars”, illustrates the industry that creates those burning slags and is a harrowing account of the extremely hazardous work of men that are literally buried alive while they work the coal mines, ‘robbing the pillars’ i.e. tearing down the posts holding up makeshift ceilings behind them as they exit the areas they’ve just mined.
“Clinch”, the ‘great society’ story, is one of the best in the collection. As a mother attempts to buy only what she needs and calculating a budget based on food stamps, her son is attempting to earn money the best way he can by turning in glass bottles at the country grocery store. LBJ’s “Great Society’ speech is playing on the television in the store, forming an ironic soundtrack to this local illustration of how great this society really is. Belligerent store owners take no pity on mother or son while a local constable campaigns for re-election in the store, even talking up the glass bottle hustling boy.
“Merope” and “Nympho” are both razor sharp depictions of the psychology of junior high school boys who start rumors about girls, both the alluring and the plain. Hormones have just begun their assault so these boys seek release through physical outlets, such as a school bully, “suddenly throwing his lanky white arms into wild frog punches that would’ve given grown men Charley horses.” The narrator of “Merope” is ashamed of his attraction to a plain girl that he would be embarrassed to be seen with. He quickly abandons her once they’ve been discovered.
The two mill workers in “Crazy Checks” suffer from poverty of brain cells as they each concoct ‘accidents’ that will render them eligible for disability checks, just like those foreigners (“Government ought to ship his sorry ass to North Korea and send all these foreigners with him.”). The foreigners are not the only object of their ire:
“Damn shame a man’s got to walk clear across the parking lot to stand in the rain and smoke. Smoke-free workplace, my ass. Damn communist country.”
Although Sheryl Monks has drawn comparison with Flannery O’Connor, her style and general approach is more akin in my mind with Raymond Carver. Although Carver set most of his stories in the Pacific Northwest while Monks focuses on Appalachia, both authors refrain from passing judgment and get in the skin of characters afflicted with poverty and somewhat limited in intellectual resources that are driven to extreme actions in efforts to assert their autonomy and freedom.
I look forward to seeing more from Sheryl Monks. She is currently working on a novel. Regardless of the size of her canvas, I feel that she will apply the same empathy and skill that is apparent in the stories in this collection.
May 24, 2017
I was craving a short story collection and this rang all my bells. It's southern gothic at its finest.
August 3, 2017
2.5. Beautiful writing but I couldn't get into many of the stories.
April 10, 2017
Appalachia has always taken mythic proportions in my mind. I always saw it, rightly or not, as an enclave, a piece of the country sheltered from the outside but not from itself. These stories feed that image, with characters positively Snopes-ish (as one reviewer pointed out). The mundane and small-time travails go neck in neck with struggles and sufferings bordering the epic, and the line between fantasy and realism is suitably, satisfyingly blurred. I can't claim to have absorbed the work, and that's what I find particularly satisfying: the characters and situations are reverberating in my head even now, hours after having finished it. Compelling and revolting, frustrating and satisfying, Monks delivers the goods.
June 6, 2017
This collection of Gothic Southern/Midwestern short stories range from poignantly realistic, a daughter tanning with her mother, to mystical realism, an elderly couple cohabitating with Biblical monsters at the End of Days. Through her characters, Monks explores the balance between morality and circumstances, choice and complacency.
180 pages
180 pages
December 17, 2016
The first story set me on edge - even though it's fiction, there are folks out there capable of that action. It definitely helps grab your attention. the rest of the book is mellower, but every story is left with a potential for much worse to happen.
February 6, 2017
SPOILER ALERT...
The monsters are people!
Seriously though, Monks gets to the heart of Appalachia in this collection of short fiction: the good, bad, and the ugly. As a native, it simultaneously made me miss some parts of life there while reminding me why I live 2,500 miles away.
The monsters are people!
Seriously though, Monks gets to the heart of Appalachia in this collection of short fiction: the good, bad, and the ugly. As a native, it simultaneously made me miss some parts of life there while reminding me why I live 2,500 miles away.
March 4, 2017
I can't stop thinking of these characters. Such vivid impossible hopes. So utterly human, as good as any of us. Monks hits a full range of emotion here, from the touching to the tragic, and often cuts right to the bone. Powerful stuff, and rich. Wonderful stories.
July 5, 2017
Short stories that help me understand a world so foreign to me - Appalachia and it's people have a history and way that is beyond my daily life - to understand this country and it's current political views I appreciate this view into another way of thinking...
December 4, 2016
The title story literally gave me a nightmare - loved it!
December 15, 2016
4.5 stars. Awesome themed collection of short stories. She can write so well.
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January 7, 2017Book of short stories set in Appalachia. An Appalachia that is full of characters bad and good, and almost always struggling...
July 23, 2017
A sampler of styles and storytelling from the subterranean to the (possibly) intergalactic. The voices are beautifully wrought and the stories linger.
September 11, 2017
The stories in this book are hit or miss. The last one was a dud, for sure.
September 16, 2017
Fine collection of stories.
November 6, 2017
deeply rooted in place, to read this collection is to be transported. stunning and strange.
January 4, 2021
I'm late to the party on this one, but that's okay, as these stories will be just as striking another 20 years onward. Sheryl Monks has an understated empathy for the desperate lives she portrays in all their harshness. Her characters are genuine, her dialogue smart, and her writing altogether airtight. "Robbing Pillars," "Clinch," "Merope," and "Justice Boys" are among the gems in this collection. If you like high-quality work, you'll savor the stories in "Monsters in Appalachia." If you're a writer, you'll be jealous.
January 28, 2017
Not all short stories have a clear resolution. These wonderful stories--mostly set in Appalachia--bring the reader (and the conflict) to the point of climax, but sometimes leave the characters hanging. It's as if the reader is expected to formulate what happens next.
March 12, 2019
Apparently I read lots of things as long as it's short stories. These are quasi out of my usual because it's all Southern Gothic perhaps? A lot of magical realism or something more akin to SFF than I was expecting. Decent enough.
August 5, 2018
Should take its rightful place among the canon of Appalachian literature. A beautiful, haunting collection full of unforgettable characters.
September 17, 2018
Fantastic book. Great voice & characters.
November 5, 2021
Some really good ones in here, but some were kind of esoteric that I didn't enjoy as much.
February 22, 2022
Such a strange and fascinating book. This was chosen for a book club I'm in and im glad it was! Personally I enjoyed the stories.
April 29, 2022
An enjoyable, bleak collection. Monks has a very unique and compelling voice in her writing!
June 27, 2022
I finished this collection of short stories, and I immediately want to re-read them.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews