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Eveningland: Stories
“Michael Knight is more than a master of the short story. He knows the true pace of life and does not cheat it, all the while offering whopping entertainment.”—Barry Hannah
Long considered a master of the form and an essential voice in American fiction, Michael Knight’s stories have been lauded by writers such Ann Patchett, Elizabeth Gilbert, Barry Hannah, and Richard Bausch. Now, with Eveningland he returns to the form that launched his career, delivering an arresting collection of interlinked stories set among the “right kind of Mobile family” in the years preceding a devastating hurricane.
Grappling with dramas both epic and personal, from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to the “unspeakable misgivings of contentment,” Eveningland captures with crystalline poeticism and perfect authenticity of place the ways in which ordinary life astounds us with its complexity. A teenaged girl with a taste for violence holds a burglar hostage in her house on New Year’s Eve; a middle aged couple examines the intricacies of their marriage as they prepare to throw a party; and a real estate mogul in the throes of grief buys up all the property on an island only to be accused of madness by his daughters. These stories, told with economy and precision, infused with humor and pathos, excavate brilliantly the latent desires and motivations that drive life forward.
Eveningland is a luminous collection from “a writer of the first rank.”(Esquire)
Water and oil --
Smash and grab --
Our lady of the roses --
Jubilee --
Grand old party --
The king of Dauphin Island --
Landfall
Long considered a master of the form and an essential voice in American fiction, Michael Knight’s stories have been lauded by writers such Ann Patchett, Elizabeth Gilbert, Barry Hannah, and Richard Bausch. Now, with Eveningland he returns to the form that launched his career, delivering an arresting collection of interlinked stories set among the “right kind of Mobile family” in the years preceding a devastating hurricane.
Grappling with dramas both epic and personal, from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to the “unspeakable misgivings of contentment,” Eveningland captures with crystalline poeticism and perfect authenticity of place the ways in which ordinary life astounds us with its complexity. A teenaged girl with a taste for violence holds a burglar hostage in her house on New Year’s Eve; a middle aged couple examines the intricacies of their marriage as they prepare to throw a party; and a real estate mogul in the throes of grief buys up all the property on an island only to be accused of madness by his daughters. These stories, told with economy and precision, infused with humor and pathos, excavate brilliantly the latent desires and motivations that drive life forward.
Eveningland is a luminous collection from “a writer of the first rank.”(Esquire)
Water and oil --
Smash and grab --
Our lady of the roses --
Jubilee --
Grand old party --
The king of Dauphin Island --
Landfall
277 pages, Hardcover
First published March 7, 2017
41 people are currently reading
1243 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 - 30 of 121 reviews
March 26, 2017
The first thing I noticed when I started reading was how smooth the prose was, it immediately put me at ease and I felt that I was in the hands of an author I could trust.. These stories are set in Alabama, the characters are white and seem to be from the more privileged families of the area. Throughout these stories they come to some kind of understanding with themselves, these are brief glimpses into a particular time, event in their lives.
I loved the first story, Oil and Water, a snapshot of teenage angst, reminded me of summers by the Fox River when I was growing up.
Smash and Grab was another favorite, a robbery gone wrong with an unexpected surprise ending.
The third is actually a novella, Landfall, and a family has an unexpected crisis to deal with just as a hurricane is expected to make land.
Will keep this author on my watch list, he is a superb storyteller and I enjoyed these immensely.
ARC from Atlantic Monthly Press.
I loved the first story, Oil and Water, a snapshot of teenage angst, reminded me of summers by the Fox River when I was growing up.
Smash and Grab was another favorite, a robbery gone wrong with an unexpected surprise ending.
The third is actually a novella, Landfall, and a family has an unexpected crisis to deal with just as a hurricane is expected to make land.
Will keep this author on my watch list, he is a superb storyteller and I enjoyed these immensely.
ARC from Atlantic Monthly Press.
September 29, 2016
I'd rate this 4.5 stars.
I don't know about you, but I have a list (both mental and written) of authors whose work I have enjoyed through the years, and from time to time I check all of the book-related websites to see if any of these people have books coming out in the near future. Some of these authors are more prolific so I don't have to wait a long time between books, but others keep me waiting for years, and in certain cases I wonder whether they're even planning to write another book.
I found Michael Knight's work when his first novel, Divining Rod , and his first story collection, Dogfight and Other Stories , were both released in 1998. The power of his storytelling emanated from his use of language and rich characterization, as well as his ability to create tension and drama without resorting to histrionics or elaborate plot devices. And although Knight's stories appeared periodically in publications following the release of his first two books, I waited five years for his next one, and then seven years for the one after that. (I wasn't aware he had written a holiday-related novella between the two.)
Since 2010 I've been hoping Knight had another story collection or novel in him, so when I saw on NetGalley that his latest collection, Eveningland , was due out in March 2017, you can bet I submitted my request as soon as possible! Six years of elapsed time haven't dulled his talent, and reading these stories felt like visiting with an old friend, a person with whom you can talk for hours on end.
Eveningland is a collection of seven somewhat-connected stories, each of which takes place in Knight's native Alabama. The stories are set between the Deepwater Horizon oil spill into the Gulf in 2010 to the arrival of a destructive hurricane, although not every story is firmly rooted in time as a concept. Each story focuses on relationships—between husband and wife, lovers, family, even strangers. And while each story seems relatively simple, it's surprising how quickly these characters find their way into your mind.
All of the stories in this collection worked for me on some level, but my favorites included: "Smash and Grab," in which a teenage girl turns the tables on a burglar—and keeps him guessing; "Grand Old Party," which tells of a man who suspects his wife's infidelity and decides to confront her and her lover, but doesn't think it through; "Jubilee," about a long-married couple preparing for the husband's 50th birthday party; "Our Lady of the Roses," in which a young art teacher at a Catholic school finds herself at odds with her career, her faith, and her relationship; and "Water and Oil," which tells of a teenage boy worried about the encroaching oil spill yet distracted by a more worldly waitress at his father's marina.
There are flashier short story authors out there, but Knight is a tremendously talented storyteller. Eveningland sneaks up on you quietly, hooks you quickly, and leaves you wanting more from Knight. I hope I don't have to wait six more years!!
NetGalley and Grove Atlantic provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!
See all of my reviews at http://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blo....
I don't know about you, but I have a list (both mental and written) of authors whose work I have enjoyed through the years, and from time to time I check all of the book-related websites to see if any of these people have books coming out in the near future. Some of these authors are more prolific so I don't have to wait a long time between books, but others keep me waiting for years, and in certain cases I wonder whether they're even planning to write another book.
I found Michael Knight's work when his first novel, Divining Rod , and his first story collection, Dogfight and Other Stories , were both released in 1998. The power of his storytelling emanated from his use of language and rich characterization, as well as his ability to create tension and drama without resorting to histrionics or elaborate plot devices. And although Knight's stories appeared periodically in publications following the release of his first two books, I waited five years for his next one, and then seven years for the one after that. (I wasn't aware he had written a holiday-related novella between the two.)
Since 2010 I've been hoping Knight had another story collection or novel in him, so when I saw on NetGalley that his latest collection, Eveningland , was due out in March 2017, you can bet I submitted my request as soon as possible! Six years of elapsed time haven't dulled his talent, and reading these stories felt like visiting with an old friend, a person with whom you can talk for hours on end.
Eveningland is a collection of seven somewhat-connected stories, each of which takes place in Knight's native Alabama. The stories are set between the Deepwater Horizon oil spill into the Gulf in 2010 to the arrival of a destructive hurricane, although not every story is firmly rooted in time as a concept. Each story focuses on relationships—between husband and wife, lovers, family, even strangers. And while each story seems relatively simple, it's surprising how quickly these characters find their way into your mind.
All of the stories in this collection worked for me on some level, but my favorites included: "Smash and Grab," in which a teenage girl turns the tables on a burglar—and keeps him guessing; "Grand Old Party," which tells of a man who suspects his wife's infidelity and decides to confront her and her lover, but doesn't think it through; "Jubilee," about a long-married couple preparing for the husband's 50th birthday party; "Our Lady of the Roses," in which a young art teacher at a Catholic school finds herself at odds with her career, her faith, and her relationship; and "Water and Oil," which tells of a teenage boy worried about the encroaching oil spill yet distracted by a more worldly waitress at his father's marina.
There are flashier short story authors out there, but Knight is a tremendously talented storyteller. Eveningland sneaks up on you quietly, hooks you quickly, and leaves you wanting more from Knight. I hope I don't have to wait six more years!!
NetGalley and Grove Atlantic provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!
See all of my reviews at http://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blo....
January 4, 2017
4.5 Stars rounded up
The seven stories in Eveningland are set in Alabama. Michael Knight clearly knows the ins and outs of his state, the way it draws people in. In the same way his stories draw the reader in. There is a loose connection, links, between the stories, reflections of lives lived along the Gulf Coast, told with the unmistakable essence of those who actually do live there.
Water and Oil – 5 Stars
A lovely and moving coming-of-age story about a young man, still a boy to his father - his concerns about pollution, and love.
An estuary acts as a natural filter. Pollutants are washed downstream on currents or inland on the tide and absorbed by marsh plants, canebrake and cattails sopping up impurities through their roots, leaving the water cleansed. On the surface, eventually, the world returns to normal. Only time reveals how it has been changed. So it was with Henry Bragg.
Smash and Grab – 4 Stars
A break-in, a thief, and an unexpected twist.
At the last house on the left, the one with no security system sign staked on the lawn, no dog in the backyard, Cashdollar elbowed out a pane of glass in the kitchen door and reached through to unlock it from the inside. Though he was ninetynine percent certain that the house was empty – he’d watched the owners leave himself – he paused a moment just across the threshold, listened carefully, heard nothing.
Our Lady of The Roses – 4.5 Stars
A young art teacher, working in a Catholic school, comes to terms with her boyfriend, her life, and what faith means to her.
Later, drinking Shiraz and watching TV at her boyfriend’s house, Hadley said, “If creativity comes from God then isn’t all art religious?
Jubilee – 4.5 Stars
A married couple reflectively prepares to host a party, a gala event celebrating the hesitant-to-celebrate husband’s 50th birthday.
His rush of nerves is passing. He just needs a drink, that’s all. On their wedding day, Dean convinced a bridesmaid to slip Kendra a note. It’s not too later. We can still elope. Kendra held onto it for years. She kept it in a box with tarnished hinges, along with other personal souvenirs—a matchbook, a mateless earring, a ticket stub.
Grand Old Party – 4 Stars
A man who is convinced that his wife has been unfaithful.
Use the barrel to ring the doorbell. This is what a man does when he’s been made a fool.
The King of Dauphin Island – 5 Stars
Marcus Weems, the sixth richest man in the state of Alabama, having lost his wife to cancer, now sets his sights on buying up all the property on Dauphin Island. His daughters seek to have him declared incompetent.
Like the long gone captains of the Confederacy, he stood watch at the edge of Dauphin Island, his old life just out of sight across the water. What he felt in those moments, pelicans skimming the chop, tankers lugging cargo to ports unknown, was not loneliness or loss, as you might expect, nor the weight of tragedy but its opposite, pure lightness, the hole left inside him by Suzette’s death as big and hollow as a zeppelin and just as buoyant, as if the shape of her absence might lift him up and carrying him away.
Landfill – 5 Stars
As a major hurricane hovers near, family members prepare for the eventual landfall. As they face their individual crises, memories emerge.
“Hello, Little Girl,” he said, and she said, “Hey, Big Man,” because that’s what they called each other, just the two of them.
He asked what she was doing and she told him and he took off his Panama hat and reached up into the tree and scooped the butterfly down to her. She liked that her grandfather was the last man in the world who wore a hat to work.
“I’ll bring it right back,” she said, already dashing for the house, holding the hat against her chest to keep the butterfly from escaping. “Let me put him in a jar.”
Pub Date: 7 Mar 2017
Many thanks for the ARC provided by Grove Atlantic / Atlantic Monthly Press
The seven stories in Eveningland are set in Alabama. Michael Knight clearly knows the ins and outs of his state, the way it draws people in. In the same way his stories draw the reader in. There is a loose connection, links, between the stories, reflections of lives lived along the Gulf Coast, told with the unmistakable essence of those who actually do live there.
Water and Oil – 5 Stars
A lovely and moving coming-of-age story about a young man, still a boy to his father - his concerns about pollution, and love.
An estuary acts as a natural filter. Pollutants are washed downstream on currents or inland on the tide and absorbed by marsh plants, canebrake and cattails sopping up impurities through their roots, leaving the water cleansed. On the surface, eventually, the world returns to normal. Only time reveals how it has been changed. So it was with Henry Bragg.
Smash and Grab – 4 Stars
A break-in, a thief, and an unexpected twist.
At the last house on the left, the one with no security system sign staked on the lawn, no dog in the backyard, Cashdollar elbowed out a pane of glass in the kitchen door and reached through to unlock it from the inside. Though he was ninetynine percent certain that the house was empty – he’d watched the owners leave himself – he paused a moment just across the threshold, listened carefully, heard nothing.
Our Lady of The Roses – 4.5 Stars
A young art teacher, working in a Catholic school, comes to terms with her boyfriend, her life, and what faith means to her.
Later, drinking Shiraz and watching TV at her boyfriend’s house, Hadley said, “If creativity comes from God then isn’t all art religious?
Jubilee – 4.5 Stars
A married couple reflectively prepares to host a party, a gala event celebrating the hesitant-to-celebrate husband’s 50th birthday.
His rush of nerves is passing. He just needs a drink, that’s all. On their wedding day, Dean convinced a bridesmaid to slip Kendra a note. It’s not too later. We can still elope. Kendra held onto it for years. She kept it in a box with tarnished hinges, along with other personal souvenirs—a matchbook, a mateless earring, a ticket stub.
Grand Old Party – 4 Stars
A man who is convinced that his wife has been unfaithful.
Use the barrel to ring the doorbell. This is what a man does when he’s been made a fool.
The King of Dauphin Island – 5 Stars
Marcus Weems, the sixth richest man in the state of Alabama, having lost his wife to cancer, now sets his sights on buying up all the property on Dauphin Island. His daughters seek to have him declared incompetent.
Like the long gone captains of the Confederacy, he stood watch at the edge of Dauphin Island, his old life just out of sight across the water. What he felt in those moments, pelicans skimming the chop, tankers lugging cargo to ports unknown, was not loneliness or loss, as you might expect, nor the weight of tragedy but its opposite, pure lightness, the hole left inside him by Suzette’s death as big and hollow as a zeppelin and just as buoyant, as if the shape of her absence might lift him up and carrying him away.
Landfill – 5 Stars
As a major hurricane hovers near, family members prepare for the eventual landfall. As they face their individual crises, memories emerge.
“Hello, Little Girl,” he said, and she said, “Hey, Big Man,” because that’s what they called each other, just the two of them.
He asked what she was doing and she told him and he took off his Panama hat and reached up into the tree and scooped the butterfly down to her. She liked that her grandfather was the last man in the world who wore a hat to work.
“I’ll bring it right back,” she said, already dashing for the house, holding the hat against her chest to keep the butterfly from escaping. “Let me put him in a jar.”
Pub Date: 7 Mar 2017
Many thanks for the ARC provided by Grove Atlantic / Atlantic Monthly Press
February 11, 2017
Eveningland is a small collection of seven short stories set in contemporary Alabama, a place I've never been. I like fiction that gives me a sense of place, especially when it conveys ordinariness or realness rather than playing on stereotypes or the grandiose. And that's what reading Eveningland felt like, although it is clearly a peek into a substrata of contemporary Alabama. The protagonists tend to be white, middle class and middle aged. Despite this similarity between the characters, each story is distinct. With a couple of notable exceptions, these are not stories of high drama or big emotions, but they feel potent and charged in a way that had me hooked. A couple of stories stand out. Smash and Grab focuses on the dynamics between a burglar and a young woman in one of the houses he breaks into -- it makes for a very clever and tight psychological dance. Another favourite is Landfall which is the last and longest story, focusing on the members of a family as a hurricane sweeps into the area. With few words, Knight gets right into his characters' perspectives, skilfully conveying complex emotional dynamics. This book adds to my new found enjoyment of short stories. I'd be happy to read more books by Knight who I gather has been writing short stories for many years. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.
July 24, 2017
Rating: 4* of five
I can't, in good conscience, rate the book less than four stars, but I feel as though I should. If I'm honest with myself and y'all, I can think of a dozen books like this one that I've read this year alone. Lovely sentences, look at the quotes I've added, and profound thoughts that make all the sense in the world to me in my après vie. But the whole isn't as satisfying as its parts led me to believe it would be.
Again I am let down by my inability to trust the perfect signal indicator of my overall satisfaction with a read: If a writer I don't like blurbs a book glowingly, I should just save my five bucks or whatever and skip it. In this case it's Tom Franklin, he of the deadly dull Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, who crowed about this book.
There's much to like in here, but nothing really to crow about.
I can't, in good conscience, rate the book less than four stars, but I feel as though I should. If I'm honest with myself and y'all, I can think of a dozen books like this one that I've read this year alone. Lovely sentences, look at the quotes I've added, and profound thoughts that make all the sense in the world to me in my après vie. But the whole isn't as satisfying as its parts led me to believe it would be.
Again I am let down by my inability to trust the perfect signal indicator of my overall satisfaction with a read: If a writer I don't like blurbs a book glowingly, I should just save my five bucks or whatever and skip it. In this case it's Tom Franklin, he of the deadly dull Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, who crowed about this book.
There's much to like in here, but nothing really to crow about.
June 24, 2017
Eveningland Gleams Like Moonbeams on Mobile Bay
A great writer creates stories that refresh our perceptions. Familiarity often blinds us to the beauty of the world around us, so that when the "writer shakes up the familiar scene," it is "as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it." (Anais Nin).
Moon over Mobile, Alabama
I'm not going out on a limb in calling Michael Knight a wizard of Mobile Bay. After all, his "Eveningland: Stories," a "story cycle" comprised of six short stories and a novella set in the past decade, teems with abracadabra moments for anyone who has lived within fifty miles of Mobile Bay, such as: hearing "the buzz of an outboard motor fussing in through the screen" of a home on the water; smelling batter "on the kitchen exhaust" as a boat "cruises under [Dog River] bridge"; meandering off Dog River under "cypress branches arching over the creek, painting a filigree in shadow"; viewing from a distance "fingers of blue smoke" above factories "like machines for making clouds"; wondering at the shades of red in a Catholic church's stained glass rose; using as a make-out den a canopy beneath a magnolia "at least three stories tall" with its "cool, shadowy space..., the world and the sky barely visible through the leaves"; and, duck hunting on "cold, early mornings," watching "mist over the water and the lazy rising of the sun," with a "dog shivering in the blind."
The historic Grand Hotel at Point Clear, Alabama
Knight, a St. Paul's alum, now serves as an English professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He anchors his latest story collection on a quote from "The Moviegoer," Walker Percy's 1961 award-winning novel set in New Orleans in which the aunt of young, lonely and disillusioned Binx Bolling lamented the "going under of the evening land," by which she meant the decline of a way of life from the old South. She explained her disappointment at her inability to "pass on to [Binx] the one heritage of the men of our family, a certain quality of spirit, a gaiety, a sense of duty, a nobility worn lightly, a sweetness, a gentleness with women—the only good things the South ever had and the only things that really matter in this life." As W.J. Cash explained in his 1941 "The Mind of the South," "the gentlemanly idea, driven from England by Cromwell, [took] refuge in the South and fashioned for itself a world to its heart's desire: a world...wholly dominated by ideals of honor and chivalry and 'noblesse.'"
The Grand at Point Clear
While Knight's characters are mostly those whom many "outsiders" might consider the usual suspects to mourn the sinking of evening land--mostly white in the upper-middle to upper classes, his stories seem to subtly chronicle, in a life cycle, this "going under" by way of education and nature, as the older generations pass and the younger ones recede further away. Knight does not romanticize the genteel way of life. Instead, as in "The Moviegoer," most of the characters here float adrift--lonely, restless, regretful--in the doldrums of an existential dilemma or spiritual crisis. Perhaps more significantly, all of their lives are overshadowed by the accomplishments, or haunted by the sins, of the father.
Mobile Bay, view from Fairhope, Mobile, AL
In "Our Lady of the Roses," set over the two weeks surrounding Mardi Gras, a 26-year-old art teacher at a parochial K-8 confronts her first life crisis in the confluence of an anticipated marriage proposal, the head nun's push for her to teach a more liturgical curriculum, her disillusionment with the church and her doubts concerning her faith since attending Brown, and the loss of her cat, until being pushed to the edge by the actualization of a recurring dream.
St. Joseph's Chapel at Spring Hill College, Mobile, AL
"Eveningland" transports the reader past dozens of familiar places, such as Fort Morgan and Dog River, in "Water and Oil," a poignant story of innocence lost and the ache of nostalgia. In the summer of 2011, 17-year-old Bragg is charged with scouting between Forts Gaines and Morgan on his skiff for signs of the ominous, obsidian cloud of oil slowly approaching from the Deepwater Horizon.
While operating out of his dad's Dog River marina, Bragg infatuates over a 19-year-old marina employee, a "damaged beauty" with a rough beau and no aspirations. I take a moment here to heap extra praise on Knight for brilliantly pegging a sentiment from my distant past, which I suspect many other men experienced in younger years: "He could not have explained the intensity of his attraction to [her], that blissful ache that welled up in his chest at the sight of her barefooting across the dock, the feeling a distant cousin of nostalgia, as if he’d already won and loved and lost her." Truly, fiction reveals "truths that reality obscures." (Jessamyn West).
At the other end of life, the old narrator, a widower living in a houseboat docked at the marina, concludes with this insight into lost love in youth: "I can tell you this: there will be other girls, other disasters. And there will be nights to come, his life mostly behind him, when he will long to hurt like that again."
"Jubilee" is the collection's middle story in which an attorney approaches age 50, and his homemaker wife in Point Clear plans a jubilee celebration at the "old hotel" (i.e., the Grand). Knight nicely contrasts the birthday jubilee with the biological jubilee in Mobile Bay, "the only place in the world where shrimp and crab and flounder occasionally abandon deep water in the summer and swarm the shallows for no good reason, practically leaping into nets and buckets, presenting themselves for a feast."
Knight deftly captures the Grand's mystique, with its "history shining like wax on every surface, in every room and hall, on the brass-railed bar, windows reflecting wavery images of passing figures, walking paths buckled by the roots of oak trees even older than the hotel."
In "Grand Old Party," a cuckold-mad fifty-something travels with 12-gauge shotgun--with its "black walnut" and "engraved plates"--to a home in a fictionalized Oakleigh district to confront his wife of 31 years and the horner, with whom she recently began an affair after they volunteered together for the 2012 Romney campaign.
The "King of Dauphin Island" is a local 68-year-old real estate tycoon, "the sixth richest man in Alabama," who just lost his wife to cancer. He moves to an older condo complex he owns on Dauphin Island and begins, of a sudden, a buying spree for "all" private land on the Island in what can only be seen as his attempt to rescue the Island from development and destruction and navigate his way through grief after his fortune proved essentially worthless in his efforts to save his late wife from cancer.
Eveningland's pièce de résistance is "Landfall," a novella that is both intense and heartrending. It follows the family of a recently-deceased shipbuilding magnate fighting to survive and come together during a fictional category 3 hurricane bearing down on Mobile, after the septuagenarian matriarch slips and hits her head on the tile bathroom floor, soaked by a tub overflowing in preparation for the storm.
That evening, her forty-something daughter waits in the hospital, running on generators, as her mom suffers seizures from a brain hemorrhage. Meanwhile, her two brothers, in their late thirties, fight the furious forces of nature trying to return to see their mom who may not make it through the night.
One brother must survive the raging Gulf after taking a crew out to save a commercial fishing vessel that the family company just built. The vessel is seaworthy but not quite fully finished, and thus would risk much more damage at the shipyard.
The other journeys south from the family hunting camp—now his residence--up the Tombigbee River. Past nightfall, he finds all lanes of I-65 directed north, and chances a nameless road going toward Mobile. Thirty miles from the city limits, he comes upon a bridge with what appears to be a foot of water flowing over it from the creek swollen from the storm surge. His truck stalls out of course, and rocks "in the current like a boat on gentle seas." As he is about to jump out the window, "the railing creaked and splintered and the current washed his back end around so he was looking upstream a moment, his rear wheels poised over nothing. Then it was like the bottom dropped out of the Earth...as he plunged into the creek...water pouring through the window, beer cans floating by his head, the whole world upside-down and dark."
Knight concludes "Landfall" with one of the most emotionally stirring scenes of any story, long or short, that I've read in quite some time, without the need to resort, as lesser authors do, to the sentimental or the mawkish.
The stories in the edifying "Eveningland" gleam like moonbeams on the Bay, evoking both viscerally and visually the land, history, weather, landmarks, waters and people of this storied region.
A great writer creates stories that refresh our perceptions. Familiarity often blinds us to the beauty of the world around us, so that when the "writer shakes up the familiar scene," it is "as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it." (Anais Nin).
Moon over Mobile, Alabama
I'm not going out on a limb in calling Michael Knight a wizard of Mobile Bay. After all, his "Eveningland: Stories," a "story cycle" comprised of six short stories and a novella set in the past decade, teems with abracadabra moments for anyone who has lived within fifty miles of Mobile Bay, such as: hearing "the buzz of an outboard motor fussing in through the screen" of a home on the water; smelling batter "on the kitchen exhaust" as a boat "cruises under [Dog River] bridge"; meandering off Dog River under "cypress branches arching over the creek, painting a filigree in shadow"; viewing from a distance "fingers of blue smoke" above factories "like machines for making clouds"; wondering at the shades of red in a Catholic church's stained glass rose; using as a make-out den a canopy beneath a magnolia "at least three stories tall" with its "cool, shadowy space..., the world and the sky barely visible through the leaves"; and, duck hunting on "cold, early mornings," watching "mist over the water and the lazy rising of the sun," with a "dog shivering in the blind."
The historic Grand Hotel at Point Clear, Alabama
Knight, a St. Paul's alum, now serves as an English professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He anchors his latest story collection on a quote from "The Moviegoer," Walker Percy's 1961 award-winning novel set in New Orleans in which the aunt of young, lonely and disillusioned Binx Bolling lamented the "going under of the evening land," by which she meant the decline of a way of life from the old South. She explained her disappointment at her inability to "pass on to [Binx] the one heritage of the men of our family, a certain quality of spirit, a gaiety, a sense of duty, a nobility worn lightly, a sweetness, a gentleness with women—the only good things the South ever had and the only things that really matter in this life." As W.J. Cash explained in his 1941 "The Mind of the South," "the gentlemanly idea, driven from England by Cromwell, [took] refuge in the South and fashioned for itself a world to its heart's desire: a world...wholly dominated by ideals of honor and chivalry and 'noblesse.'"
The Grand at Point Clear
While Knight's characters are mostly those whom many "outsiders" might consider the usual suspects to mourn the sinking of evening land--mostly white in the upper-middle to upper classes, his stories seem to subtly chronicle, in a life cycle, this "going under" by way of education and nature, as the older generations pass and the younger ones recede further away. Knight does not romanticize the genteel way of life. Instead, as in "The Moviegoer," most of the characters here float adrift--lonely, restless, regretful--in the doldrums of an existential dilemma or spiritual crisis. Perhaps more significantly, all of their lives are overshadowed by the accomplishments, or haunted by the sins, of the father.
Mobile Bay, view from Fairhope, Mobile, AL
In "Our Lady of the Roses," set over the two weeks surrounding Mardi Gras, a 26-year-old art teacher at a parochial K-8 confronts her first life crisis in the confluence of an anticipated marriage proposal, the head nun's push for her to teach a more liturgical curriculum, her disillusionment with the church and her doubts concerning her faith since attending Brown, and the loss of her cat, until being pushed to the edge by the actualization of a recurring dream.
St. Joseph's Chapel at Spring Hill College, Mobile, AL
"Eveningland" transports the reader past dozens of familiar places, such as Fort Morgan and Dog River, in "Water and Oil," a poignant story of innocence lost and the ache of nostalgia. In the summer of 2011, 17-year-old Bragg is charged with scouting between Forts Gaines and Morgan on his skiff for signs of the ominous, obsidian cloud of oil slowly approaching from the Deepwater Horizon.
While operating out of his dad's Dog River marina, Bragg infatuates over a 19-year-old marina employee, a "damaged beauty" with a rough beau and no aspirations. I take a moment here to heap extra praise on Knight for brilliantly pegging a sentiment from my distant past, which I suspect many other men experienced in younger years: "He could not have explained the intensity of his attraction to [her], that blissful ache that welled up in his chest at the sight of her barefooting across the dock, the feeling a distant cousin of nostalgia, as if he’d already won and loved and lost her." Truly, fiction reveals "truths that reality obscures." (Jessamyn West).
At the other end of life, the old narrator, a widower living in a houseboat docked at the marina, concludes with this insight into lost love in youth: "I can tell you this: there will be other girls, other disasters. And there will be nights to come, his life mostly behind him, when he will long to hurt like that again."
"Jubilee" is the collection's middle story in which an attorney approaches age 50, and his homemaker wife in Point Clear plans a jubilee celebration at the "old hotel" (i.e., the Grand). Knight nicely contrasts the birthday jubilee with the biological jubilee in Mobile Bay, "the only place in the world where shrimp and crab and flounder occasionally abandon deep water in the summer and swarm the shallows for no good reason, practically leaping into nets and buckets, presenting themselves for a feast."
Knight deftly captures the Grand's mystique, with its "history shining like wax on every surface, in every room and hall, on the brass-railed bar, windows reflecting wavery images of passing figures, walking paths buckled by the roots of oak trees even older than the hotel."
In "Grand Old Party," a cuckold-mad fifty-something travels with 12-gauge shotgun--with its "black walnut" and "engraved plates"--to a home in a fictionalized Oakleigh district to confront his wife of 31 years and the horner, with whom she recently began an affair after they volunteered together for the 2012 Romney campaign.
The "King of Dauphin Island" is a local 68-year-old real estate tycoon, "the sixth richest man in Alabama," who just lost his wife to cancer. He moves to an older condo complex he owns on Dauphin Island and begins, of a sudden, a buying spree for "all" private land on the Island in what can only be seen as his attempt to rescue the Island from development and destruction and navigate his way through grief after his fortune proved essentially worthless in his efforts to save his late wife from cancer.
Eveningland's pièce de résistance is "Landfall," a novella that is both intense and heartrending. It follows the family of a recently-deceased shipbuilding magnate fighting to survive and come together during a fictional category 3 hurricane bearing down on Mobile, after the septuagenarian matriarch slips and hits her head on the tile bathroom floor, soaked by a tub overflowing in preparation for the storm.
That evening, her forty-something daughter waits in the hospital, running on generators, as her mom suffers seizures from a brain hemorrhage. Meanwhile, her two brothers, in their late thirties, fight the furious forces of nature trying to return to see their mom who may not make it through the night.
One brother must survive the raging Gulf after taking a crew out to save a commercial fishing vessel that the family company just built. The vessel is seaworthy but not quite fully finished, and thus would risk much more damage at the shipyard.
The other journeys south from the family hunting camp—now his residence--up the Tombigbee River. Past nightfall, he finds all lanes of I-65 directed north, and chances a nameless road going toward Mobile. Thirty miles from the city limits, he comes upon a bridge with what appears to be a foot of water flowing over it from the creek swollen from the storm surge. His truck stalls out of course, and rocks "in the current like a boat on gentle seas." As he is about to jump out the window, "the railing creaked and splintered and the current washed his back end around so he was looking upstream a moment, his rear wheels poised over nothing. Then it was like the bottom dropped out of the Earth...as he plunged into the creek...water pouring through the window, beer cans floating by his head, the whole world upside-down and dark."
Knight concludes "Landfall" with one of the most emotionally stirring scenes of any story, long or short, that I've read in quite some time, without the need to resort, as lesser authors do, to the sentimental or the mawkish.
The stories in the edifying "Eveningland" gleam like moonbeams on the Bay, evoking both viscerally and visually the land, history, weather, landmarks, waters and people of this storied region.
October 17, 2016
PERFECT!!!!! Complete PERFECTION!!!!
I can't begin to express how thrilled I am to have read these marvelous stories.
I had never heard or read anything by Michael Knight before. He's the PERFECT ....
type of writer for me: PERFECT. Should I say that again? PERFECT!!!
I'm excited to have discovered he has written...
"The Typist", "Divining Road", "The Holiday Season", "Dog Fight", and "Goodnight, Nobody". I want to read all of them!!!!
Having discovered such a wonderful -fit-author for myself (I'm completely attached at the hip already to 'my' Michael Knight...lol), and realizing many people before me in the literary world 'do' know of Michael Knight's great work....I'm reminded ( once again folks), that I am still a late bloomer reader. I'm 64 years old, and I've only been an avid reader for about 10-12 years. Why didn't anyone tell me about Michael Knight until now?
His writing is genuinely affecting. He touched my heart with even the
most simple moments. They are intricate and absorbing - highly imagined - deftly layered - fragile and beautiful.
There are 7 stories in this collection....
I'm going to share little 'teasers' from each story. It's the best way I know to share small samples of MICHAEL KNIGHT'S writing.
From "Water and Oil":
"The boys name was Henry Rufus Bragg and though he was 17 years old and would most likely be offended by my description, there was still enough boy about him that the word remains appropriate. He was handsome but in an unfinished way, especially in summer when the sun freckled his nose and cheeks, blurring his features,
a faint constellation half a shade darker than his tan".
From "Smash and Grab":
"He came to with his wrists and ankles bound with duct tape to the arms and legs of a ladderback chair. His cheeks throbbed. His nose felt huge with ache. Opposite him, in an identical chair, a teenage girl was blowing lightly on the fingers of her left hand. There was a porcelain toilet tank lid, freckled with blood, across her lap. I'm it was arrayed a cell phone, a pair of cuticle scissors, A bottle of clear polish, cotton balls, and a nail file. The girl glanced up at him now, and he would have sworn she was pleased to find him awake".
"How's your face?", she said".
From "Our Lady of The Roses":
"Mondays and Thursdays, Hadley Walsh taught art at Our Lady of The Roses School. She was 26 years old. She didn't need money--her father gave her an allowance because he felt guilty about leaving her mother. She had a black cat named
Jezebel. On her days off, she longed with friends or did some painting of her own, watercolors mostly. Weekends, Hadley dawdled with her boyfriend. This all took place one winter in Mobile, Alabama.
From "Jubilee":
"Dean likes Motown, beach music. He likes to dance. The band will set up in the ballroom of the old hotel. Her son is coming home. On her signal, Kendra tells the agent, the band should play "Happy Birthday", then follow it with that famous Otis Redding song. She imagines yourself spinning on the dance floor, past friend Deasy to Thomas, a rowdy horn section, back-up singers, the night trembling with music and stars".
From "Grand Old Party":
"Softly, Hannah says, "You're not gonna shoot anybody. You're not that kind of man," and even though what you hear in her voice is more like affection than contempt, tell her you didn't think she was the kind of woman to be unfaithful but here she is and here you are and you never know what a person will do so could she please, please, please, please, if she ever really loved you, now would be the time to shut her mouth".
From "The King of Dauphin Island":
"Marcus Weems was the sixth richest Man in the state of Alabama but he lost his wife to cancer like everybody else".
"I want to buy the island"
"Un-huh. I see. And what do you mean to do with it?"
"I'm not sure about that", Marcus said."
"Homer pursed his lips and stared for a moment into his drink"
"This is a community ", he said, raising his eyes.
"It s dying, Marcus said. "It's nearly dead."
From "Landfall":
"Sadness". "The word it's self didn't do the feeling justice. What she felt was more complicated alchemy of emotion, equal parts grief and loneliness and longing, with measures of resentment and self-pity drizzled in. She's had to lean against the wall a minute. Breathe. Her best defense against the feeling was to let herself fret over the children, to become more mother than wife. Than widow. So she worried about the fact that somehow Doodle had never learned to look after herself and that Angus would never live up to his father and that Percy would never, no matter how long she waited, no matter how many prayer she offered up, choose the life she wanted for him, the only life that would make him happy, whether he realized it or not".
Heavenly gratifying..... luscious pleasure reading!!!!
Thank You Grove Atlantic, NetGalley, and Michael Knight
I can't begin to express how thrilled I am to have read these marvelous stories.
I had never heard or read anything by Michael Knight before. He's the PERFECT ....
type of writer for me: PERFECT. Should I say that again? PERFECT!!!
I'm excited to have discovered he has written...
"The Typist", "Divining Road", "The Holiday Season", "Dog Fight", and "Goodnight, Nobody". I want to read all of them!!!!
Having discovered such a wonderful -fit-author for myself (I'm completely attached at the hip already to 'my' Michael Knight...lol), and realizing many people before me in the literary world 'do' know of Michael Knight's great work....I'm reminded ( once again folks), that I am still a late bloomer reader. I'm 64 years old, and I've only been an avid reader for about 10-12 years. Why didn't anyone tell me about Michael Knight until now?
His writing is genuinely affecting. He touched my heart with even the
most simple moments. They are intricate and absorbing - highly imagined - deftly layered - fragile and beautiful.
There are 7 stories in this collection....
I'm going to share little 'teasers' from each story. It's the best way I know to share small samples of MICHAEL KNIGHT'S writing.
From "Water and Oil":
"The boys name was Henry Rufus Bragg and though he was 17 years old and would most likely be offended by my description, there was still enough boy about him that the word remains appropriate. He was handsome but in an unfinished way, especially in summer when the sun freckled his nose and cheeks, blurring his features,
a faint constellation half a shade darker than his tan".
From "Smash and Grab":
"He came to with his wrists and ankles bound with duct tape to the arms and legs of a ladderback chair. His cheeks throbbed. His nose felt huge with ache. Opposite him, in an identical chair, a teenage girl was blowing lightly on the fingers of her left hand. There was a porcelain toilet tank lid, freckled with blood, across her lap. I'm it was arrayed a cell phone, a pair of cuticle scissors, A bottle of clear polish, cotton balls, and a nail file. The girl glanced up at him now, and he would have sworn she was pleased to find him awake".
"How's your face?", she said".
From "Our Lady of The Roses":
"Mondays and Thursdays, Hadley Walsh taught art at Our Lady of The Roses School. She was 26 years old. She didn't need money--her father gave her an allowance because he felt guilty about leaving her mother. She had a black cat named
Jezebel. On her days off, she longed with friends or did some painting of her own, watercolors mostly. Weekends, Hadley dawdled with her boyfriend. This all took place one winter in Mobile, Alabama.
From "Jubilee":
"Dean likes Motown, beach music. He likes to dance. The band will set up in the ballroom of the old hotel. Her son is coming home. On her signal, Kendra tells the agent, the band should play "Happy Birthday", then follow it with that famous Otis Redding song. She imagines yourself spinning on the dance floor, past friend Deasy to Thomas, a rowdy horn section, back-up singers, the night trembling with music and stars".
From "Grand Old Party":
"Softly, Hannah says, "You're not gonna shoot anybody. You're not that kind of man," and even though what you hear in her voice is more like affection than contempt, tell her you didn't think she was the kind of woman to be unfaithful but here she is and here you are and you never know what a person will do so could she please, please, please, please, if she ever really loved you, now would be the time to shut her mouth".
From "The King of Dauphin Island":
"Marcus Weems was the sixth richest Man in the state of Alabama but he lost his wife to cancer like everybody else".
"I want to buy the island"
"Un-huh. I see. And what do you mean to do with it?"
"I'm not sure about that", Marcus said."
"Homer pursed his lips and stared for a moment into his drink"
"This is a community ", he said, raising his eyes.
"It s dying, Marcus said. "It's nearly dead."
From "Landfall":
"Sadness". "The word it's self didn't do the feeling justice. What she felt was more complicated alchemy of emotion, equal parts grief and loneliness and longing, with measures of resentment and self-pity drizzled in. She's had to lean against the wall a minute. Breathe. Her best defense against the feeling was to let herself fret over the children, to become more mother than wife. Than widow. So she worried about the fact that somehow Doodle had never learned to look after herself and that Angus would never live up to his father and that Percy would never, no matter how long she waited, no matter how many prayer she offered up, choose the life she wanted for him, the only life that would make him happy, whether he realized it or not".
Heavenly gratifying..... luscious pleasure reading!!!!
Thank You Grove Atlantic, NetGalley, and Michael Knight
September 29, 2016
A collection of short stories, so powerfully written made a significant impact on me as a reader. Seven different stories that take place at Knight's native Alabama showcases the relationships on different levels.
My favorites are
"Smash and Grab" where a robber is held by a teenage girl and leaves him surprised at every step. "Our lady of Roses" where an art teacher questions faith and life.
"The king of Dauphin Island", the 6th richest man in State of Alabama tries to buy an Island when he
suffers the loss of his wife.
Finally
"Landfall", where a family awaits hurricane but internally everyone in the family have their own hurricane to tackle.
This is my first book by Michael Knight, and I have added his other books to my TBR. Such a quiet book but kept me hooked till the end. I look forward to reading his other books soon.
Thank you for ARC from Netgalley and Grove Atlantic.
My favorites are
"Smash and Grab" where a robber is held by a teenage girl and leaves him surprised at every step. "Our lady of Roses" where an art teacher questions faith and life.
"The king of Dauphin Island", the 6th richest man in State of Alabama tries to buy an Island when he
suffers the loss of his wife.
Finally
"Landfall", where a family awaits hurricane but internally everyone in the family have their own hurricane to tackle.
This is my first book by Michael Knight, and I have added his other books to my TBR. Such a quiet book but kept me hooked till the end. I look forward to reading his other books soon.
Thank you for ARC from Netgalley and Grove Atlantic.
March 23, 2017
Eveningland is a collection of seven loosely-connected short stories set in Alabama. Each story is unique, but they all share a certain relaxed and melancholy tone. These characters are experiencing the Big Stuff like marriage, love, death, and grief, but their "real" stories are communicated through the sweet and simple little nothings of their daily lives. This is a book of detailed moments that hint at the bigger picture without ever totally revealing it. Every story left me wondering, curious, wanting more.
I had two clear favorites, though. In Jubilee, middle-aged couple Kendra and Dean are comfortable with each other but also disconnected. The story follows them through their tried-and-true married-life routine in the weeks leading up to Dean's big birthday celebration. I still can't tell if this one is supposed to be happy or sad...
In Grand Old Party, a man (with his shotgun) follows his wife to her lover's home intending to blow said lover to bits, but an unexpected Chinese food delivery throws off his game. And then things get weird.
Both stories surprised me by not going anywhere I expected them to. And even then, author Michael Knight still manages to leave just the right amount of ambiguity; the stories offer some closure, but they also leave a lot of room to imagine where it all leads and what it all means. I liked that.
I'm not usually a fan of short stories, but I really enjoyed this book. It was interesting and quick to read. It made me think, and I connected with the characters. But it also wasn't ever overwhelming with the feelz. This was a great "between books" book--a nice palate cleanser.
ARC provided through Net Galley.
See more of my reviews at www.BugBugBooks.com!
I had two clear favorites, though. In Jubilee, middle-aged couple Kendra and Dean are comfortable with each other but also disconnected. The story follows them through their tried-and-true married-life routine in the weeks leading up to Dean's big birthday celebration. I still can't tell if this one is supposed to be happy or sad...
In Grand Old Party, a man (with his shotgun) follows his wife to her lover's home intending to blow said lover to bits, but an unexpected Chinese food delivery throws off his game. And then things get weird.
Both stories surprised me by not going anywhere I expected them to. And even then, author Michael Knight still manages to leave just the right amount of ambiguity; the stories offer some closure, but they also leave a lot of room to imagine where it all leads and what it all means. I liked that.
I'm not usually a fan of short stories, but I really enjoyed this book. It was interesting and quick to read. It made me think, and I connected with the characters. But it also wasn't ever overwhelming with the feelz. This was a great "between books" book--a nice palate cleanser.
ARC provided through Net Galley.
See more of my reviews at www.BugBugBooks.com!
March 23, 2017
It was OK. It was all about rich white people in Mobile. I am a white person from Alabama so a lot of it was slightly nostalgic for me in a way that I both enjoyed and resented. The last story, the long one, is pretty good. I feel like he could have just published that one like a novella and it would have been better. The rest sound like they come from an undergrad creative writing class. A lot of telling and not a lot of showing. Cheesy characters. Quick read, some good ideas, not a waste of time, but not life-changing.
October 26, 2021
As southern lit goes this is not particularly high on my list. It’s definitely not trash but I feel it lacks that Southern something. Many of the stories are on the bland side with characters I could feel less about. It could have been done for something like Southern Living magazine, if Southern Living printed fiction pieces.
October 16, 2016
I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
A book of seven short stories all taking place in Alabama. No, they aren't about incest, rednecks, or whatever "southern" stereotype you're thinking of. They're all just people who wish they had life figured out, but don't and aren't really on the path to do it. The strongest stories for me were: Smash and Grab - a burglar and his WTF break-in
Our Lady of the Roses - a teacher having a quarter-life crisis
The King of Dauphin Island - the 6th richest man in the state grieves the loss of his wife
Landfall - a hurricane and a family.
This is in no way saying that the other stories are weak. With an abundance of riches, it's hard to choose.
I think the only problem I had with the book is that all the characters had a similar type of thought process. It's one of those things where if you read these stories interspersed into a larger book of short stories with other authors, you'd immediately be able to pick these out as having the same writer.
4.5/5 stars. This book will get on some awards lists.
A book of seven short stories all taking place in Alabama. No, they aren't about incest, rednecks, or whatever "southern" stereotype you're thinking of. They're all just people who wish they had life figured out, but don't and aren't really on the path to do it. The strongest stories for me were: Smash and Grab - a burglar and his WTF break-in
Our Lady of the Roses - a teacher having a quarter-life crisis
The King of Dauphin Island - the 6th richest man in the state grieves the loss of his wife
Landfall - a hurricane and a family.
This is in no way saying that the other stories are weak. With an abundance of riches, it's hard to choose.
I think the only problem I had with the book is that all the characters had a similar type of thought process. It's one of those things where if you read these stories interspersed into a larger book of short stories with other authors, you'd immediately be able to pick these out as having the same writer.
4.5/5 stars. This book will get on some awards lists.
October 31, 2016
I really, really wanted to like this book. An entire book of short stories from my home state was so compelling that I downloaded it immediately. The first story was engaging and I was enjoying it ... until the end. Then the second, third, fourth ... I began to see a pattern. The stories proved to be compelling and drew me in, but the endings of almost all of the stories in this collection were so abrupt as to be disappointing. There was so much more to be investigated, more story to be told, additional nuances to be explored. To be left flat at the end of each story left me feeling that the author had reached his word quota and had to end the story suddenly.
This one is not recommended. However, if you are looking for an excellent book of short stories, I recommend "The Paper Menagerie" by Ken Liu.
Many thanks to NetGalley for a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
This one is not recommended. However, if you are looking for an excellent book of short stories, I recommend "The Paper Menagerie" by Ken Liu.
Many thanks to NetGalley for a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
December 11, 2018
Michael Knight's a collection of short stories gives us the flavor of the many attributes of the city Mobile Alabama and a taste of some of its varied inhabitants, with some wild weather (both literally and figuratively) thrown in for good measure. See what I thought of these stories in my review of "Eveningland" here. https://tcl-bookreviews.com/2017/03/2...
December 26, 2017
Every once in a while, short stories provide a pause that refreshes. Michael Knight provides a collection that more than fits the bill.
All set in Southern Alabama as the area prepares for a hurricane, the stories all explore the different paths people take to discover who they really are and what is important in their lives.
So, take a pause from those 500 page doorstops and enjoy.
All set in Southern Alabama as the area prepares for a hurricane, the stories all explore the different paths people take to discover who they really are and what is important in their lives.
So, take a pause from those 500 page doorstops and enjoy.
April 20, 2017
Michael Knight can do no wrong. These stories vibrate, shimmer, and resonate. A native of Mobile, AL who has made his home in Knoxville, TN for the better part of two decades, you get the sense that Michael Knight doesn't pass a day without missing home. He writes about his native land with clear-eyed reverence and deep, abiding love, and he knows this milieu very well. These are subtle, elegant stories, in the tradition of Knight's literary heroes, especially Peter Taylor and Walker Percy. He has also learned a great deal from Alice Munro about how to pack the depth and scope of a novel into the more compact form of the short story. Chekhov also comes to mind. Knight may be too elegant, his people perhaps a bit too genteel, for this collection to generate a ton of media hype in our current cultural moment, but that doesn't mean this book doesn't deserve a ton of accolades and a wide audience. Knight's last novel, THE TYPIST, set during the post-WW II occupation of Japan, was a small miracle--a slim novel with all the weight and heft of a door-stopper. EVENINGLAND is every bit as wise, lucid, and riveting. Highly, highly recommended.
February 5, 2017
Eveningland is a wonderful collection of stories that caught my imagination right from the first page. As a short story writer myself, it is a joy to read works by someone who is such an expert in the form. Every tale is beautifully paced and structured, with just the right amount of description and character development to draw the reader in. I particularly love the way the stories are all set within the same place, with minor characters that reappear again and again, linking the individual tales into a cohesive glimpse of this world. Masterful storytelling. I would certainly seek out more works by Michael Knight in the future.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley.
April 17, 2019
I've wanted to read Michael Knight for a while, and where better to start than a collection about my new home state. He gets great press and accolades from various important places (Kirkus, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker) and other authors (Ann Patchett). This collection centers around mostly white middle class and above families living is coastal Alabama, Mobile, the bay, and the gulf. I don't think its a bad collection, and two of the stories stick out as much better than the others for me: the one with the teenage boy experiencing heartache in the wake of the gulf oil spill, and the one with the new widower who starts buying up real estate on Dolphin Island only to be declared incompetent by his daughters. But, it isn't that great either. The whole time I kept thinking an undergraduate writing class had been given coastal Alabama as a writing prompt and this collection was the result. I can appreciate some of the setting and class nuances in a literary way, but none of the stories will stick with me in any meaningful way.
April 10, 2017
A lovely book full of short stories set in and around Mobile, Alabama that move at the languid, ponderous pace of so much of the South. The stories predominantly center on "the right sort" of Mobile families (the types that have had the same land in their families since before the Civil War) and Knight captures so much of the ennui and loneliness that his characters feel in a world that it changing due to oil spills, a slowing economy and an unstoppable hurricane.
October 1, 2017
While I'm late in reviewing this book, I can say I enjoyed the short stories which were interconnected and took place in Alabama. Probably the best of the stories was the longest, novella one. What is lacking however are stories of more diversity in Alabama.
April 17, 2017
Michael Knight is a very satisfying short story writer. Making Mobile, Alabama, as interesting as he does here in Eveningland is a testament to his great abilities.
May 16, 2020
As soon as I finished it I wanted to start it again.
This was definitely a serendipity book. I picked it up in the regional section of a nearby second-hand bookstore simply because it had Alabama on the cover. Wasn't expecting to love it so much! #rolltide
This was definitely a serendipity book. I picked it up in the regional section of a nearby second-hand bookstore simply because it had Alabama on the cover. Wasn't expecting to love it so much! #rolltide
January 20, 2018
I️ loved these short stories and the author is my next door neighbor! If you haven’t read Michael Knight, try him. The NYT compared him to some pretty great writers.
March 19, 2017
This book is a fantastic collection of short stories beating with the pulse of a place close to my heart, Mobile Bay. The stories don't punch like, say, Flannery O'Connor's would, but they drift dreamily into one another while telling the secrets of those living "lives of quiet desperation." A melancholy mood persists throughout almost the whole collection, maybe at times just wistfulness, but that feeling is strongly countered by adaptation and survival. I heartily recommend this book to ease through in the coming, creeping longer evenings of the spring and summer.
January 18, 2017
A good collection
Story #1 Water and Oil
This is the first story in the book, it begins and is told like an old country song. About a boy and his first love, and his first heart break. His transition into becoming a man, and the inevitability of his future loves and losses.
It was written in a descriptive prose, this was consistent throughout the story. We learn about the boy, through an older man who serves as a narrator for the tale:
'The boy’s name was Henry Rufus Bragg and though he was seventeen years old and would most likely have been offended by my description, there was still enough boy about him that the word remains appropriate. He was handsome but in an unfinished way..... A late bloomer, his mother called him, the last of the model airplane builders, a tender boy, a quiet boy, an odd and earnest boy who, like the keeper of some lost art, memorized old knockknock jokes and repeated them in his head when he was bored.'
I was drawn to the sophisticated style of description. I loved it.
Story #2 Smash and Grab
n this short story we encounter a burglary gone wrong. We learn that Cashdollar is an expert thief, he is quick on his feet and has never had a run in with the law. That is until he is caught by a teenage girl, she knocks him out, and he wakes to find himself taped to a chair, bruised. He learns that she is the daughter of the owner if the house, and she calls the police on Cashdollar. By a weird and surprising turn of events she manipulates the situation for her own benefit.
This story wasn't as descriptive, but it was definitely unpredictable.
Story #3 Our lady of the Roses
A chapter in the life of Hadley, an art teacher at a Catholic school. In some ways, she is lost and confused as ber students. She doesn't necessarily have a plan, and she doesn't so much agree with how religion restricts her curriculum. She's carving her own path in the world, and learns something from a fellow Sister.
Story #4 Jubilee
Kendra and Dean, a middle-aged couple living life, Dean's birthday is fast approaching and Kendra takes care to organise a party for him. Their son will be coming with a date, oh how the years have passed them by. On the night of the party, Dean experiences huge anxiety, everything seems unfamiliar, and everyone seems to be speaking in an unrecognizable language. But they must let the party run its course, see it through to its end.
I liked this story, it really was like a family sharing a small but very important time with a special guest- the reader. It didn't feel like intrusion but, a warm invitation and welcome.
Story #5 A grand old party
A man thinking about shooting his unfaithful wife, or perhaps the man she is with. He gets inside the guy's house, and it goes from there...
Story #6 King of Dauphin island
The story of a man grieving the passing of his wife, while working out the best way to help himself and his daughters find their way, so he heads off to find his way. He sells the house and proceeds to create a new life.
Story #7 Landfall
This story is probably the most complicated to explain, in this book.
There's a family: mother, father, and three kids. Two of the kids have their own kids, Doodle has two girls, and Angus has one boy. Percy is the third child, unmarried and single. The father has passed away, the mother lives alone. She's always crafting chores and tasks to occupy her time, still she mourns her husband's passing.
With a hurricane fast approaching, they all have to get to safety. Relatively easy, except Doodle quickly discovers her mom has suffered a fall in her bathroom which is flooding under a pool of water. She has injured her head severely, and her memory has become impaired. Doodle is alone in figuring out what needs to be done. We then see all the characters try to make the best of such a horrid situation, and deal with it in spite of the unfortunate timing.
With each of these stories, my attention was captured instantly, and looking back on the stories, now, I can say it was also done in a cleverly subtle way.
I received this book through NetGalley.
Story #1 Water and Oil
This is the first story in the book, it begins and is told like an old country song. About a boy and his first love, and his first heart break. His transition into becoming a man, and the inevitability of his future loves and losses.
It was written in a descriptive prose, this was consistent throughout the story. We learn about the boy, through an older man who serves as a narrator for the tale:
'The boy’s name was Henry Rufus Bragg and though he was seventeen years old and would most likely have been offended by my description, there was still enough boy about him that the word remains appropriate. He was handsome but in an unfinished way..... A late bloomer, his mother called him, the last of the model airplane builders, a tender boy, a quiet boy, an odd and earnest boy who, like the keeper of some lost art, memorized old knockknock jokes and repeated them in his head when he was bored.'
I was drawn to the sophisticated style of description. I loved it.
Story #2 Smash and Grab
n this short story we encounter a burglary gone wrong. We learn that Cashdollar is an expert thief, he is quick on his feet and has never had a run in with the law. That is until he is caught by a teenage girl, she knocks him out, and he wakes to find himself taped to a chair, bruised. He learns that she is the daughter of the owner if the house, and she calls the police on Cashdollar. By a weird and surprising turn of events she manipulates the situation for her own benefit.
This story wasn't as descriptive, but it was definitely unpredictable.
Story #3 Our lady of the Roses
A chapter in the life of Hadley, an art teacher at a Catholic school. In some ways, she is lost and confused as ber students. She doesn't necessarily have a plan, and she doesn't so much agree with how religion restricts her curriculum. She's carving her own path in the world, and learns something from a fellow Sister.
Story #4 Jubilee
Kendra and Dean, a middle-aged couple living life, Dean's birthday is fast approaching and Kendra takes care to organise a party for him. Their son will be coming with a date, oh how the years have passed them by. On the night of the party, Dean experiences huge anxiety, everything seems unfamiliar, and everyone seems to be speaking in an unrecognizable language. But they must let the party run its course, see it through to its end.
I liked this story, it really was like a family sharing a small but very important time with a special guest- the reader. It didn't feel like intrusion but, a warm invitation and welcome.
Story #5 A grand old party
A man thinking about shooting his unfaithful wife, or perhaps the man she is with. He gets inside the guy's house, and it goes from there...
Story #6 King of Dauphin island
The story of a man grieving the passing of his wife, while working out the best way to help himself and his daughters find their way, so he heads off to find his way. He sells the house and proceeds to create a new life.
Story #7 Landfall
This story is probably the most complicated to explain, in this book.
There's a family: mother, father, and three kids. Two of the kids have their own kids, Doodle has two girls, and Angus has one boy. Percy is the third child, unmarried and single. The father has passed away, the mother lives alone. She's always crafting chores and tasks to occupy her time, still she mourns her husband's passing.
With a hurricane fast approaching, they all have to get to safety. Relatively easy, except Doodle quickly discovers her mom has suffered a fall in her bathroom which is flooding under a pool of water. She has injured her head severely, and her memory has become impaired. Doodle is alone in figuring out what needs to be done. We then see all the characters try to make the best of such a horrid situation, and deal with it in spite of the unfortunate timing.
With each of these stories, my attention was captured instantly, and looking back on the stories, now, I can say it was also done in a cleverly subtle way.
I received this book through NetGalley.
September 25, 2016
A very enjoyable book of short stories all taking place in the Mobile AL area. The characters in each story are diverse, deep and thoughtfully written, giving insights into people from widely diverse backgrounds but similar emotions.
Full disclosure - I received a copy of the book from Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Full disclosure - I received a copy of the book from Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
March 28, 2017
My review appears in Washington Independent Review of Books
October 24, 2016
This more a three and a half star book, but I'm rounding up because I really like the cover.
"Eveningland" is a collection of seven stories that are based in the same Mobile area, among the same type of citizen: the rich, white, Republican citizens that really are enveloped in their problems. Michael Knight is a superb writer and story teller, and these stories are flawless to the most part, but the subject matter, particularly the older married couple stories, feel well worn and comfortable. I was bored through a few of these stories, just trying to get through them, and I think that this is because of my lack of interest in rich white people problems. The writing is good, and even though I was bored with a few of the stories (particularly "Jubilee" and "Grand Old Party") it is mostly because of my tastes more than poor writing. The high points, "Smash and Grab" and "Our Lady of the Roses," are those without the husband and wife tension, and I think that this makes these stories more compelling. Overall a decent collection and one that other readers might find better than I did. As it is, I think this collections shortfalls for me are due to lack of interest in reading about old, white, rich couples anymore.
I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
"Eveningland" is a collection of seven stories that are based in the same Mobile area, among the same type of citizen: the rich, white, Republican citizens that really are enveloped in their problems. Michael Knight is a superb writer and story teller, and these stories are flawless to the most part, but the subject matter, particularly the older married couple stories, feel well worn and comfortable. I was bored through a few of these stories, just trying to get through them, and I think that this is because of my lack of interest in rich white people problems. The writing is good, and even though I was bored with a few of the stories (particularly "Jubilee" and "Grand Old Party") it is mostly because of my tastes more than poor writing. The high points, "Smash and Grab" and "Our Lady of the Roses," are those without the husband and wife tension, and I think that this makes these stories more compelling. Overall a decent collection and one that other readers might find better than I did. As it is, I think this collections shortfalls for me are due to lack of interest in reading about old, white, rich couples anymore.
I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
February 24, 2019
Written in a quiet voice and somewhat slow pace that match the region of the country in which they are set, the stories of Eveningland are accessible and filled with relatable characters.
I felt a paternal concern and cautious optimism for the boy in “Oil and Water.” As a man approaching a significant birthday, I easily fell into the rhythm of "Jubilee." As someone who has endured more Gulf Coast storm watches than I care to remember, I followed intently as the multiple storylines in “Landfall” marched to their conclusions like a strengthening storm on a tracking map. I am a sucker for final sentences, and in “Water and Oil,” “Jubilee,” “The King of Dauphin Island,” and “Landfall,” I found that Knight brought the stories to a close with lines that made me feel he had explained the meaning of life.
If you live in the Gulf Coast, you'll recognize these stories as an a reflection of life. If you've never even been there, you'll peek inside the window of a unique region of the U.S. Either way, the Eveningland collection is a trip worth taking.
I felt a paternal concern and cautious optimism for the boy in “Oil and Water.” As a man approaching a significant birthday, I easily fell into the rhythm of "Jubilee." As someone who has endured more Gulf Coast storm watches than I care to remember, I followed intently as the multiple storylines in “Landfall” marched to their conclusions like a strengthening storm on a tracking map. I am a sucker for final sentences, and in “Water and Oil,” “Jubilee,” “The King of Dauphin Island,” and “Landfall,” I found that Knight brought the stories to a close with lines that made me feel he had explained the meaning of life.
If you live in the Gulf Coast, you'll recognize these stories as an a reflection of life. If you've never even been there, you'll peek inside the window of a unique region of the U.S. Either way, the Eveningland collection is a trip worth taking.
November 24, 2016
This book was nothing like I expected. The book is broken up into different stories. Each one is unique and exceptionally written. Some of the stories started in a way I thought I knew how it was going to end. Nope!! Brilliant. And I loved them all.
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