Felt in the Jaw

by Kristen N. Arnett, Kristen Arnett

In her debut story collection, Kristen Arnett, with dark humor, explores the lives of queer women and their families in the light of the bleak Florida sun. A young dancer suddenly loses language while her family struggles to understand their new roles. A mother endures a horrifying spider bite while camping with her daughters in the backyard. A family reunion goes sour when a group of cousins are left to their own devices. In these ten stories, outward strength is always betrayed by deep vulnerability: these are characters so desperate for family and connection that they often isolate themselves--and sometimes, it's the world isolating them.

Genres: Short Stories, LGBT, Queer, Fiction, Queer Lit, Contemporary, Adult

220 pages, Paperback

First published August 20, 2017

Reviews

[Liza · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to go on a date to a Dunkin Donuts drive-thru with this book, and tbh reading it I feel like I did. Florida is important to my heart in a weird and confusing way, and reading this I realized how I have not even realized how much I wanted queer stories in Florida. I would recommend to anyone interested in queer women, or Florida, or drive-thrus, or having a body that might/definitely is/ definitely will someday break down, or a heart with love troubles.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tender, nervous, somewhat alienated lesbian domestic/natural realism set (entirely?) in Florida. Lots of weird body stuff, mostly in the realm of the real, including a fantastic story featuring period problems. A few stories deliver this subtle but very affecting build of suspense/danger/threat.

[Kami Bumgardner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't often read a lot of short stories; not because I don't enjoy them in general, but because they are not always great. Most leave me either wanting more from them, or feeling like there was just too much in there to make a good story. They are incredibly hard to write, as you have such a small window to get your reader hooked emotionally, and tell a whole story arc from beginning to end in a very short amount of words. Few people do this well- O. Henry, Edgar Allen Poe, and Arthur Conan Doyle are a few who spring to mind. I am so pleased say that these stories are on that level of amazing. I found myself not zipping through this book, like I do with so many of the novels I read. It truly was a book that I wanted to savor, that I did not want to come to an end. Every single story in this collection has an emotional pull and characters that are so relatable and feel like you know them, or ARE them. Each story has the perfect amount of tension that makes you hold your breath, not knowing what will happen next and fearing perhaps the worst. These stories also highlight the fact that regardless to what the dynamic is of any given relationship (man/woman, woman/woman, man/man) we are all human and have the same responses to life. Thank you, Kristen, for this wonderful piece of real life.

[Susanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a huge fan of Kristen Arnett's essays, and her first short story collection did not disappoint. I feel like I am still swatting away Florida bugs and worrying about Florida children.

[Angie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really struggle with short stories because it takes a lot of motivation for me to start a story, which means I have to start many times over in the course of a single book. I thought the stories in Felt in the Jaw were interesting and well written. But only one of them actually had an ending, and that made the whole experience really frustrating. Especially since most of these stories are thematically sad, which was its own disappointing because all but two of the stories are about sapphic relationships. I will say this: Felt in the Jaw confirms that I never want to live in Florida.

My favourite story was "Blessing of the Animals"--the only one that had an actual ending. Least favourite was probably "Notice of a Fourth Location."

[Maggie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A perfect beach read for a lesbian reading on a Floridian beach. This book was a compilation of short stories about lesbians in Florida. Main themes that stood out to me were isolation, guilt, & fading romance.

[Edward Rather · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kristen Arnett’s Felt in the Jaw is real in every sense of the word. If you read to escape reality, to breakaway from the grind of life, expecting a release from the darkness in this world, you will not find that here. The experience that Felt in the Jaw offers is not so much one of reading a book but rather staring into a large mirror reflecting the world around you. Kristen’s stories are a deeply personal look into everyday life. A dissection of troubles and annoyances that a lot of people experience, and yet are normally deemed as not interesting enough to be the focus of most works of fiction.

The relief found through latching onto endless opportunities offered by sugary bright worlds or even the statistical unlikeliness of the terrors in dark worlds is replaced by the comfort of connecting to supremely relatable humans showcased as characters. Characters who are just like you, imperfect, self-conscious, anxious, sometimes subjected to consequences of their own making, sometimes subjected to consequences of an unfair world, but surviving, existing nonetheless.

Most of all, what Felt in the Jaw offers is an understanding that not every story needs a happy ending to be inspiring. The grind of life is real, and for those who relate to neither being polished or obliterated by the friction, Felt in the Jaw will remind you that simply still existing is an accomplishment.

[Danielle Lazarin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stories in Kristen Arnett's beautiful, funny, tender and cohesive collection are set in Florida, mostly in the domestic spaces of queer women and their families, populated by their children, their exes, their wives, their mothers, their pets. There are trips to the supermarket and the donut shop and lurking pregnancies and neighbors and wondering that comes from a place of kindness and hope, that becomes an extended hand, and often that hand is bitten: by animals of the human and not-human kind. There's an undercurrent of danger throughout, at times from the unexpected corners of the natural world but mostly from the desire to love and be loved and all the risk that comes with that. This is a stunner of a book that asks again and again what it means to want and be wanted and how brave it is to try your best to hang on to both. GO READ IT.

[Liv · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not to sound like a greedy toddler but I need another Kristen Arnett book right now immediately. 25/10 would recommend to anyone looking for high-quality short stories, many bonuses for aggressive, ugly-beautiful, loud, messy queerness; fucked-up protagonists who are entirely too relatable; and an unflinching dedication to depicting the grossest, stickiest, most taboo subjects that crop up when writing human bodies. A thousand points to that one story with the church; it helped me feel so seen as a lesbian with a weird relationship to religion. Kristen Arnett, I love you. Thank you for making my summer 10x queerer than I ever hoped it could be.

[Lauren Dostal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finished last night and get to see Kristen at a reading tonight! Yay!
This book is stunning. Though they are not related, every story builds on the energy of the last. Each story is like a snapshot, a moment suspended in time. The characters crash together, entangling themselves for our viewing pleasure, then fade to black. Every scene, every life left to resonate beyond the page. I did not expect to be so profoundly moved by this book, but it blew me away. Really really really amazing.

[Allison Renner · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of short stories about queer women’s relationship with other women in a variety of ways. Some of my favorites were the ones involving childhood or children because the characters were so realistically multi-faceted.

Disclaimer: I am the Publicity & Reviews Manager for Split/Lip Press, though I read and reviewed this collection before taking on this position.

[S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Human stories about human folks living in an otherworldly place (Florida). What I love is how the focus on the domestic becomes universal, and exposes how vulnerable we are when trying to connect with each other through “Home,” whatever that is for an individual.

[Andria · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection as purely Floridian as your Popsicle melting before you can eat it, or being swallowed by a sinkhole, or dying because you fell asleep in the back of a van in a parking lot in the middle of June. I loved it.

[✨ Megan ✨ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of this wrenched me hard, but these endings aren't quite there.

[Jess]

NR. Gross girl short stories <3 I was sweating and a little queasy the whole time. Kristen Arnett rocks.

I cannot for the life of me match the titles with the stories but my standouts were: the dead daughter one, the Dunkin Donuts one, the brain disease one, and the church one.

[Clay · Rating 5 out of 5]

I appreciate how descriptive and downright uncomfortable Kristen Arnett’s writing is throughout all of her work. Each individual short story within this collection is enticing and left me ready to read the next one.

[Diana Marie Denza · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really like Kristen Arnett. I read this short story collection after reading her novel, Mostly Dead Things. She really knows how to capture the Florida lesbian/queer experience, and is very good at writing about complicated relationships. I liked how different each short story was - you have suburban housewives having an affair, a divorced lesbian couple with kids, a young lesbian couple trying to have a church wedding, an academic lesbian couple coping with home-ownership, and more.

In the stories, they're navigating relationships with their significant other(s), family members, and themselves. There are also elements of magic and body horror. A loner female neighbor seems to mysteriously seduce a housewife (and everyone else she comes into contact with, for that matter), a spider bite causes a woman crippling pain, a dancer is stricken with a brain disorder...

Arnett showcases many aspects of queer life, not just dealing with homophobia (although that is present, too). It's a must-read, especially for those in Florida.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this! Being from Central Florida, this struck me as a unique take on a place I thought I knew. Like "The Florida Project," it asks us to see a FL behind the Mickey-ears -- in this case, queer families of various social classes, trying to make a life in a landscape that doesn't want them.

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of course I liked this.

[Amy Armstrong · Rating 5 out of 5]

I felt a lot of the stories creep into my dreams and thoughts.

[Jill Pietrantonio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of these stories are haunting me, well after I've finished them.

[Maddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was lovely. It's a collection of problems that are present but never fully realized or identified, both in the characters or in readers (or both). I don't read a lot of realism -- I don't find that I'm a huge fan of people falling out of love/sort of out of love/falling out of love because of an inability to communicate, etc. -- and sure, some of those stories were like that, but I felt like they subverted the type just enough or had a good enough B-plot to stay interesting. I found some parts of this hard to get through. I will say I have never seen images so effortlessly disturbing in writing except for when I read Yoko Ogawa, so that was impressive. There's just a lot of touching moments, or horrifying ones, or moments where the tension was so perfect that I ended up really liking this.

My favorites were "Notice of a Fourth Location" and "The Locusts," mostly because of their gut-punch moments. "A Decline in Natural Numbers" was great at frustrating me with language on purpose, which was fantastic.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this one up after I loved her first novel, Mostly Dead Things. I wanted more Arnett! This collection of short stories reads like a painter’s experimental sketches. Arnett is exploring different women, situations, topics, fleshing out where her interest might lie for further investment. Nonetheless, like many short stories, they stand alone in piquing your interest, even if they leave you feeling an uncomfortable sense of non-closure (in the case of these stories, likely intended).

Arnett has a way of writing emotion and higher level themes, always grounding the stories in visceral meaty details of real life: period blood, insect bites, warm coke, damp pits, hair pins falling out, and so many sweaty beverage glasses in the Florida heat. She has this uncanny ability to notice those details as real parts of life, there behind/supporting the dramatic plot points; she doesn’t gloss over them in pursuit of a larger story. Real things happen in real life, and sometimes you have to stop your “journey” and empty your menstrual cup.

There were a few standout stories for me. The eponymous Felt in the Jaw, weaves together fear of being alone, health scares, and sadness that binds people together. Aberrations in Flight was a metaphor-laden exploration of relationships. And See Also: A History of Glassmaking drags you through details of a day in the life of Patricia, a data entry technician whose Florida life lives up to the strip malls and pitchers of margaritas you’d imagine. Notice of a Fourth Location was also a standout because it was such a “WTF is going on?” story. Next level Arnett.

If you loved Mostly Dead Things (still her best work to-date), give this one a read. If you were on the fence about it, you likely won’t care for these stories. I’m looking forward to her future work! And in the meantime, find her on twitter - she’s on fire over there.

Follow me on Instagram: @brianreadsbooks

[Josh Dale · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. A steady, almost dreamily, read of classic short stories. Themes on motherhood, queerness, and the angst of life are consistent and genuine. The metaphor and imagery are some of the best I’ve seen recently. Some of the characters felt like they could easily fit in other stories, almost like a novel. Reading Arnett’s debut years later was worth it.

[gen d · Rating 4 out of 5]

I LOVED this book. It took me forever to read it but it was so, so good. My favorite story was either the one about the young girl losing her memory or the Blessing of the Animals. Made me laugh and cry.

[Erin McCroskey · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first, I didn’t love the way her short stories ended. Always on a bizarre note without a true resolution. But as I got deeper into the collection, I began to enjoy it along with her ability to transport the reader to the exact scenes.
Overall an enjoyable read.

[Jocelyn H · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kristen Arnett's short story collection, from 2017. Queer Florida stories. Loneliness, isolation, warmth. *3.5

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very strong selection of short stories. This is really more of a 4.5 rating.

[Sar Starr · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this short story collection! Each story did an amazing job building a full character while leaving me wanting for more!

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well macabre is definitely the correct word to use for many of these.