Missing Persons

by Stephanie Carpenter

Missing Persons is the winner of the 2017 Press 53 Prize in Short Fiction. Employing a dazzling range of styles and subject matters, the collection’s ten stories offer glimpses into the lives of ordinary people facing out-of-the-ordinary problems. A street sweeper sends coded messages that a young couple is compelled to decipher. A woman becomes smitten with a living statue. A divorced dad finds himself with an unwanted house guest, after his online date goes wrong. Including speculative, historical, contemporary, and flash pieces, the collection grapples in surprising and illuminating ways with themes of disappearance and loss.

176 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 5, 2018

About the author

Stephanie Carpenter’s first book, Missing Persons, won the Press 53 Award for Short Fiction and was released in Fall 2017. Her prose has appeared in The Missouri Review, Witness, Nimrod, Big Fiction, The Crab Orchard Review and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Syracuse University and a PhD in Creative Writing and American Literature from the University of Missouri. She teaches creative writing and literature at Michigan Tech University, in the northernmost reaches of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Reviews

[Krista · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn’t too sure about this collection when I started it. If I’m being honest, I didn’t really care for the first couple of short stories. They were a little too slice-of-life for my taste. The felt bland and pointless. I kept reading, though, and I found that I enjoyed each successive story a bit more than I did those that came before. Either the storytelling improved or my approach to the writing underwent a metamorphosis. I suspect the latter because the writing did not suggest any significant change in tone, depth, or focus. The author’s voice was distinctive and pleasant. No, the issue early on most likely had more to do with my reading preferences than the craft so skillfully employed. I don’t read a lot of short stories and when I do they tend to be more in the spirit of genre fiction than Literature.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a tremendous collection of short stories from a talented writer. The style is fluid and easy to read, but there is a subtle (or sometimes not so subtle) darkness that permeates many of the stories. With the exception of the almost magical realism of the inventive story about hidden messages delivered by street sweepers, the book is full of compelling, real world premises and characters - every day heroes in ordinary situations that become something more than that. The characters are complex and magnetic, and often sad; you wish for more time to understand them. Many of the stories almost read as potential first chapters of a novel. If we're lucky, maybe one will become a novel some day.

[Joseph Rein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stephanie Carpenter’s collection is a wondrous debut, filled with stories that are uniquely strange and strangely unique. And though there are many actual “missing persons” through the work, the main characters in these ten stories all fit the definition as well, tying them together as they desperately and compellingly search for their own lives.

Carpenter’s collection begins with “Witnesses,” which follows a teenage boy as he navigates the ever-humming Michigan landscape in which many of the stories are set. One of the most fascinating conceits is in the second story, “Living Statues,” when an unnamed protagonist follows a street performer to his home. The exchange between the two highlights the random and often desperate places in which we seek meaning (and the futility that results from such searches).

The most conceptual of the stories is “The Sweeper,” a surrealistic tale that follows a narrator and love interest as they try to decode a deconstructionist message broadcast by mysterious street sweepers. With reminisces of Kafka and Haruki Murakami, this story tackles the loss of humanity through the loss of the very language that connects us.

“Trial Watchers” is a fascinating examination of the ways in which we often despise those who most reflect us. As the protagonist’s sister delves deeper into her obsession over a murder trial, Carpenter astutely parallels the sister’s life with the defendant’s. Like many others in this collection, the story entertains while presenting a pained, often biting view of the circumstances that make us inexplicably human.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read the full review here: http://pageandplate.com/pages/#/missi...

3.5/5

This book was the winner of the Press 53 Award for Short Fiction in 2017, and it's not hard to see why. The stories are eerie and lyrical in a way that makes them sticky in your mind.