Moonflower, Nightshade, All the Hours of the Day

by J.D. Scott

Winner of the 2018 Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writer’s Residency Prize.

The sly fabulism of JD Scott’s fiction casts its own peculiar spell upon the reader as it outlines a world unsettlingly similar to our own. Scott troubles the line between what is literary and genre, fairy tale and parable. In one story, a perfumer keeps his boyfriend close-at-hand by dosing him with precise measures of poison. In another, a comical domestic drama hinges upon the life and death of an ancient chinchilla. Scott pushes liminality with magical scrolls, a drowned twin returning from the sea, and a witty retelling of the Crucifixion where a gym bunny chops down a tree in the Garden of Eden—only to transform the wood into a cross for himself. This debut collection ends with an epic novella where a heroic teenager comes of age inside an otherworldly shopping mall that spans the entire globe. Visceral, dreamlike, and full of dazzling prose: Moonflower, Nightshade, All the Hours of the Day announces the arrival of a distinctive talent who challenges us to see our own endless possibilities—to find luminescence inside and beyond the shadows.

"I was immediately smitten with the idea of the queer body as an epistemological site, as well as a real place where narrative meanings are generated and negated endlessly. The prose is breathtaking as it weaves its way through what appears to be real and then beyond, challenging what we mean by plot in the best ways. I am thrilled to imagine what innovations this writer can conjure."
—Lidia Yuknavitch, Plonsker Prize Judge

"The stories contained in Moonflower, Nightshade, All the Hours of the Day are true bursts of light. JD Scott has curated a collection that takes all the wild magic of youth and love and transformed it into tender aches, beautiful little pains. The stories sit lodged in your chest and refuse to leave. Compulsively readable and immaculately written, Scott has honed their incredible craft into a book that readers will return to again and again."
—Kristen Arnett, author of Mostly Dead Things

"I didn’t read JD Scott’s vivid and visceral collection Moonflower, Nightshade, All the Hours of the Day as much as I absorbed it. Scales sloughed from my eyes. These richly saturated fictions flood the senses endlessly and everywhere. Look, there are new blues! See, there is a spectrum of ultra and infra delights! Not since Edmund White’s Nocturnes for the King of Naples have I felt so steeped, immersed, swaddled in liquid syntactical fictive maps, scaled to disorientated worlds of words more detailed than the things they represent. This light is all osmotic. These fictions, I see, make me see to see."
—Michael Martone, author of Brooding and The Moon Over Wapakoneta

"This strikingly original collection is at once magical and achingly real, distinctive in its formal invention and its sly, inviting wit. Scott’s characters grapple with loss and desolation, but this is also a book about possibility and transformation. Moonflower, Nightshade, All the Hours of the Day marks the arrival of a major new talent."
—Dawn Raffel, author of The Strange Case of Dr. Couney

Genres: Short Stories, Fantasy, LGBT, Fiction

236 pages, Paperback

First published April 3, 2020

About the author

JD Scott is the author of Moonflower, Nightshade, All the Hours of the Day (&NOW Books, 2020), a debut short story collection which won the 2018 Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writer’s Residency Prize. Their debut poetry collection, Mask for Mask, is forthcoming from New Rivers Press in 2021. Scott has also authored two poetry chapbooks: FUNERALS & THRONES (Birds of Lace Press, 2013) and Night Errands (YellowJacket Press, 2012), which was the winner of the 2011 Peter Meinke Prize. Scott’s prose and poems has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Indiana Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Ninth Letter, Salt Hill, Sonora Review, The Pinch, Spoon River Poetry Review, Bayou, and elsewhere. Other writing has been featured in the Best American Experimental Writing and Best New Poets anthologies. Scott’s accolades include being awarded a Lambda Emerging LGBTQ Voices fellowship, attending the Poetry Foundation’s inaugural Poetry Incubator, and being awarded residencies at the Millay Colony, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, and Writers at the Eyrie. Scott holds an MFA from the University of Alabama, where they edited and designed for Black Warrior Review.

Reviews

[J.D. Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

This rating might be slightly influenced by personal bias. I never thought I would be one of those "rates their own book five stars on Goodreads" people, but here we are. There are ten stories in this collection, and I wrote one of them for you. I hope you find it and that it calls to you.

[Irene ➰ · Rating 3 out of 5]

2,64/5

Single story ratings:

The Teenager: 2.7/5
Chinchilla: 3/5
The Hand that Sews: 3/5
Cross: 1/5
Moonflower, Nightshade: 4.5/5
Where Parallel Lines Come to Touch: 3.5/5
Night Things: 3/5
Their Sons Return Home to Die: 2.5/5
After the End Came the Mall, and the Mall Was Everything: 4.2/5
Fordite Pendant: 1.5/5

General Thoughts:

This book was definitely a different read for me. I was pretty excited to start it but ended up with mixed feelings.
I’ll explain. Every story is completely different and the arguments are very various. There are different worlds and some are real worlds, others are fantasy settings.
In each, there’s a main protagonist dealing with (for what I understood) a life difficulty of different type.
Some of them were interesting and fun to read, others were all over the places, that’s why I have huge mixed feelings.
The most interesting was the second to last one, this world made just of shopping centers was so absurd and scary at the same time, but my absolute favorite remains the one that gave the title to this book.

I think that the least you know about this book the better you will enjoy this journey. It’s definitely a different book and definitely not for everyone, but it was still interesting to explore.
Hands down to the writing style, that was awesome!

[Juan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars overall; some of these stories struck a perfect balance between fabulism and thematic elements, others felt like they just had nothing to say. Some of these are very strong for a debut author, though, and I'd be curious to pick up another collection by J.D. Scott in the future.

- The Teenager - 3
- Chinchilla - N/A
- The Hand That Sews - 5
- Cross - 4
- Moonflower, Nightshade, All Hours of the Day - 4
- When Parallel Lines Come to Touch - 2
- Night Things - 3
- Their Sons Return Home to Die - 2
- After the End Came the Mall, and the Mall Was Everything - 4
- Fordite Pendant - 3

Note: I did not read Chinchilla, not because anything was inherently wrong with it but just because I'm not prepared to read about the death of a pet right now. Or ever, really.

[Briar Page · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can tell a poet wrote these stories; I love their language even in the one or two tales that don't hang together quite as well as I'd like them to. The range of subject matter and tone on display here also deserves applause. Kinda reminds me of Kelly Link, but with more focus on gay characters and a more experimental/unconventional prose style.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I met JD Scott at the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices, during the summer of 2018. The retreat took place on a boxy college campus in Los Angeles, a city that I know is home to real people living real lives, but nevertheless felt like an island off the coast of reality. In my memory, it was always sunny except for when we illegally drank wine on a deck with graffiti walls and the stars as our ceiling. We slept in dorm rooms, made friends over tater tots and plastic trays, and lost each other in arcade rooms on the Santa Monica Pier.

The stories in Scott’s new collection, Moonflower, Nightshade, All the Hours of the Day, feel like islands in that same sea, each with their own rules, magic, and hungers. Unpredictable characters guide readers through these worlds, and Scott’s poetic prose shapes a luscious landscape. The collection, selected by Lidia Yuknavitch for the 2018 Madeleine P. Plonsker Prize, is full of wonder and fear, pain and pleasure. It is also full of absurd, dark humor. JD Scott is laugh-out-loud funny.

Through theme and setting, Scott builds bridges to other writers of the ongoing Florida literary renaissance: Karen Russell, Kristen Arnett, Lauren Groff, and Laura van den Berg. The collection is also a spectacular addition to the queer literary canon. It explores the intersection between queerness and fabulism, and toys with the places and tools we use to escape a world that can never be wholly our own. As a queer reader, it was so easy to get lost in these stories; it was just as easy to find myself there.

[Serpent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily my favorite read of 2020. I leaned on this book this year as a portal to other worlds that felt lush, challenging, and teeming with possibility. The stories in this collection are enchanting, reverently irreverent, often darkly humorous, and always startling beautiful. I think most people would find Moonflower, Nightshade, All the Hours of the Day a striking read, but as I've been describing it, it's a collection especially well-suited for us GOTHS (Gay, Online, They/Them/ Hotties). These stories examine queer joy and playfulness alongside spellbinding conflicts, crises, and transformations (or refusals of such).

I honestly can't pick a favorite story. I love each and every one of these strange and innovative beauties. I'm excitedly awaiting J.D. Scott's poetry collection release in 2021 and until then I will continue to revisit my beloved copy of Moonflower.

[Bill Hsu · Rating 2 out of 5]

This has some charming ideas and characters. Unfortunately, I really didn't care for how the ideas were developed, and the writing.

[Avery Mead · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a terrific collection of stories that bend the lines between reality and fantasy. Beautiful imagery and symbolism root these tales and leave the reader feeling transported. Great debut! Can’t wait to see what this writer does next.

[Silas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scott has created a dozen stories, some of them more grounded in reality than others. Some have genre fic elements (more fantasy and horror than science fiction). If you are a reader who prefers minimal prose, this story collection may not be for you, although it was for me. Scott is clearly a poet in disguise and does not believe in suppressing poetry in fiction. The lines are absolutely gorgeous. There are moments where the stories are mysterious and leave much to the imagination, and moments where everything feels rendered in 4K with stunnning imagery. You can experience every sense to an intense degree. The writer also has a good diverse case with many LGBT characters.

Some stories are a little stranger and harder to talk about (the crucifixion story and the angels one), while some stories are more slice-of-life and easier to understand (the chinchilla one). I had picked up the ebook on Itch during a sale. I googled it and saw some article about a fantasy mall story in the collection that was good (it's the longest story in the book and appears toward the end) and I took a chance.

The mall story is like nothing I've ever read before, in the best way possible. It's part YA (teen coming of age and trying to figure out life), part fantasy (or at least fantasy tropes being toyed with), part poem, part video game, but also something original and new. I found myself just staring at the ceiling after I read it trying to figure out exactly what I read and why it moved me so much. I'm still trying to find the words.

Ultimately, this is a very strange and under-the-radar story collection that I wish more people knew about. It's experimental but not too much and slipstream but not too much. It's super duper lyrical. It was not anything like I was expecting, but it also supprassed my expectations. I think Scott is a talent to be reckoned with and someone people should be keeping an eye on. I hope they're working on a novel based on what they demonstrated in the mall story, because there is so much promise here.

I cannot wait to see what this author does next.

[•°• gabs •°• · Rating 3 out of 5]

e-ARC provided by NetGalley but all opinions are my own.

"Mina does this thing, sometimes, where she looks like she's glaring right at you, but you know she's glaring ten, twenty years into the past."

uf, where do i start with this? i've struggled a bit with the rating to be honest, because i was torn between 3 and 4 stars. the thing about collections of short stories and anthologies is that there can be stories you really like, and others you really don't. so where does that leave you?

i rated each story individually as i was reading and they look like this:
the teenager - 2/5
chincilla - 3.5/5
the hand that sews - 3.5/5
cross - 2/5 (only for "just got resurrected, lol")
moonflower, nightshade, all the hours of the day - 4/5
where parallel lines come to touch - 3.5/5
night things - 4/5 (reminded me a little of siken)
their sons return home to die - 3/5
after the end came the mall, and the mall was everything - 3.5/5
fordite pendant - 1.5/5

now, what i can say without a doubt is that the writing style is really beautiful. there are so many quotes that made me gasp and made me feel, you know. but the problem is, where they were supposed to be eerie and whimsical, they ended up being confusing and weird. at least from my subjective pov.

however, i loved the diversity in this, queer and poc, and the relationships between the characters, like the twins from "where parallel lines come to touch" and mina and joshua from "after the end came the mall, and the mall was everything", and as i said before, i really liked the writing style, very metaphorical and beautiful, which is why you should read this.

[Harri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moonflower, Nightshade, All the Hours of the Day is a collection of short stories written by J.D. Scott. There are ten stories in total, each one very different from the last, although there are common themes and topics that recur throughout the collection. Some of the stories are quite short, others are longer. The longest story is 'After The End Came The Mall, And The Mall Was Everything', which in my opinion felt quite different from the other stories in the collection.

Scott has a way with words that really makes this book unique. A way of describing things that makes them feel unreal, even if what is being described is completely normal. And then truly surreal things are woven in. I spent a lot of the time I was reading this book not really knowing where I stood, not knowing for certain what was real and what was metaphorical, or a dream or delusion. The whole book was like a strange dream.

All of the stories have an eerie feeling, a dream like quality. We see humanity in all of its weirdness and mundanity. Human connections and disconnections. Love and loss. Explorations of death. Ghosts and the occult show up in more than one of the story, as well as dreams and delusions. There's even a science fiction fantasy dystopian capitalist society, and a bizarre retelling of the Christian Easter.

My ratings for each story individually are as follows:

The Teenager 3/5

Chinchilla 4/5

The Hand That Sews 5/5

Cross 3/5

Moonflower, Nightshade, All The Hours Of The Day 5/5

Where Parallel Lines Come To Touch 5/5

Night Things 3/5

Their Sons Return Home To Die 4/5

After The End Came The Mall, And The Mall Was Everything 4/5

Fordite Pendant 3/5

My overall rating for this book is 4/5. It's an interesting collection of stories that takes the reader on a dream like experience, and really makes you think. I certainly wouldn't consider it easy reading material! It takes some time and some thinking about, but it is well worth a read.

[Rae's Reading Corner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this to be a very interesting collection of stories. The writing was completely mesmerising and brilliant, the mix of genres throughout was a great choice as there is at least story for everyone in this collection. Some of the wording and quotations I read in this book made me so envious of the author, they were so beautiful and cleverly constructed, I almost gasped and wanted to read the same lines over and over again.

Some of my favourites included:
Where Parallel Lines Come to Touch
- A wonderfully emotional story of loss, memories and letting go.
Night Things
- An eerie tale that kept me on my toes wanting to read on
Their Sons Return Home to Die
- a unique story bound in the author's beautiful writing.

Each story within this collection is different, from genres ranging from sci-fi and thriller to love and romance. I found some to be more enjoyable to read than others but I think that's the best thing about this book, although I may not have enjoyed a story or two, others might absolutely love them!

It's new and unique, it may not be for everyone but it was for me!

[Carlos Silva · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really interesting collection of short stories that lean towards the magical realism genre. The prose is absolutely beautiful, and the metaphors are alluring. It feels like walking through a garden and each word you read is a flower you pick and take the time to smell. Maybe that’s why I took such a long time with this book. Even though most stories were about 10, 20 pages long, I found myself rereading whole paragraphs – sometimes even whole pages.

I couldn’t help but compare the writing to Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Cycle. There was something about the magic in the words that just reminded me of that series.

Even after weeks, I still think about the third story, “The Hand that Sews”. Such a powerful and compelling read! “Chinchilla”, “Cross” , and “Where Parallel Lines Come to Touch” were also delightful.

J. D. Scott is to release a poetry book in 2021 and I’ll definitely look out for that one as well. Thanks to the publisher for granting me an e-ARC of this book through NetGalley!

[Ds Oswald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rating this five stars purely for the reason that I would like more books like it, though litfic is very out of my wheelhouse and I didn't enjoy every story. It feels like the author was considering language very heavily during the writing--like they wanted to push at the boundaries of good prose. The result often feels hallucinatory in an interesting way and the fantastical elements enhance the effect. I do think that the collection should have led with its third story instead, because that was the one that hooked me + made me think ok this writer has something to contribute (sorry to teenager and chinchilla, especially to chinchilla which could be very funny but they were not my faves). I appreciated that the author did their own cover design, samesies. There are several copyediting errors which took me a fair bit out of the reading experience, but mostly because I am a weirdo and I want to see every book be lovingly copy edited. Will be telling my more literary minded friends to give it a shot

[Kathy_reads · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm really sorry to rate this one so low but it wasn't my cup of tea at all. The writing style is unique but very very confusing. And I think because it is kind of weird there are a lot of people who would enjoy it, unfortunately I am not one of them.
This book is a collection of 10 short stories and every story follows different characters and settings. Though every character has a different conflict that they are dealing with.
Little parts of the book were amazing because some quotes gave me goosebumps but overall I was just confused and not really enjoying it so I stopped after story number 2

[Allyssa (Book Ally) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sadly I had to dnf this book but it is no way due to the book being bad or badly written in fact I found the writing to be gorgeous and the stories I did read really did evoke alot of emotions for me.

I have just come to realise this will be the final short stories collection I will read/try to read because I can now say they are not for me.

If however you do enjoy short stories I would highly recommend this book as I said the writing is so beautiful and the stories are very deep and somewhat magical or have magical realism.

The ones I read were on the darker side but I still did enjoy and could relate. If this author wrote a novel I would 100% read it and probably love it!

[Kyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of short stories.
Some of the stories I really enjoyed and others I didn't really understand at all. Some of them seemed to have no clear theme or aim to where the story was going and when they ended, it seemed like it could have been anywhere in the story instead of the end. Almost like it was a snippet of the middle of a story, instead of a complete short story.

However, there were some stories that I really enjoyed. For example 'After the end came the mall, and the mall was everything' was probably my favourite story from the whole collection. It was longer than the others and was very gripping from the start. It was well written and very creative.

[Andi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you NetGalley.

I tried and tried to read this book and I couldn't get into it. I went back to it many times and wanted to love this book because it was different and intriguing. But it just wasn't happening for me. I have a hard time getting into books in general and getting to know the characters, so short stories are harder for me with less character and story building.

[pejowalker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a collection of short stories and a novella. The stories are from a variety of genres and cover a lot of different themes.
I really enjoyed reading this book. The stories are original and entertaining. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading short story collections.



Disclosure:I received a copy of this book from netgalley. The views expressed are completely my own.

[Claire James Carroll · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the real deal! These stories are beautiful and I hate the word "poignant" in reviews, but they are poignant! They are surreal and care so much about sound with J.D.'s poet's sensibilities. There are so many lines in this book that I know I will come back to again and again as I reframe my own ideas about what it means to be lonely or loved or with purpose. I am so grateful and can't wait to see what comes next from J.D!

[Lindsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredible collection, a prime example of queering the narrative. The prose is poetic and as imaginative as the storylines themselves, which are full of fascinating characters and worlds that resemble our own to varying degrees, but are never quite as ordinary. I highly recommend this book to fans of Kelly Link, Karen Russell, and the like.

[Stephanie W · Rating 4 out of 5]

Something for everyone. Each story in this collection, possess the ability to pull you in.

An imagination full of possibilities. Take your mind on a playful journey.

**I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.**

[Gareth Jones-Jenkins]

dnf after 1st story sorry

[Jackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Netgalley preview book- very interesting book of short stories. Some are weird, some are moving and some are just plain entertaining. Really enjoyed this, but I can’t lie- it is an unusual book.

[Sara Habein · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this, but especially the second to last (and the longest) story, set in a mall-as-civilization with magic.

[WBTM BOOKSHELF]

Vaporwave, Malls, and Reimagining Genre: An Interview With JD Scott
https://www.vol1brooklyn.com/2020/05/...

[Landice (Manic Femme)]

Currently DNF'd at 29%, but might return and finish later. I would like to note from the get go that I'm DNFing more out of personal preference than because I think the book is inherently bad.

I try really, really hard to never DNF books, especially those I have review copies for, but after four months of trying to wade through Moonflower, Nightshade, All the Hours of the Day, I think it's going to become the first ARC I've DNFed.

I think I might have been able to finish if the collection had been shorter, but, as is, many of the stories, as well as the book itself felt too long to me, at least compared to other short story collections I've enjoyed in the past. Even when I read for fairly large chunks of time, I never seemed to make any progress, which quickly became frustrating and eventually led to me avoiding the book altogether, which is never a good sign.

Rating this 3 stars despite DNF, because the writing overall wasn't bad, and I at least moderately enjoyed most of the stories I read. Some of the writing was brilliant, but other times, it felt clunky and superfluous.

I would be interested in checking out Scott's future writing, especially longer work like novellas or even novels. There were several stories I read in here that I would have been interested in diving further into. I think The Hand That Sews, in particular, was worth exploring further and would make an excellent novella. I still have the collection on my Kindle, so I might return to it at some point and finish, at which point I'll update this review, but to be honest, probably not any time soon.

ARC Note: Thank you to Netgalley & NOW Books for the advance review copy. All opinions are my own.

[Carlos B · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like a book with great variety (duh, it's short-stories), but this one was very playful, elegant, a little kinky. These dreamscape stories have the magic of the unknown in common, which is treated with a sort of reverence(?). It gets poetic at those junctures and outskirts in order to present them.

I like to review things by pointing out lines that strike a note (for me at least). So, 10 stories, in order (spoi-ler don't care):

(1/10) "Be rich. Grow up. Be white. Be tall. Be a man. Be blameless. Only fuck up when no one is watching. Or fuck up in public if you hold the power." "...the math of blood, this thirst to destroy himself and all others."

(2/10) "I spent the rest of the night brushing blow off [the chinchilla's] little corpse." "The express train from Halloween to the new year. This felt like the good death, the change I needed. I became obsessed with these ideas--about how healing capitalism could be for the soul--the safety of familiar chain stores."

(3/10) "This was my calculation: for that desirable room to never hold any desire." "I would ask the earth to swallow entire cities whole if only my son was spared. It's something I feel deep in my chest, moving back toward my shoulder blades."

(4/10) "I go to do the sign of the cross before I remember I'm not religious, so my hand just circles my chest to make an infinity sign." "I take a selfie with the flash. I send it to my cat-sitter friend. BE BACK SOON. JUST WAS RESURRECTED, LoL."

(5/10) "Like marrow I know he keeps me for how well I take care of him. I'm inside. Every bone needs marrow." "You can only be so careful, so clever. You get lazy. Small parts of your start to believe in justice, wanting him to figure out what you've been doing to him all these years."

(6/10) "...red tide, what it does to the fish. What the fish do to humans. A cycle, all of it. Water and waves." "Someone else was auditing, counting the dead, bringing back the one who got away for an ebb. Perhaps there are none who sneak away--only ones who are lent."

(7/10) "...like the Ouroboros that eats itself forever. He focused on the act of focusing. Is this what it meant to meditate?" "He imagined Zaza wrapping that long white [bird] across her altar, flies summoned over sugar, dead snails, birdneck. Some god was being pacified or summoned. Some world was being saved or savored in secret."

(8/10) "The sons believe they need to go earthbound for their deaths to have meaning." "For one fragment between heaven and earth our eyes meet in the dark room of the son's body."

(9/10) "I've spent my entire life being issued warnings: warnings about the dead parts of the mall where other creatures live, where beings with powers beyond humanity take you away, gobble you up. They say: buy. They say: build. They say spend your money, grow your business, live your life or the magic will devour you."

(10/10) "America is a flower coming to bruise." "The center of the bed is a funnel that I descend through. The sheet is rock and that rock is just lithospheric layers laced with color: mandarin orange, champagne, deep cherry, black, forest green.... All the gorgeous shimmer of cars is there, in the core of the earth that calls me down into its hot interior."

[Avalon Love · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you’re into magical realism fueled by hallucinations, this is probably for you. A man going on holiday to get crucified, but he’ll be back when he rises. The future world is entirely built upon a network of never ending shopping malls that constantly change form. A spiritual shaman (or homeless man?) lives in the woods... and he’ll take your shoes. Read it for yourself and see.

[Chaya · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's difficult to give one clear rating to an anthology - I settled on four stars because some stories absolutely blew me away, and some were a bit lackluster.

Overall, I found this an engaging collection of short stories, and would read more from the author in the future.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.