Living Things

by Landon Houle

Black Creek, South a small town in the swamps that convinces itself that nothing bad has ever happened and nothing bad ever will. Black Creek is the sort of place where young girls roam the streets free to imagine who they are and who they’ll become. Where women sell pies and plants at the courthouse square. Where the fire department rescues cats from the tops of electric poles. And what trouble there is, they’ll tell you, stays past the town limits, in the run-down house-turned-strip-club and Lake Darpo, where certain birds are going extinct. These eleven closely related portraits show that the real threats have long taken root. Black Creek is a place of poignancy and absurdity, love and loss, loneliness and the brief charges of connection. Its residents will do almost anything to protect what they think is theirs.

Genres: Fiction

232 pages, Paperback

Published October 8, 2019

Reviews

[Leslie P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a short book comprised of a series of short stories that contain interconnecting characters. The central theme running through all of the stories is the small, almost gothic, southern town in which they are set. While I found myself not liking really any of the characters very much, I thought the writing was quite expressive and a good representative for the voices depicted. I would recommend this book, especially if the reader is familiar with small southern towns, it will ring true.

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did enjoy this book; however, I wasn't expecting it to read like a book of short stories. The individual stories, however, were all connected and kept me engaged. Believeable accounts of small town living, not only in the deep south.