Nobody Gets Out Alive: Stories

by Leigh Newman

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD AND THE STORY PRIZE

Named a BEST BOOK OF 2022 by Oprah Daily , Vogue , Kirkus Reviews , Library Journal , and Electric Lit

From a prizewinning author comes an “electric...stunning” ( Publishers Weekly , starred review) debut story collection about women navigating the wilds of male-dominated Alaskan society.

Set in Newman’s home state of Alaska, Nobody Gets Out Alive is an exhilarating collection about women struggling to survive not just grizzly bears and charging moose, but the raw legacy of their marriages and families.

Alongside stories set in today’s Last Frontier—rife with suburban sprawl, global warming, and opioid addiction—Newman delves into remote wilderness of the 1970s and 80s, bringing to life young girls and single moms in search of a wilder, freer, more adventurous America. The final story takes place in a railroad camp in 1915, where an outspoken heiress stages an elaborate theatrical production in order to seduce the wife of her husband’s employer.

“Rich with wit and wisdom, showing us that love, marriage, and family are always a bigger and more perilous adventures than backcountry trips” ( Kirkus Reviews , starred review), these keenly observed stories prove there are some questions—about love, heartbreak, and the meaning of home—that can’t be outrun, no matter how hard we try. Nobody Gets Out Alive is a dazzling foil to the adventure narratives of old.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Nature, Book Club, Anthologies

288 pages, Paperback

First published April 12, 2022

About the author

Leigh Newman’s story collection NOBODY GETS OUT ALIVE is forthcoming in April 2022 from Scribner. Her memoir about growing up in Alaska, STILL POINTS NORTH was a finalist for the National Book Critic Circle’s John Leonard prize. Her stories have appeared in Harper’s,The Paris Review, One Story, Tin House, Electric Literature and McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern and have been awarded the Pushcart and the American Society of Magazine Editor's fiction prizes, as well as selected for Best American Short Stories anthology. In 2020, she received f the Paris Review’s Terry Southern Prize for “humor, wit, and sprezzatura.”

Reviews

[Sujoya - theoverbookedbibliophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall rating: 4⭐️

“I was unsettled. I was not right. This is a condition that many people experience after arriving in Alaska. Nothing here is fixed, nothing is any better. Where is there left to go, except out of your mind?”

Nobody Gets Out Alive by Leigh Newman is a collection of eight compelling short stories mostly featuring strong female protagonists. Newman’s stories are powerful and versatile in theme, tone and scope. While some of the stories are set in Alaska, others have characters who have once lived in Alaska but still have ties to their hometowns despite having moved on. Though a few characters appear in more than one story, the stories themselves are standalone.

The first story Howl Palace features a sixty-seven-year-old widow, Dutch, who is preparing to sell her home of “Forty-three years. Five husbands. Two floatplanes. A lifetime”, on account of financial difficulty. As in most cases of homes built in that terrain, the new owners would probably raze the existing structure to the ground- a fact she is unable to reconcile with. She is particularly sentimental about her “wolf room”, which was once to be a nursery, but now houses 387 pelts of fur on pegs. (5/5)

In High Jinks, we meet two friends, Jaime and Katrina, on a father-daughter float trip, each searching for solace from their dysfunctional family situations in the other’s family only to realize that no family is as perfect as it appears from the outside. (4/5)

In the title story, Nobody Gets Out Alive we meet Katrina once again, newly married to Carter, and Katrina’s friend Neil and his wife Janice. Carter’s impressions of life in Alaska and Katrina’s family are not quite what he had expected. Adding to that is the fact that Neil quite obviously has unresolved feelings for Katrina. (3.5/5)

My personal favorite, Alcan: An Oral History takes us back to 1975 when two fresh graduates, Maggie and Danielle, and a single mother with her two children, Janice and Kevin, cross paths on their way to Alaska, each hoping for brighter prospects. The events that follow significantly change their plans and their lives. Told from multiple perspectives, this story truly stands out. (5/5)

Slide and Glide revolves around a man’s efforts to save his marriage. However, a planned trip to a remote cabin leads to only more disappointment as he realizes there is not much he can do to salvage his relationship with his wife(3.5/5)

In Valley of the Moon Jaime and her younger sister, Becca, now adults, meet up in a wine bar and recount events from their childhood- their parents’ marriage, separation and divorce and the toll it took on their relationship and also reflect upon complexities in their present lives. (4/5)

Our Family Fortune Teller revolves around a fifty-six-year-old unnamed fortune teller/clairvoyant who fears being evicted by her new landlord. She spends her days recalling events from her past and catering to her best (and now only) client, “CFO of a small, local corporation that peddles opiates to people with imaginary back problems through a chain of legal “pain-management” clinics”, who is having trouble with her son who is exhibiting delinquent behavior. (4/5)

An Extravaganza in Two Acts takes us back in time to a tent city in 1915, later to become Anchorage, where we meet people employed in the Ship Creek railway camp among whom is twenty-six-year-old Walter. Walter is accompanied by an affluent heiress, Genevieve whose brash and reckless behavior has landed her in trouble in the past. Her attraction for Hazel, wife of Walter’s boss leads to a complicated situation that impacts the lives of all concerned. (4/5)

My initial interest in this book was because of the Alaskan setting which piqued my curiosity. But Newman’s powerful writing, complex characters and realistic depiction of relationships drew me in. The author tackles a wide range of themes such as dysfunctional families, marriage, divorce and infidelity, abuse, mental health, substance abuse and depression. While there are moments of humor and wisdom, there are also moments of hardship, grief, isolation and despair. A running theme in these stories is that of survival- not just the challenges of life in the harsh landscape of Alaska but survival against all the odds that life throws your way. I enjoyed the stories set in different eras, which also gives us a historical perspective. Each of these stories warrants pause and reflection and is well worth the time invested.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed reading these stories and look forward to more from this author in the future.

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I WON A GOODREADS GIVEAWAY!! HOORAY!!

Your average happy person didn't last in Alaska. It was too much work not to die all the time.

i was going to do that exhausting thing where i review all of the stories individually, but there are only eight of them, and since the collection folds over itself, visiting some of the characters at different points in their lives, it's more like a location-specific The Candy House-shaped book, where the stories are linked-but-standalones, so i'll just star-rate the stories separately and review the collection in toto.

short stories don't always do it for me, but i thought this was an excellent collection, and my ARC is now full of dog-eared pages signifying a phrasing or description i particularly liked. the stories are set across different points across time, tied together by the romance, the promise, the mythology, and the reality of living in alaska, and the types of people drawn to a life off the grid.

I have a radio. Bland, official fuzz from NPR informs me of Obamacare, Social Security, the new Section 8 housing the city is building. I do not know how to do any of this: what forms you fill out, what websites will prove you were alive before you blew off the edge of the world into human vapor. I am fifty-six, and no official trace of me exists.

when i read the synopsis of this book, i thought the whole "survival against the unforgiving wilderness" thing would be a more prominent theme, but it's more about emotional/psychological than physical survival; the conflicts are "anywhere" kind of problems—infidelity, loneliness, regret, scraping by—but the juxtaposition of alaska's stark and beautiful natural landscapes backdropping the tumultuous inner lives of the characters was a nice contrast. nature doesn't give a shit about your failing marriage—nature just quietly, stoically endures whilst you live out your comparatively tiny struggles. newman, whose characters manage to get by with limited financial, social, or actual, life-sustaining resources, also makes the most of her prose, conveying so much with succinct little phrasings:

A little dead light explodes in her heart.

or

Her face scrambled.

but she also gets to the center of her characters' hopes and disappointments with chewier prose:

"Think about it this way," said Benny. "We live or die together." I was nineteen by then and he was the age I am now—sixty-seven. I held on to his words as though they were special to our situation, not an agreement you enter into with every person you ever care about. Even just in passing.

and

She knew me so well...and still. I knew her so well...and still. Were these twin snowflakes of delusion the only reason we were even married—believing that one amazing day, either she or I would finally do something so unlike ourselves that we would finally make the other happy?

i mean, "twin snowflakes of delusion" is a bit much, IMO, but the way she unveils the weary resignation of that story's relationship is otherwise extraordinary.

Alcan, An Oral History is the longest story and the collection's standout piece—a swerving, heart-scooping emotional road trip that is, indeed, about the convergence of two differently-motivated road trips. it's long, but it still leaves questions tantalizingly unanswered. since so many characters pop up in multiple stories throughout the collection, i was hoping that some of these alcan-travelers would pop up again in a later story to fill in some blanks, but alas(ka), 'twas not to be.

i'm glad i won this through the goodreads giveaways, because if i hadn't felt the gratitude-fueled pressure to read it within a reasonable timeframe, it would likely have just sat on my shelf collecting dust, because i'm just never hungry for short stories, and on the rare-ish occasions i DO pick up a short story collection, it'll be one by an author i have already read and enjoyed, not some stranger-danger risky-read. so, thank you to the gr-gods for forcing this debut collection into my hands. if anyone is reading this, the book is NOW AVAILABLE because i am slow at reviewing these days. argh.

Howl Palace
★★★☆☆ (but ★★★★★ for that title)

High Jinks
★★★★☆

Nobody Gets Out Alive
★★★☆☆

Alcan, An Oral History
★★★★★

Slide and Glide
★★★★☆

Valley of the Moon
★★★★★

Our Family Fortune Teller
★★★★☆

An Extravaganza in Two Acts
★★★★☆

come to my blog!

[Zibby Owens · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the most amazing, well-written collection of stories I’ve ever read. There are many stories about marriage in this collection. This collection is unique because the stories are set in Alaska about women struggling to survive grizzly bears, the elements and charging moose, and the raw, exhausting legacy of their marriages and families.

One tale, "The Alcan, an Oral History," didn't even feel like a short story. It felt like a whole novel because it was about a road trip with five different people from five different perspectives. Most Alaska books show the frontier from a male POV, but this collection lets us experience Alaska from a female point of view, whether through a mother, a daughter, or best friends. I found myself relating to different people in all of the stories. In Nobody Gets Out Alive, I loved the opening sentence, "My brother and I didn't grow up religious." Nobody Gets Out Alive is, "Getting past the mastodon took planning."

To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
https://zibbyowens.com/transcript/lei...

[Justin Pickett · Rating 2 out of 5]

I cannot say that I enjoyed any of these stories. Only one was okay (“Our Family Fortune-Teller”), the rest were annoying, and some were just bad. This is coming from someone who has always been drawn toward Alaska and had an interest in stories set therein.

Many things about the stories were irritating (e.g., the tone of the writing, the lack of linearity, focus, or coherent organization). What irritated me the most, however, was the inclusion in almost every story of some obnoxious, crude, unnecessary reference to sex. I’m not a prude, nor am I averse to sex in stories. But when it isn’t helpful to the story and/or doesn’t fit the setting or characters, it becomes bothersome and distracting. Some examples:

“‘Anal sex … He won’t even try it’ … ‘If you want anal sex, Candance … just drive yourself down to Las Margaritas, pick some guy on his third tequila, and go for it’” (pp. 10-11).

“Suck my dick,’ says Katrina; ‘Lesbo,’ says Jamie; ‘Dildo-dingleberry-asswipe’ … moaning into her hairbrush-microphone as if it was a big, thick, bristly penis” (pp. 28-29, 31).

“I was a cunt-bag ass toy!” (p. 68).

“She got down on her knees. She wedged her hands between his thighs and pried them open … His hard-on arrived without his desire—or consent” (p. 74).

“The kids were sleeping like kittens on either side of us. I shifted with my hip, right up behind her—and I could have just slid in … I tried not to feel my stiffness, the little hot cleft of wetness I was already half-nudged into … My woody was gone. I spit in my hand and brought it back to life” (pp. 170-171).

“How she drank pineapple juice to make her twat taste better” (p. 186).

“That she would pleasure herself a few hours into their pretense of a marriage is hardly a surprise … Her technique, however, is almost disappointing … A sash of her hand, a rumple of kimono, and she is finished” (pp. 237-238).

[Darryl Suite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this, loved this, loved this. This is why I read short stories. Impressive writer. Every story is a banger.

[Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 Stars for Nobody Gets Out Alive: Stories (audiobook) by Leigh Newman read by Carlotta Brentan and Erin deWard.

This was an interesting set of short stories about strong women trying to survive in and around Alaska.

[Theresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Nobody Gets Out Alive" was a very fun and interesting short story collection. I LOVE reading short stories, they are so underrated. There were only 2 stories I didn't connect with, but the others I enjoyed very much. I think my favorite was "Slide and Glide" which is about a flaky husband fearing his wife is cheating on him. "Valley of the Moon" is about 2 sisters grappling with their traumatic childhood. The ending was absolutely heartbreaking. Some of the characters in previous stories pop up in other stories. The opener, "Howl Palace" is about an older woman forced to sell her beloved house because of financial difficulties. All the stories take place in the Alaskan wilderness. You could really feel the writer's love for Alaska and her gripes with the state as well. A very honest and unflinching look at life in a rural town. The characters deal with infidelity, drug use, mental illness, nosy neighbors, etc. Leigh Newman's writing style is beautiful and has a cinematic feel. I'll definitely be reading more from her in the future.

Thank you, Netgalley and Scribner for the digital ARC.

[Betsy Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 2020, author Leigh Newman won a short story prize called Paris Review’s Terry Southern Prize for “humor, wit, and sprezzatura.” I had to look up the last word. Sprezzatura: Italian, from a Baldassare Castiglione book, “a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it.” Sprezzatura is the perfect description of Newman’s work.

Eight short stories, all about Alaskans or people running to Alaska, are stunning. My favorites are the ones (I’m not sure how many; maybe the first four, but to be sure of that, I’d have to check that no characters are repeated later) that intertwine almost like a novella, exploring repeating characters at different times in their lives. I was absolutely riveted, on the edge of my seat for the culmination of the fourth story, which felt like an unpredictable end of a huge saga.

What an exciting work of art Leigh Newman has birthed.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every story in this collection is perfection. Highly recommended for my short fiction fan friends.

[Bandit · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are crappy books out there and then there are good books you just don’t jell with. I pride myself on being able to tell the difference and this one firmly lands in the latter camp. Disappointing really, because it arrives on the wave of so much praise, the first few pages are just praise, how great it is, how brutally realistic, how vivid and yes. I absolutely get all that from reading this book. But it doesn’t make me enjoy it any more.
I love armchair travelling, often setting off for destinations I’d never set foot in in real life. Alaska…well, I’m not sure, I’d ever want to go. Maybe cruise by the coastline, check out the whales, but the actual place doesn’t eactly entice. The tough hardscrabble starkness of it all doesn’t appeal. It’s like a place where pioneers have gone to drink themselves into oblivion. It doesn't seem very inviting, it seems like the sort of place that lives up to the book's title.
You have to have a certain mentality to want to go there and a certain stamina to succeed upon getting there. It’s a difficult place for anyone and all the more so for women…you know, since things have been made to be more difficult for women for ages already irrespective of the destination.
And yet, there are some women tough enough, resilient enough, determined enough to set off for Alaska and made a life for themselves out there. This book collects their stories in a tangentially intersecting sort of fashion.
Objectively, it is perfectly well written, and it does a great job of rendering the people and the land real and multi-dimensional. Subjectively, much like Alaska itself, it just isn’t for everyone. Or at least, it wasn’t for me. Didn’t jive with it. Didn’t get emotionally engaged. I appreciated it on the purely intellectual level, it certainly merits reader’s appreciation quality-wise, but didn’t love it and didn’t enjoy it all that much save for a few things here and there. The last story, the one that takes you back to when Alaska was still being set up for a living, might be the best one. But overall, this is definitely one of those things where user mileage will vary. Thanks Netgalley.

[Bonnie E. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book of eight short stories - all set in Alaska - is extraordinary! The situations and characters are all so unique yet the themes are universal - loneliness, loss, love, despair - and with the wilds of Alaska as the backdrop, this made for a terrific read. Been to that great state on a road trip and reading this makes me want to go back as soon as possible.

1) Howl Palace -5 stars. Dutch is a widow, divorced several times over and she's getting ready to show her dilapidated house to prospective buyers. "Anybody who buys a house on Diamond Lake brings in a backhoe and razes the place to rubble" but she hopes she will find people who will love it as it is, especially her "wolf room" where she sits quietly on wolf pelts while strangers roam through her home.

2) High Jinks - 5 stars. Father/ daughter float trip which reveals the different ways fathers fail their daughters, and how isolation can either forge or fracture friendships. The fishing, the foraging and the bush plane that flew the adventurers in and out are wild rides, typically Alaskan.

3) Nobody Gets Out Alive - 5 stars. Compelling vignette about newlyweds Carter and Katrina's wedding reception hosted by her old friend Neil and his wife Janice, back in Katrina's hometown, and an overall weird day. The couple was gifted with a mastodon tusk by Neil, whose hankering for Katrina becomes more obvious as the party goes on. "Alaska had been Carter’s idea from the start. He had never met Katrina’s father or seen where she’d grown up. Anchorage had sounded exotic—a city with five mountain ranges and a reindeer named Star who lived in a pen downtown. Her father owned a floatplane! Which she knew how to fly!" Carter comes to see that Katrina's family life in Alaska isn't quite the wonder that he had imagined, noting that Katrina "had a theory about this, a theory that seemed to apply to everyone except herself and her father: Your average happy person didn’t last in Alaska. It was too much work not to die all the time."

4) Alcan: An Oral History - 5 stars. This one is epic. The longest of the stories at 73 pages, broken into several parts, it follows Janice, Maggie, Laurel, Danielle, and Maureen, each of whom is enroute to a destination. All are outrunning their problems. And as one of them discovers: "Nothing here is fixed, nothing is any better. Where is there left to go, except out of your mind?” There are many moments that set you back in your heels, they are so wrenching and so powerful.

5) Slide and Glide - 3 stars. A man takes his family on a wilderness trip, although he fears that his wife is cheating on him. Well done story, just not as powerful as some of the others.

6) Valley of the Moon - 4 stars. Starts in an Alaskan wine bar where two sisters meet up. The bar is described like this: "Other than the missing treasure chest and the receptionist’s desk, the decor of the wine bar still looks like the dentist office it formerly was: a muted assortment of chairs and tables, inoffensive lighting. A few men wait at the bar peering into voluminous glasses of cabernet, as though an ancient Highlights crossword might surface from the depths. On a hook by the hostess hangs a key attached to an awkward hunk of driftwood—presumably meant to keep you from misplacing it on the journey to the restroom. The hostess is missing and the tables mostly are empty, save for a few women with tasteful sunsets of eye shadow over each eye. They sit by the fireplace, bronzed in the clingy light. " We learn a lot about the sisters through this story which takes us back to their childhoods and then ultimately back to the bar where the women have to make a hasty exit to escape the unwanted attention of a group of men.

7) Our Family Fortune Teller - 2 stars. My least favorite, there is a lot here about motherhood but overall this one did not resonate with me.

8) An Extravaganza in Two Acts - 4 stars. Genevieve is the main character in this story, the only one that is set back in time, in the early 20th century. Genevieve is constrained as much in the wild settlement that later becomes the city of Anchorage as she had been in Milwaukee where an act of rebellion results in a permanent deformity. Her relationship with her new friend Hazel is destined to end badly and she is betrayed by those around her in many small ways that overwhelmingly diminish and defeat what had been an indomitable spirit.

[meg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love short stories and this book has the kind of short stories I love most: subtly interconnected, vague and self-contained yet satisfying, focused internally on their characters. For fans of: Brandon Taylor, Rebecca Makkai

I can’t say they’re all winners: “Howl Palace” and “Our Family Fortune-Teller” I thought were particularly weak. I did really really love the interconnected family saga of “High Jinks”, “Nobody Gets Out Alive”, and “Valley of the Moon”. And while I did like all the Alaska flavor, there wasn’t quite as much natural landscape content as I had hoped for.

All that being said, the best story, “Alcan, an Oral History”, is so utterly fantastic that I wish it were a full novel. It could carry the 5 star rating all by itself.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

These were fantastic - funny, poignant, shocking. A few of the stories are linnked, some stand alone, all about young girls, mothers, girfriends, wives and widows in Alaska. Newman's voice is so strong and her use of metaphor so creative, the words just leap of the page. I loved these and "AlCan: An Oral History' blew my mind.

[Larry H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leigh Newman's debut collection, Nobody Gets Out Alive , is a collection of stories featuring women at their toughest, dealing with the wilds of life.

I always love discovering books thanks to Bookstagram friends. This story collection, longlisted for the National Book Award, was recommended by two friends whose reading taste is so admirable, so I figured, how could I lose?

The collection takes place in Alaska, one of my favorite settings for books, and the stories follow women dealing not only with the wildlife and the sometimes-unforgiving climate, but also with the challenges and pain associated with love, loss, and relationships. Some stories are set in the present, some in the not-too-distant past, and one is even set in the early 1900s.

Newman’s characters are tough, independent, smart, and sensitive, which makes reading about them really appealing. A few of the stories feature the same characters at different points of their lives.



As with any story collection, I loved some more than others. My favorites included “Howl Palace,” about an older woman dealing with financial challenges and the mortality of those she loves; the title story, about an engaged couple dealing with the advances of others; and “Alcan: An Oral History,” which follows five different women outrunning their problems.

Let’s hear it for book recs from friends!!

See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com.

Follow me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/getbookedwithlarry/.

[Cassidy Washburn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nobody Gets Out Alive is a captivating collection of short stories centered around the everyday lives of women in the male-dominated Alaskan wilderness. Each character's joys and hardships, from their extremely high ups and their horribly low lows, will draw you in and never let you go. Leigh Newman truly knows how to create a character and story that not only feels believable, but is also genuinely bewitching.

[RP · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leigh Newman's writing just feels good to read. These stories have been cared for, the way Alice Munro's have been, or Denis Johnson's. The people in them are real, troubled, messy, funny, scrappy, and tough, and so are the stories themselves. Throughout, Alaska presents itself as the beauty and danger through which these characters roam and stumble. A masterful collection.

[Casey (ish-i-ness) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alaskans seem a lot like Coloradans. And I imagine like anyone living in a rural area that is somewhat inhospitable and remote. I guess I liked the 4 stories I did read but there just wasn’t enough to hold on to and I couldn’t get myself to read anymore. I don’t think I’d recommend it. Maybe to someone who reads a lot of eco-lit, or like… someone’s dad? Haha. For everyone else I would say you’d like the Orange World collection of stories by Karen Russell more and it has a lot of the same vibes but with more to say and more going on.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not naturally drawn to short story collections, but this one sparked my interest with the combination of Alaska and women surviving tough conditions and challenges. Disappointingly for me as I've traveled in the Panhandle and want to go back and explore more of the state, Alaska was not the biggest feature. But the cast of female characters - raw, persistent, protective, independent - more than redeemed my initial interest.

This isn't a feel-good book. It's a take-no-prisoners, unflinching, and unsentimental look at women taking on the lot assigned them today, a few decades ago, and (in one story), 1915. I loved the connections that ran through some of the stories: Diamond Lake, the characters as kids and then adults.

Like others, the quote that best sums up this collection for me is:

She had a theory about this, a theory that seemed to apply to everyone except herself and her father: Your average happy person didn’t last in Alaska. It was too much work not to die all the time.

[LindaJ^ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book because it was on the longlist for the 2022 National Book Award for fiction. It was one of my favorites, although not the judges as it did not make the shortlist.

This is a book of eight short stories, all with Alaska, the author's home, as a location. In fact, most, if not all, have a connection to a specific location in Alaska -- Diamond Lake. Characters are often seen in different stories at different points in their lives. These are standalone stories but it is fun to look for connections, whether location or person.

The eight stories are listed below. I have added a few comments to those I particularly liked:
Howl Place A 67 year old woman has run out of money so has to sell her home, called Howl Place, that was one of the first built on Diamond Lake. She was married 5 times, although it seems she truly loved only her first husband, the one who died when his plane crashed. She and her first husband built Howl Place. The room that was to be a nursery never saw a child. It became the Wolf Room and was full of wolf pelts obtained by shooting the wolves from the plane.
High Jinks Two young girls spend a week in the wild with their fathers. Each girl thinks they would rather have the other's father as their father, but each of the fathers has issues.
Nobody Gets Out Alive
This is a longer story with subparts. It weaves two stories together. The first story is about a single mom without the money to pay her rent headed to Alaska to meet an online boyfriend with her two kids -- Janice and Kevin. The second story is about two recent college graduates - Danielle and Maggie - who are headed to Alaska to farm but their car dies and they are picked up in Canada by the single mom and her kids.
Slide and Glide
Valley of the Moon Jaimie from High Jinks is now pregnant. She meets her sister Bekka in a bar to tell her that she has taken over the mortgage payments on their mother's house from their father and wants Bekka to get on with her life, but it turns out Jaimie's life is a bit screwed up too.
Our Family Fortune-Teller
An Extravaganza in Two Acts In this story we learn about the creation of Diamond Lake, but it is only a couple of sentences buried at the end of the story. The story is about Walter and his first job and first marriage. He was actually the guardian of the woman that people thought was his first wife. She was quite rich but considered crazy by her family (it was 1915) because she liked women. She falls in love with the mine superintendent's wife her was an excellent artist and is wooing her with Walter betrays her confidence.

For good succinct summaries of all the stories, see Sujoya's review -- https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Smriti · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars but upped to 5 on Goodreads because I feel like it deserves a higher average rating.

These collections of short, often interconnecting, stories set in Alaska were honestly a masterclass in writing characters that were raw, real and you immediately felt like you knew. They were unlikable and doing things you may not agree with but were so compelling. Also the fact that all these stories were set in Alaska, the state the author grew up in? Mashallah.

My favourite stories were the ones in the beginning - Nobody Gets Out Alive, Alcan: An Oral Story, High Jinks and Howl Palace.

[Sadie Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of short stories was right up my alley. I really admire the integrity of the characters, their experiences and how they interact with other characters. I’ve been to Alaska twice in the past 20 years and could recognize so many traits of the dreamers, independent men, women and children who excel at overcoming adversity. All the stars.

[Deedi Brown (DeediReads) · Rating 5 out of 5]

All my reviews live at https://deedispeaking.com/reads/.

TL;DR REVIEW:

Nobody Gets Out Alive is my absolute jam of a short story collection. It’s atmospheric, character-driven, and deliciously layered. I was hooked from the first one.

For you if: You like stories that transport you to a different place.

FULL REVIEW:

I am endlessly grateful for the National Book Award longlist for putting this short story collection in my hands, because I’m not sure the synopsis would have alone, and I really loved it! I’m a big fan of a story that wears its heart on its sleeve and makes its metaphors just obvious enough for me to feel clever when I spot them — and this definitely fits the bill.

These eight stories are loosely dotted rather than connected, with a few recurring characters but every story easily standing on its own. They all take place either in Alaska or on the way to Alaska, and almost all of them center women. But don’t get it twisted — these stories are character first, Alaska (close) second. Newman merges the idea of survival, not just in the darkness of wild lands but when our lives feel dark and difficult and rough terrain; the title, when you discover it in the text, ties this idea of life as wilderness together too.

I was hooked by the first story — Newman says so much without saying it, leaves the spaces in between information rife with meaning. She evokes humor and grief and joy and loneliness in a way that just really captured my heart.

I’m sad this one isn’t shortlisted, because it’s going to be one of my favorites from the list!



CONTENT AND TRIGGER WARNINGS:
Death of a spouse; Grief; Suicide (minor); Abandonment; Alcoholism (minor)

[Sandra The Old Woman in a Van · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short story collection will immediately transport you to Alaska - at least a rather grim and edgy Alaska. I loved the rich ambiance of the stories and the focus on a woman’s point of view.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

The sisters, daughters, wives, lone wolves, and a few anxious husbands in this dynamic debut navigate complicated relationships and the gravitational pull of Newman’s home state of Alaska, where everyone is running to or from something. From the brusque, secretly sentimental ex-wife trying to sell her quirky home to a panicked mother on the road, the eloquently insightful characters are both hard-headed and easy to love. Great collection, full of compassionate, muscular writing.

[Carol Orange · Rating 5 out of 5]

What incredible stories. Leigh Newman is a fine writer. Her characters from Alaska are unforgettable.
The edginess in her writing reminds me of Raymond Carver, but Newman's psychologically rich characters could only leap from her pen.

[Jessie (Zombie_likes_cake) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read the first 2 stories and in the middle of the 3rd I decided that this is it: I don't like the tone and voice of these, I don't find the heavy emphasis on marital issues as a theme interesting at all, and yes maybe the later stories could work better for me but realistically that is unlikely if the the writing in the first 3 was not my cup of tea at all. I mean, the second story is on paper exactly what I want from this: set in the Alaskan wilderness on a canoe trip, comin-of-age elements since we follow 2 tweens and their dads, a slight quirk to the characters; this should have been for me but I did not get invested in it in the slightest and found many aspects rather forced than interesting. Also, the wilderness does not come into play as much as I personally hoping.

Generally speaking I struggled with realistic short stories. I am huge fan when it comes to short fiction with genre elements: magical realism, Horror, speculative. That's my wheelhouse and I read ton of them. But whenever I try to branch out in recent years, I end up underwhelmed and not interested. The stories often seem pointless to me. So is it a simple me thing, that I am trying to branch into a genre that is just not my thing or am I picking up the wrong collections?

[Sherri Puzey · Rating 5 out of 5]

12 • “I was unsettled. I was not right. This is a condition that many people experience after arriving in Alaska. Nothing here is fixed, nothing is any better. Where is there left to go, except out of your mind?”

NOBODY GETS OUT ALIVE is a breathtaking short story collection. Each individual story is magnificent—filled with characters so fully formed I felt they were in the room with me and with lines that brought me to my knees—and the collection as a whole blew me away. Leigh is a master storyteller, spinning tales of wild Alaska and the grit of the women who inhabit it through themes of friendship, survival, love, family, and addiction. Leigh’s ability to choose the perfect language to immerse the reader in not only the setting but also the complex emotional experiences of the characters made me forget I was reading, let alone reading short stories. I can’t remember the last time I stayed up late to finish a book, but I couldn’t wait until morning to finish this one. It’s funny and wise and heartbreaking. I’m so glad we’ll be reading Leigh’s work for decades to come. I loved this one so much! Out April 12.

[Meghan Mckeever · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a former Alaskan, who grew up on a lake near Diamond Lake in the 80s and 90s, this book felt like a dance through my childhood. Every turn of the page revealed a lost memory, a forgotten place. These were my neighbors and friends. These are the parks I inhabited, the streets I grew up in up in, the mountains I knew. The author has truly captured the unique characteristics and personalities of New Alaskans, while also beautifully describing the longing and independence and hope and faith that it takes to uproot and transplant a life. I truly loved this collection of stories.

[Sarah High · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was simply gorgeous. It was also raw, even disturbing at times. Such a dazzling collection of short stories.

[Karin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought these were really outstanding. She created female characters that were so unique and vibrant. Very challenging people. Really glad I picked this one up.