![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() It’s a place where the myth of the West is inseparable from the deflation of the American dream-a water-thirsty landscape in which we are all left to pull ourselves up by the straps of our turquoise boots and continue on as gracefully as we can. Heartbroke is not quite our world, but it is very much of our world. At particular moments, Bieker’s vignettes have the quality of a postcard sent by a Quentin Tarantino character, if that character grew up in Del Rey reading Flannery O’Connor and Annie Proulx. Heartbroke isn’t the stuff of bedtime stories, but it is embroidered with the stuff of American myth. It’s terrible to watch but also fascinating, because their terrible choices carry a whiff of the mundane, the ordinary, and when they survive-if they survive-you can’t help admiring them for it. Bieker’s characters do bad things, sometimes terrible things. Heartbroke falls within this tradition of writers fixing their lenses on the underbelly of small-town and rural America, examining the dark things that happen there before they entrap you into empathizing with people you might never meet in life-or want to. Chelsea Bieker is the recipient of a 2018 Rona Jaffe Writers Award, and the author of the forthcoming novel, Godshot (Catapult 2020), and the story collection, Cowboys and Angels. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |