Publisher: Little Brown and Company
Published: July 7, 2020
Source: Personal copy
Summary:
This “outstanding” debut story collection from a rising star reveals Louisiana and its characters with stark honesty and empathy as they grapple with homesickness, desperation, and desire (Peter Orner).
Last One Out Shut Off the Lights is a vivid portrait of the last-chance towns of southwest Louisiana, where oil development, industrial pollution, dying wetlands, and the ever-present threat of devastating hurricanes have eroded their inhabitants’ sense of home. These stories feature characters struggling to find a foothold in a world that is forever washing out from under them, people who must reckon with their ambivalence about belonging to a place so continually in flux.
An overwhelmed teenage mother leaves her infant son in a closet to buy herself a night out; a teacher with a terminally ill husband fantasizes about another man; a retiree surveys the devastation left by a hurricane and decides the fate of a lost cat; and a young woman out of options tries to drag her brother to Mexico for surgery, desperate to save his life and her own.
As Lauren Groff did for the Sunshine State in Florida, Stephanie Soileau demonstrates that Louisiana is as much a state of mind as it is a place on the map. Her fiction is a powerful reminder of the rich variety of Southern culture, and brings back into focus the Cajun language, life rhythms, and customs that still make Louisiana so unique.
My thoughts:
Short stories are not something that I used to read a lot of, but lately I seem to be gravitating towards them more and so when I had the opportunity to select them as the option for my reading choice as a monthly pick with the @literati book club, I jumped at it. Knowing I would have a group to discuss these stories with made it a much more richer reading experience.
As I find anytime I pick up a collection of short stories, I enjoy some more than others and that was definitely the case here. This collection is about life in Louisiana, and not ever having been there, I did appreciate just how different the culture is there from New York where I have lived. The writing in each of these stories was so vivid and the imagery just pours off the pages. What really comes across is here is not the Louisiana we know from tourism, but rather, we see the struggles that these characters have to make ends meet in rural, impoverished communities. It’s a hard-hitting, eye-opening read that sits heavy with you. It’s intense, but so worth the read.
I love finding these types of reads because they are thought-provoking. They are conversation starters and they are the ones that stay with you long after you find reading. I’m so glad I selected this one and definitely plan to read more from this very talented author!
