Jessi Jezewska Stevens already has two critically feted novels – The Exhibition Of Persephone Q and The Visitors – under her belt, but Ghost Pains is her debut collection of short stories, some of which have been previously published in outlets as esteemed as Harper’s and The Paris Review.
If there’s an overarching theme to the assembled tales, it’s disorientation and discombobulation. They tell of Americans in exile in Europe, of awkward encounters and exchanges with exes and others, and, in Honeymoon, of the disconcerting novelty and strangeness of married life. This makes Rumpel, a comic Charlie Kaufman-esque retelling of Rumpelstiltskin set in a techno-dystopian near future, stand out all the more.
Stevens’ stories are subtle, literary and dizzying, picking you up and then setting you down somewhere slightly different. Their elliptical nature is magnified by the fact that a handful of marginal characters reappear in the background of other stories, hinting at a bigger picture that the reader can’t quite see, a jigsaw puzzle for which the author has craftily hidden some of the pieces.
Ghost Pains, Jessi Jezewska Stevens (And Other Stories)
Price: £14.99. Info: here
words BEN WOOLHEAD