It’s hard out there for young writers. The only houses that will house them are small, indie enterprises full of energy but lacking funds, and readers are scared by untested virtue. Be scared no longer sovereign readers! I will test your books for poison. Eat up!
The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich
There is no future for the self-proclaimed Slutty Teenage Hobo Vampire Junkies. Our narrator and her band of undead boyfriends tour the Pacific Northwest as the most ostracized of rejects. Revolving along the spokes of 7-11 parking lots and meth-head-hiding old growths, our narrator tumble-dries through consciousness searching for an unrelated sister who may or may not already be buried. Life is an uncontrollable, dangerous thing, where “…tiny bloody scratches popped up on my skin all over, as if carved out from the inside. I clasped a hand to each in turn, but more crept up in shiny black beads in its wake.”
If you’ve ever itched to jump trains, dumpster dive and squat in deserted flop houses, this book will quell your desire. By harboring ambivalence about time and corporality, our narrator convinces the reader that being listless is not all that it’s cracked up to be. Teenage energy turned violence becomes misdirected and useless and tiresome, nothing more or noble. Krilanovich’s words are on the edge of needing an urban dictionary but stand by with unusual enjambments formed from common vernacular. At the book’s worst, it’s readable. At its best, you won’t know what’s going on and your mind will hurt. To read The Orange Eat Creeps is like entering the REI rain room on a dare clothed only in shorts and a shirt and then finding the door jammed and the water steadily rising above your sockless ankles.
~Matt Nelson, Northeast Branch
In case you missed it, click here to read Part I and Part III of Books by People You’ve Probably Never Heard of.
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