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Book Reviewed by:Hailed by Lauren Groff as "fully committed to the truth no matter how dark or difficult or complicated it may be," and written with "incantatory crispness," Sleepovers, the debut short story collection by Ashleigh Bryant Phillips.
This collection takes us to a forgotten corner of the rural South, full of cemeteries, soybean fields, fishing holes, and Duck Thru gas stations. We meet a runaway teen, a mattress salesman, feral kittens, an elderly bachelorette wearing a horsehair locket, and a little girl named after Shania Twain. Here, time and memory circle above Phillips' characters like vultures and angels, as they navigate the only landscape they've ever known. Corn reaches for rain, deer run blindly, and no matter how hungry or hurt, some forgotten hymn is always remembered. "The literary love child of Carson McCullers and John the Baptist, Ashleigh Bryant Phillips' imagination is profoundly original and private," writes Rebecca Lee. Sleepovers marks the debut of a fearless new voice in fiction.
Sleepovers is the winner of the 2019 C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize, selected by Lauren Groff.
While many of the characters in the collection are isolated, Phillips creates the impression that they are never truly alone, outlining the imperfect, delicate ties that exist between them and the universe around them—whether familial, romantic, neighborly or cosmic. She also draws individual experiences with such intense vulnerability that they give way to a sense of collective human consciousness, engaging the reader in a kind of communion with them. This sense is so powerful that even when the stories lose momentum or appear rough-edged in their construction, as they sometimes do, their high points are often exquisite. Sleepovers is a breathtaking, evocative debut and an exciting literary journey...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Elisabeth Cook).
The story "Mind Craft" in Sleepovers by Ashleigh Bryant Phillips is named for one character's incorrect way of referring to the video game Minecraft, which is a multi-platform "sandbox game," the term for a game that leaves the player relatively free to explore a setting without having to progress through it in a linear fashion. Minecraft is based around the simple idea of "mining" materials from various sources and then using those materials for construction. Known for its trademark blocky graphics and its virtually limitless possibilities for creation and exploration, it is one of the most popular games in the world and one of the best-selling video games of all time.
Minecraft was created by Swedish developer Markus "Notch" Persson ...
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If you liked Sleepovers, try these:
Orange World and Other Stories
by Karen Russell
Published 2020
A stunning new collection of short fiction that showcases Karen Russell's extraordinary, irresistible gifts of language and imagination.
by Amy Bonnaffons
Published 2020
For fans of George Saunders and Karen Russell, an "amazing, wildly inventive" collection of stories that straddles the line between the real and the fantastical.
Lauren Groff, author of Florida
Ashleigh's prose often holds an incantatory crispness that lulled me into forgetting that I was reading, particularly in extraordinarily sad stories like 'The Virgin' and 'An Unspoken,' both of which derive their power from an almost unbearable dramatic irony and an equally deep hunger for human connection and compassion. I see in this collection a steely writer, one deeply moved by her place and her people, but also fully committed to the truth no matter how dark or difficult or complicated it may be.
