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Stories
by Leigh Newman
Book Reviewed by:From the prizewinning, debut fiction author: an exhilarating virtuosic story collection about women navigating the wilds of male-dominated Alaskan society.
Set in Newman's home state of Alaska, Nobody Gets Out Alive is a collection of dazzling, courageous stories about women struggling to survive not just grizzly bears and charging moose but the raw, exhausting legacy of their marriages and families. In "Howl Palace"—winner of the Paris Review's Terry Southern Prize, a Best American Short Story, and Pushcart Prize selection—an aging widow struggles with a rogue hunting dog and the memories of her five ex-husbands while selling her house after bankruptcy. In the title story, "Nobody Gets Out Alive," newly married Katrina visits her hometown of Anchorage and blows up her own wedding reception by flirting with the host and running off with an enormous mastodon tusk.
Alongside stories set in today's Last Frontier—rife with suburban sprawl, global warming, and opioid addiction—Newman delves into remote wilderness of the 1970s and 80s, bringing to life young girls and single moms in search of a wilder, freer, more adventurous America. The final story takes place in a railroad camp in 1915, where an outspoken heiress stages an elaborate theatrical in order to seduce the wife of her husband's employer, revealing how this masterful storyteller is "not only writing unforgettable, brilliantly complex characters, she's somehow inventing souls" (Kimberly King Parsons, author of Black Light).
Newman deploys multiple points of view to stunning storytelling effect in "Alcan, An Oral History," which focuses on several wayward people traveling from the Lower 48 to Alaska. There are enough twists and turns here to propel a novel or a feature-length film; these are entertaining, tender portraits of people with unmet needs and big dreams. The narrative consistently renders human consciousness with exquisite compassion and detail. The chronology is non-linear, and the final piece in the collection, "An Extravaganza in Two Acts," takes place in 1915 in the region now known as Anchorage. The author explores early white settlement here, and foreshadows decades of ecological exploitation...continued
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(Reviewed by Karen Lewis).
Small airplanes are a common form of transport in Leigh Newman's collection of short stories, Nobody Gets Out Alive, set primarily in Alaska. Several of the stories take place on a lake where homes boast "seaplane docks." Alaska is a vast, sparsely populated region where it's estimated that around 80% of communities exist beyond the reach of roads, making air travel essential.
Bush planes, also known as STOL (Short Takeoff and Landing) aircraft, can land on short runways. With rugged "tundra tires," they're able to land in a clearing or meadow without pavement. Planes can also be outfitted with skis to land on snow or ice, and seaplanes are designed to land on water. Such conveniences matter in a region with active glaciers, a long ...
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Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!
Nobody Gets Out Alive is a stunning debut collection, with the most generous ratio of wickedly funny details to devastating plot lines. It's a joy to travel through these characters' overlapping Alaskas, where violent longings go thrashing under the frozen stillness of the everyday, and the hard, hot work of navigating the wilderness of family can give way at any moment to 'a dazzle of ice and blue and light.'
