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Don't Kiss Me Stories Lindsay Hunter Books

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Don't Kiss Me Stories Lindsay Hunter Books

Oh, where to begin on this stinker? The first clue for me was the 400-word sentence in the first 'story' of this collection of rambling and addled collection of words, seemingly thrown like mud against a wall to see what would 'stick.'

Or perhaps it was the complete lack or abuse of punctuation throughout? The use of all caps? The nonsense dialogue layout?

I understand the concept of 'flash fiction,' but if this work is a superior example then my cat walking across my keyboard is James Joyce.

How this unbelievably poor example of 'modern' prose is touted as fiction, let alone 'flash fiction' is beyond me. Perhaps this 'book' (if you can call it that) may appeal to some of today's youth, but I don't see how any publisher would consider wasting the paper for printing this stuff.

Don't waste a dime on this 'book.'


Tags : Amazon.com: Don't Kiss Me: Stories (9780374533854): Lindsay Hunter: Books,Lindsay Hunter,Don't Kiss Me: Stories,FSG Originals,0374533857,Literary,Fiction;21st century.,Short stories - 21st century,Short stories.,Short stories;21st century.,21st century,American Contemporary Fiction - Individual Authors +,FICTION Literary,FICTION Psychological,FICTION Short Stories (single author),Fiction,Fiction - General,Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945),Psychological,Short Stories (single author),Short stories,short stories; short story; the short story; short story collections; short story books; dark fiction; short fiction; funny stories; literary fiction; contemporary literature; contemporary fiction; women authors; collections of short stories; collection of short stories

Don't Kiss Me Stories Lindsay Hunter Books Reviews

Lindsey Hunter’s collection of short stories, Don’t Kiss Me, goes in often dark and daring places that intrigue me. The imagery is haunting and deeply thought provoking even after laying the book down. RV People is one such story in which she reveals an alien and uncomfortable existence. It caught me off guard when I read the sentence, “In the morning of us killed another of us… We lay rope in a thief’s knot over the heart…” I like the unlikely details.
Hunter’s writing style captures the seemingly unnoticed, the overlooked moment. Invisible people and she leads you into something completely unexpected. This collection of short stories were fascinating studies of people you may not want to be alone with.
As soon as I finished Don't Kiss Me, I began reading it again. It’s like a movie in that the first time through, you miss some of the nuances but the second time through you appreciate the odd foreshadowing.
As stated on the back cover, these stories defy categorization. If you like quirky and strange, or just looking for a quick summer read that is totally off the beaten path, pick up a copy of Don’t Kiss Me.
THIS REVIEW ORIGINALLY RAN AT THE NERVOUS BREAKDOWN.

Lindsay Hunter owes as much to Denis Johnson as she does to Mary Gaitskill. Her short stories, collected in Don't Kiss Me (FSG Originals) do not hesitate to descend into the primal urges and dark, lusty behaviors that make us all animals at our core, but they also shine a light on the truth, a nugget of goodness at the center of what is quite often a lonely, depraved and tragic journey, one blanketed in a desire to be seen, to be loved--no matter who we are, or what we've done. Hunter's characters work at diners and long to be included, they take care of their children while embracing their shortcomings, they chase boys into cornfields and kiss their best girlfriends, all the while longing to feel special and included.

One of the early stories in this her second short story collection, "Dishes" starts off in typical Lindsay Hunter fashion, setting the stage by showing us the raw recounting of every humble and embarrassing moment--no filter, just a mix of pride and surrender

"At breakfast my kid practices his ABCs and barfs into his cereal bowl just before Q. My other kid points out how the barf had splashed onto the table in the shape of Oklahoma. I don't tell him it looks more like Texas, he's a little kid and if he wants to mistake Texas for Oklahoma it's no skin off my tit. My husband wipes up the barf and I watch his shorts bunch in his ass."

There is so much going on here. First, it's funny, right? Whether you've been there a million times before, or this whole scene is a window into what parenthood might look like, the casual retelling, the "no skin off my tit," summons up laughter. Later, as a chorus through the story, our protagonist keeps saying, "Big girls gotta eat!" She laughs at the fact that she's overweight, she knows it, and she embraces it. She is who she is. You can almost picture her shrugging her shoulders as she says it. Her son packs her a lunch of nothing but Fruit Roll-Ups, Tootsie Rolls, half of a juice box, and a single Goldfish cracker. It's funny, it's sweet--and it's kind of sad. We go along with the joke, but quite often after the punch line, there is an extended darkness that hangs in the air to remind us that these are people, not jokes--these are real lives, not just there for our amusement. Take the final lines from this same story, "Dishes" and tell me how it feels

"...a song about a lonely desert wandered starts, I pass tacos pizzas chicken ice cream barbeque. The sky is pink meatblood, is a runny sorbet, the sun is a melting butterscotch, the sky is a dirty plate."

Not so good, I think.

Another story that does a great job of luring us in with soft memories and sweet adolescence is "Three Things You Should Know About Peggy Paula." This might be my favorite story in the collection, and since it leads off the book, Lindsay Hunter may agree with me. The first thing we learn is that Peggy works in a diner, where she watches the popular kids come in after games and dances, always in the shadows, picking up lost lipsticks, making them her own, transferring the lust and heady glow that the girls have to her own seduction of the red-headed dishwasher weeks later.

The second things we learn is that "Peggy Paula has a kidney-shaped scar on her lower back from falling backward out an open window backward at a disco." She went there to meet men, but it was a gay nightclub, so she didn't have any luck. Tumbling into a dumpster, pissed on by an apologetic blonde boy, this is a memory that she cherishes, even though she was hurt, even robbed by the club goer. The memory she clings to is that he called her special.

The third thing we learn about Peggy Paula is that she is having an affair with a married man who worked at the local video store. Throughout the story we get all of the sweaty moments in back seats, the desperation and grunting, the echo of shut doors as these men use her, and walk away. But what brings the story full circle, what really punches you in the gut are the final lines of the story, after they've been caught, what Lindsay Hunter does best--showing us the truth and motivation that drove Peggy to commit these questionable acts

"...and maybe that's why she let the man in two nights later, had to see his eyes, had to feel again, and she kept letting the man in, she kept letting the man in, his smell the hair on his chest the delicate skin above his pelvis the muscles in his thighs his calloused hands the shapes of his toes the gold in his eyes the missing molar the mole on his back the heart in his chest the breaths in and out he was alive he was another he was a man and Peggy Paula let him, she let him, because if no one is there to touch you are you even really there?"

If you don't take a deep breath there, and let out a heavy sigh, nodding your head, maybe tearing up a bit, swallowing your judgment, muttering, "Damn," under your breath--then maybe you don't have a heart, just a lump of coal where that pumping, anxious beast should rest.

And the taboo--what about that, the deviant, the sexual, the secrets? That's another part of what makes Lindsay Hunter such a brilliant writer, her willingness to risk everything on the page, to say what we're all thinking, to reveal those moments we'd prefer the world never saw. Here are two quick examples.

The first is from "Plans," where our female lead kisses a teacher, and steals a lipstick, just to see how it feels, to get that rush of adrenaline

"I wore that lipstick one night when we all met up to swim and it was so dark I let a boy take off my bottoms, the lipstick smeared and greasy all around my mouth and its crayon smell all over the boy, and then I put a ribbon on that lipstick and gave it to Momma for Christmas."

She likes to cross lines, break rules--stealing, kissing teachers, taking off her pants at the lake, the dirty lipstick now a gift to her mother? "Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?" you might ask. It seems that she does.

And then there is "Me and Gin." It's a sweet story on the surface, but just under the bruised flesh is a dysfunctional childhood, parents that are damaged and absent, friendships that are anything but healthy. The opening lines

"Me and Gin play Lips. This a game where you see how long you can touch lips before you need to scream. Gin always the one screaming first, I guess not always, sometimes I scream first cause I don't want to seem like no weird lips lover.

Me and Gin's both girls. See."

And no, I'm not giving you all of the juicy parts in this review, you'll have to pick up the book and read it yourself.

When I think of the rabbits in "Summer Massacre," it immediately reminds me of "Emergency" by the aforementioned Denis Johnson. When I read the slick sex in the back seat of a car in "Three Things You Should Know About Peggy Paula," I think of the previously cited Mary Gaitskill and the power struggle that is "Romantic Weekend." When I pause to remember "Plans" and the final words of the boy hovering over our girl when she says, "I ain't no bitch like your brother called me," and he answers, as they finish their grunting and heaving, "Ain't you, he said, ain't you?" I'm transported to the heartbreak that is the final scene in "Life Expectancy" by Holly Goddard Jones. But whatever other voices flitter about you as you read Don't Kiss Me, familiar dysfunction, dark roads you've been down before, know that Lindsay Hunter is an original, she is fearless, and she will always be a soothsayer--telling stories with heart, compassion, and authority.
Really well-done
interesting
Every story in Hunter's collection brings it throat-clenching voice, devastatingly real characters, sentences that'll spin you dizzy. One of the best collections I've read in a long time.
Hunter's sophomore offering kisses and tells. Smart little gall stones of prose to gnaw at your insides and make you moan with exquisite, painful delight. A great little read!
I enjoy switching stories to keep it fresh. The constant use of southern references, poor speech, and the onions (jesus whats with the onions) got annoying. Half the stories interested me, but never really moved me by the punch. The feeling tapered down after the first few after the sample text. Something new to read I guess...its not like Ive ever written a book.
Much like Frank Bill's Crimes in Southern Indiana Stories and Alan Heathcock's Volt Stories, the characters who populate Lindsey Hunter's second collection of short stories, Don't Kiss Me, are broken, intensely raw human beings existing along the fringes of America's heartland. Each story offers a brief glimpse into lives distorted by oddball obsessions and all too common abuses of trust. What I found most striking about these stories is Hunter's near stream of conscious style--which harkens to the styles of Hubert Selby, jr. and Dennis Johnson--that perfectly captures the mindset and base nature of her characters. But most of all, it's Hunter's wholly believable characters that make this collection such an intense reading experience. These men, women, and children are your wives and husbands, teachers, next door neighbors, your nieces and nephews; they are the ignored and the barely there.

Simply put, Don't Kiss Me is a stunning collection and easily one of my favorite reads of 2013. Highly recommended.
Oh, where to begin on this stinker? The first clue for me was the 400-word sentence in the first 'story' of this collection of rambling and addled collection of words, seemingly thrown like mud against a wall to see what would 'stick.'

Or perhaps it was the complete lack or abuse of punctuation throughout? The use of all caps? The nonsense dialogue layout?

I understand the concept of 'flash fiction,' but if this work is a superior example then my cat walking across my keyboard is James Joyce.

How this unbelievably poor example of 'modern' prose is touted as fiction, let alone 'flash fiction' is beyond me. Perhaps this 'book' (if you can call it that) may appeal to some of today's youth, but I don't see how any publisher would consider wasting the paper for printing this stuff.

Don't waste a dime on this 'book.'