Katie Chase's debut short story collection features no zombies, road warriors or other apocalyptic denizens, yet communicates a desperate, end-of-days mood in almost every story. "Refugees," set in an American refugee camp after a devastating economic collapse, hews closest to the rules of post-apocalyptic literature, especially with its meditations on religion and consumerist society. In general, however, Chase's stories occupy the mysterious, frighteningly plausible terrain between present-day reality and the dystopic future, subtly implying that our society is closer to the latter than we might care to admit.
The title story, "Man and Wife," conjures a world where women, including the nine-year-old protagonist, are married off at a very young age to adult men as part of dry business deals. Another, "Creation Story," seems to play off the devastating "Devil's Night" arsons that plagued Detroit well into the '90s, pushing the concept further to tell a story about the nihilism bred by urban decay. Even when Chase presents extreme situations, however, she always fastens them securely to grounded observations, such as one young protagonist's musings that "On sick days you could escape the movement of the world."
The same is true in "Every Good Marriage Begins in Tears," which demonstrates Chase's impressive range by setting the events in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. Ostensibly, the plot revolves around the still-common practice of bride kidnappings, but its themes of frustrated masculinity and economic fecklessness ring depressingly true across the cultural divide. Man and Wife is a disturbing, exceptional suite of stories from a promising new author. --Hank Stephenson, bookseller, Flyleaf Books