Description:
In The Town of Whispering Dolls, Susan Neville conjures a surreal and searing portrait of America's heartland in decline. Set in a Rust Belt town haunted by the ghosts of industry, opioid addiction, and war, these stories blend poetic lyricism with eerie allegory--where dolls walk the streets, women eat car parts, and grief becomes a chorus sung through empty heads. Winner of the Catherine Doctorow Prize for Innovative Fiction, this collection is a haunting elegy for forgotten places and the people who still dream within them.
Review Quotes:
"In Neville's bracing collection (after In the House of Blue Lights), residents of an unnamed Midwestern rust belt town develop unsettling relationships with dolls. In 'Here, ' an older woman who's seen her town ravaged by factory automation and deaths from opioid addiction, describes the appearance of 'a plague of dolls, ' humanlike and human-size figures who enter abandoned houses, filling the space of those who have left or died. In 'Resurrection, ' one of the strongest stories, elementary school students assigned to take care of egg babies build homes for them in boxes with families peopled by paper dolls and toys from fast food restaurants. Their play-acting becomes eerily realistic when the students begin to worry about their egg children dying; one student opens a hospital for injured eggs and finds herself overwhelmed with patients--eggs, dolls, and the students themselves."
--Publishers Weekly