American Elsewhere - Robert Jackson Bennett

I've been reading this for a little over two years, since life got in the way. And it's beautifully written and bloody. And sometimes it dragged for me, and sometimes parts of it felt a little flabby around the middle. But a lot of the time it was eerie and bloody and thoughtful. A lot of the time it poked holes in things, and made you feel even when what it wanted you to feel was off-kilter, differently experienced.

And the last 20% is absolutely searing and very well done; it blends saying interesting things with doing that with interesting people, in, well, interesting ways. There's something there, behind the eyes of the story, and maybe it's hope.


American Elsewhere is set in the town of Wink, a small, normal place at the bottom of a mesa, with a shuttered government facility at the top. But in the town of Wink, normal is never quite what it seems, and in fact is typically frequently far, far less. Wink is a town of compromises, of quiet arrangements and, possibly, faustian bargains. 

The normality of Wink is a veneer, a glaze that sits across the surface of the American suburban experience. That sense that something is off kilter, skittering just outside the corner of your eyes, that looking around a little too quickly is unwise. That there are not only untold stories, but stories best left untold - that's Wink. An eerie, ominous place that also fits into the space for perfection. It embodies the suburban dream, but in the way that shows the hollowness, the artifice. It works as a critique of the American Dream, but it also works on its own terms, as a slow roll of tense horror. An environment that papers over the cracks of life with promises and little, quiet words. And somewhere, in the edges of things, it's all starting to crack, to fall away.

And into that world falls Mona Bright. Law enforcement experience. Physically competent, sharp as a tack, and a mind swirliong around the worst edges of itself. Mona is coming into town to inherit a house, to try and answer a few questions about herself. Mona is in a liminal space, between worlds, between roles, holding close old tragedies and quiet moments. I think one of the small joys of Mona is being swept uo in her internal story, in the morass of feelings that make her who she is, in those moments between clarity, despair and joy. She's a hero, and also a person, a person doing their best under circumstances that don't entirely make sense any longer. 

And the rest of Wink. Oh my.  They're all simple people, quiet people. People who do simple things. Work on their cars. Throw parties. Meet their neighbours. But some of those people are living lives of extremely quiet desparation. And some of them are, possibly, living very different lives indeed. There's a...tension, at the heart of Wink. A lie, with people living it by choice, one way or another. Security, a price for sielnce, a price for living life as a dream, or in a dream. These are people, or people shaped, anyway.  They're eeerie and disqueiting these people, much like Wink itself, something rippling beneath the still surface waters.

I'm glad I finally finished this one; it's horrifying and strange in equal measure, and though I can't touch on the story for fear of spoilers, I'll say that you can feel its echoes in the days after you're done reading. This is silent, chilling horror, and a good read, too.