This new collection from Michael Knight--PEN/Hemingway citation
recipient and B&N Discover Award finalist whom Esquire praises as "a
writer of the first rank"--thrills and pierces with stories of men and
women of breathtaking conviction, pathos, and humor.
The stories in Goodnight, Nobody demonstrate Michael Knights' exquisite
and "rare power to make a setting breathe, to invest it with a vitality
that seems as authentic and intense as the pulsebeats of his
characters." (The New York Times Book Review) This luminous collection
astutely explores rediscovered love, reconciliation, and peace amid the
trials of everyday life.
The denizens of Goodnight, Nobody are, like so many of us, bewildered by
the circumstances in which they find themselves. The unexpected twists
of their lives--rendered with expert humor and pathos in Knight's
dark-light style--test the limits of the personalities they have known
as their own.
In "Birdland," published in The New Yorker, a beautiful Northerner
visits a small Alabama town to research the bizarre migration habits of
a flock of African parrots from Rhode Island. "Feeling Lucky" finds a
desperate man kidnapping his own daughter. In the most daring and
haunting of these stories, "Killing Stonewall Jackson," which was
published in Story, a hardened band of Confederate soldiers resorts to
surprising measures to survive on the battlefield. "The End of
Everything," published in GQ, weaves together a tender love story and an
edge-of-your-seat urban legend, while "The Mesmerist," published in
Esquire, is an eerie fairy tale about a man who hypnotizes a stranger
and makes her his wife. In "Keeper of Secrets, Teller of Lies,"
published in Virginia Quarterly Review, a man causes more havoc the
harder he tries to help a young mother and her son. In "Mitchell's
Girls," a stay-at-home dad battles the disrespect of youth and a
paralyzing bad back. "Ellen's Book" hilariously describes the yearning a
man feels for his estranged wife. In "Blackout," a suburban
neighborhood's pent-up jealousies and fears explode under the cover of
darkness.
Knight's sensibility is potent and unique, stirring tenderness in equal
parts with violence. While the settings, chronologies, and characters
vary widely throughout the collection, they remain bound by Knight's
simple, elegant prose, his graceful sense of humor, and an unfailing
empathy with the self-destructed.
