A raw debut collection that delves into the eerie and the beautiful, perfectly capturing our fears of human existence. Her heroes are unflinching and unusual, but feel uncannily familiar.

A collection of interesting short stories about girls and women. The stories are quite strange and unusual. Some are disturbing. I found it quite depressing, not exactly an enjoyable read. However, it is very well written.

An interesting read, if not always enjoyable or comfortable.

Thank you to netgalley, the publisher and the author for sending me this ARC.

With raw, poetic ferocity, Kimberly King Parsons exposes desire’s darkest hollows—those hidden places where most of us are afraid to look. In this debut collection of enormously perceptive and brutally unsentimental short stories, Parsons illuminates the ache of first love, the banality of self-loathing, the scourge of addiction, the myth of marriage, and the magic and inevitable disillusionment of childhood. There's something to relish in the boundless possibilities of fiction and how a writer can make that which is known an inescapable fact; it doesn't shy away from darkness or boredom, from the potentially mundane. And in there, it feels anything but. Weird, dreamy, vivid.

I see the merit of 'Black Light' though these short stories weren’t my cup of tea. Parsons writes flawed, sometimes grotesque yet mundane characters who share their neuroses, desires and ugliness with us, often through first person narratives. Many of the characters are young adults or children with weird interests and secret desires. There is undoubtedly a darkness to all of these stories; they are unsettling. There are drugs, imperfect mothers and lesbian desire. Violence, cruelty and dysfunction bubble under the surface.

The reader doesn’t come to understand the situation, circumstances or relationships in each story until halfway through; Parsons drip-feeds details to us - always through implication rather than direct language - making the reader work a little. There were several moments where I wondered how readers with English as a second-language might fare with these stories because the language is far from literal. Parsons instead taps into Texan colloquialisms and modern patterns of speech rather than a traditional writing style, which gives the collection a contemporary and experimental feel. However, as a reader who prefers short stories with precise and purposeful language, like in Raymond Carver’s 'Short Cuts' or Samanta Schweblin’s 'Mouthful of Birds', Parsons’s 'Black Light' wasn’t for me.

Many of the stories in 'Black Light' end abruptly. I enjoy stories that refuse closure but reading 'Black Light' I often felt taken aback and frustrated by the lack of message or point to these stories. Whilst I appreciate the importance of portraying flawed characters and mundane life – both of which I usually enjoy – I wanted these stories to do more, particularly around themes such as body image issues and mental illness which are portrayed uncomfortably. It’s difficult to detect whether there was an underlying socio-political critique or a message to the exploration of these themes, which was a turn-off for me.

Whilst 'Black Light' was disappointing for me, I can see that it will be an enjoyable and interesting read for some readers who like quirky, dark and gritty short stories and I can understand many of the positive reviews this collection has gained.

I really need to stop reading collections of short stories. They just aren’t my cup of tea and I inevitably end up disliking collections because of the art form and not because of the writing. Black Light by Kimberley King Parsons is a well written collection of short stories. I can say that with confidence. King Parsons is a good writer but the collection as a whole just was not for me. It had no theme running through out so each new story put you at the starting block again and I just felt like I couldn’t connect.

Black Light is a good collection if you have a passion or a liking for the short story form but for me it just didn’t work.

Black Light by Kimberley King Parsons is available from 06th August 2020.

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This hyper-realistic short story collection is dark and depressing and with prose not always sharp enough to work for me. The stories are mostly about people in the middle of bad decisions; not necessarily life-threatening bad decisions but rather smaller, mundane ones. Often these decisions involve neglect, neglect of their own bodies, their living environment, or most tragically their children. In subject matter it reminded me of Lidia Yuknavitch's writing (who makes an appearance in the acknowledgements) but writing wise it could not reach her brilliance. I did not love the way Parsons wrote about weight and sadly too many of her protagonists were unkind about either their own bodies or the bodies of others.

This is a dark and interesting short story collection, similar in tone to Carmen Maria Machado or Julia Armfield, but without the more speculative elements that those writers are known for. The stories themselves are mixed in quality, with some being a little too disconnected for my tastes.

Black Light by Kimberly King Parsons is a gritty and raw collection of short stories. Unflinching and bold.