Annihilation for Beginners by Charlie J. Stephens is a page-turner, mesmerizing for both its weirdness and sensitivity.
The short-story collection traverses a contemporary Oregon landscape, hitchhiking alongside surprising, messy, imperfect, real characters who are fully alive in their follies and desires.
This is the mark of exceptionality in writing: rejecting caricatures; mirroring human complexity. And Stephens masters both these elements.
Through 28 stories divided into sections that represent the wild of Oregon (also Everywhere)—coast, river, forest, valley, sky—Annihilation for Beginners seeds questions of...
Why does it all feel so hard, sometimes?
How is it all so beautiful and so melancholy?
...into seemingly everyday moments and places: apartment hallways; dinners out with friends; living-rooms with grandparents.
The book exudes an attuned emotional intelligence that leapfrogs off the page and into life. It deftly conveys that underneath anger and the behaviour it triggers and the impact of that behaviour can live a faint whisper: But will you stay? Do you see me? Do I see me?
There are fantasies of escape and freedom—into nature, into mental images of others—that shake the sand enough to ask: what's stuck?
More subtly, Annihilation for Beginners carries a low-key spiritual hum that isn't loud like instagram gurus, nor performative, but simply there, like wind.
Highly recommend this collection if you want to be dazzled by impeccable writing; if you want to start each next story with a smile of what now? If you're hungry for human complexity and also open to being flung around a bit by literature that captivates your attention and curiosity and discomfort and understanding all at once.
