VEER (2017, Ravenna Press)
VEER (2017, Ravenna Press)
“Veer is Chinquee's second collection of innovative fictions with Ravenna, following Oh Baby (2008.) She also appears in Triple #3 (2012) with a collection entitled Pistol. Many pieces in Veer are collected from the pages of NOON, Denver Quarterly, Willow Springs, Story Quarterly and Conjunctions. Combined for the first time, these stories artfully apply unspecified menace like a fine-bristled brush to first the background then the uncertain foreground of ordinary events.”
Cover art by Pier Rodelon
Kim Chinquee's Veer invites you into what, at first, may seem like an ordinary event a family meal, a child talking to a cow, sisters playing with dolls or magazine clippings, a mother and daughter out celebrating then she adds a hint of menace,a damaged caretaker, an unreliable partner, a bad mood, and you sense that everything has tipped toward danger. But pay attention to the female narrators, who know what will, or might, keep the peace for the moment, and yet crave a chance to disobey, to assert their own wants, to break rules. Because it is their turbulence that you ll feel like an aftershock when you close the book --Susan Henderson, author of The Flicker of Old Dreams and Up From the Blue