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She's out there somewhere speeding through the night. When she left, she took his car, his nickel-plated pistol, and his life.
I have this strange relationship to female writing. I like it, I want to read some as much as possible, but I'm always looking for this universal, transcendent read and there is so little of them. Writers like Hilary Davidson and Megan Abbott, who both are extremely feminine and standout storytellers, are so few and far between, you know. It's why I've taken interest in Evangeline Jennings' latest collection RIDING IN CARS WITH GIRLS (OK, she might've queried me for a review also), stories about girls riding to dark places in the cars men love so much. I'd like to say it was fantastic, but it's more complicated than that. RIDING IN CARS WITH GIRLS was darn interesting though, I'll give it that.
RIDING IN CARS WITH GIRLS counts several short stories/novellas, each titled after a different car model. My favourites were FIREBIRD, 911, TRANS AM and CROWN VICTORIA. The spare prose and the understated tension of opening story (FIREBIRD) in particular, I thought were some of the best material in the collection. CROWN VICTORY was possibly the more fascinating story for its complicated sexual themes, but it was a little overambitious and lost focus of what it was trying to say a couple times. Anyway, Evangeline Jennings doesn't really stand out by the content of her stories, which are rather standard crime fiction, but by her quirky, unique storytelling. It's not what Jennings says, it's how she says it that gives her fiction such a well-defined identity.
Evangeline Jennings has this strange, sometimes fascinating way of telling stories: she works with almost completed character arcs. Reading her stories is like reading the thirty or forty last pages of longer stories without knowing what happened to the characters at first. The only thing you know is that there was a change, that the characters are assuming new selves. Their actions are simple and resolute. Their language is raw and direct. The appeal of Jennings' fiction is the intellectual gymnastics of bridging the gaps in the narration and figuring out how her characters became who they became. She doesn't give all the answers, but that's what makes it so compelling. It relies on the reader.
Fast and Furious? Fucking right I am. Let's talk about my righteous anger first. Born and raised in a tower block almost exactly like this, I'm expected to know my place and die in it.
One odd (and also sometimes fascinating) quirk of Evangeline Jennings' writing is her (sometimes obsessive) sexual themes. Some of her stories let go of the wheel sometimes and swerve into borderline erotica for five or six chapters. Personally, I don't read to get aroused so this kind of stuff tends to get on my nerves if it doesn't seamlessly blend with the narrative (which it doesn't here), but Jennings is SO good at it. I don't want to sound like a pig, but it is a thing with RIDING IN CARS WITH GIRLS. The steamy, hot action is going to make you feel uncomfortable to read it in public. I thought the sexual themes were over-exploited and, in the end, redundant, but Evangeline Jennings has a knack for it. She knows what makes a woman beautiful. It could become out of her biggest strengths as an author if she learns to harness it.
RIDING IN CARS WITH GIRLS was not what I expected it to be. Evangeline Jennings is an authors that's both fascinating and endearing in her qualities and her flaws. While the format of her collection perfectly suited her writing style, I'm not sure of how it would translate to a novel. The intensity of her pace and her stylistic choices are best suited for shorter forms, but you know what? I'd be the first one interested in reading it, seeing how she made the transition, because I've never read anything quite like RIDING IN CARS WITH GIRLS. It's OK to swing for the fences whenever you're writing, but few are going to end up writing standout fiction and if you're not going to, better be interesting for who you are. I wouldn't call Evangeline Jennings a standout female writer YET, but I'd say she's an intriguing talent.
RIDING IN CARS WITH GIRLS was not what I expected it to be. Evangeline Jennings is an authors that's both fascinating and endearing in her qualities and her flaws. While the format of her collection perfectly suited her writing style, I'm not sure of how it would translate to a novel. The intensity of her pace and her stylistic choices are best suited for shorter forms, but you know what? I'd be the first one interested in reading it, seeing how she made the transition, because I've never read anything quite like RIDING IN CARS WITH GIRLS. It's OK to swing for the fences whenever you're writing, but few are going to end up writing standout fiction and if you're not going to, better be interesting for who you are. I wouldn't call Evangeline Jennings a standout female writer YET, but I'd say she's an intriguing talent.