Beasts and Children

In America, a lonely immigrant mother drives her car into a river, drowning herself and her two children. In Thailand, a teenage girl convinces her younger sister to cruise and drink with grown men. A father forces his son to kill a kitten, desiring only that the boy "be smarter than me." Gruesome? Perhaps. Indelible? Definitely. Readers may not immediately experience a taste for the darkness of some of the family relationships, but after a few stories, they will bite down hard. Parker writes too well to be forgotten and displays a talent for unearthing aches readers have attempted to bury. After Jill, the neglected daughter of a diplomat, finds herself in the apartment of an opiate addict, her remorse is so stark that many teenagers will strongly identify ("She understands this about herself—that her shame will endanger her again and again."). The pieces share characters and are connected. It's comforting to meet the characters again, but there's also the pain of realizing how badly their lives turned out. How do young people recover from the traumas of childhood? Why do some adults carry their pain so deeply? There are no comfortable answers, and this is not a collection for those who cry easily.