Some fiction lets you know exactly what it is from the outset. It’s comfortable in its genre or setting; it’s upfront with the reader about the plot, the timeframe, and the ramifications of characters’ actions. Kimberly King Parsons’ debut short story collection, Black Light, is more restless. Like many of the characters within them, these stories are constantly in flux, revealing new facets while refusing to conform to any preset template.
A sense of disorientation begins with the title. Black Light has many associations, from the light bulbs that make sweater lint glow to the literal paradox inherent in the phrase. And while some of those associations are teased out in the title story, the title’s use for the book as a whole gets at the contradictory emotions that Parsons grapples with throughout. The opening sentence of the opening story, “Guts,” establishes that we’re not quite in the land of literary realism: “When I start dating Tim, an almost-doctor, all of the sick, broken people in the world begin to glow.” The story’s narrator, previously averse to caring about others, now finds herself seeing another side of them. “People I once found gross or contagious are radiant, gleaming with need,” Parsons writes. It’s an almost-mystical epiphany made more complex by the dynamics of the relationship at the story’s center.
