RaveLambda LiteraryStaples renders Marion in the first-person, giving the reader a vibrant intimacy to an openly gay man in a town where the majority of nearby online dating profiles are blank. The concise, thoughtful style gives characters, even when hardly physically described, emotional propulsion. Staples’ empathy for the entire town makes the characters clear and urgent. The author’s empathy even extends to former prom king Shannon Harstad, Marion’s childhood bully who becomes his on-off closeted lover ... It’s fair to say that Shannon doesn’t know himself, a sad and pressurized state that Staples pushes into relief by skillfully writing Shannon’s sections in the second person. There’s a beauty to the unadorned prose ... Staples avoids melodrama in detailing the drug vulnerability, emotional strains, and the financial frustration that befalls the denizens of Geshig. This troubled reality does come with a good share of humor ... This Town Sleeps is suffused with such humanity and the voices are so enchanting that a longer novel, to allow for a plurality of perspectives, might have been warranted. But this is a comment about expansion. The narrative is so well controlled that, however brief, This Town Sleeps remains a consistent pleasure.
