Powerful ... Part of what makes Watkins' collection so enveloping is her mastery of the slow reveal ... The despair collected in Holler, Child might overwhelm if Watkins weren't so good at capturing the depth of her characters, sometimes finding redemptive moments amid all the pain. She has an acute eye for the resentments and betrayals that can accumulate over a long marriage and the untenable sacrifices others can demand of us, but she also captures how love can sometimes be enough to hold things together.
With equal fidelity, visits the extraordinary and the ordinary, the neglected and the grave ... In Watkins’ very capable hands, grief often shines a light on the labyrinthian quality of love ... Not a perfect story collection. In fact, I’ve yet to meet a perfect one, as stories are meant to meet you where you are, and there is no way one can be fully prepared to grasp all the fraught complexities, all the richness of character, all the rotting big dreams of the folks contained in these pages, but there was immense pleasure in trying.
An engrossing showcase of ordinary people struggling to get by, carefully and compactly drawn ... Watkins ends Holler, Child on a note of hope and love.
A collection that pulls readers into the lives of mothers and caretakers on the precipice of harrowing decisions ... Told in the rhythmic, lulling African American Vernacular English that has come to be Watkins’s signature, these stories run the gamut of difficult situations ... Together the collection asks: Whom can we protect and at what cost? Atmospheric and cinematic, Holler, Child is well worth your time.
Its ending is completely unexpected — a battlefield of conflicting logic and emotion that’s hard to fathom, but also strangely sensical ... Each voice brings something special, every narrative hard-hitting yet tender ... An excellent collection with true staying power. Every single story could stand on its own but works beautifully toward the whole.
