...[an] excellent debut collection ... It is as if the book is not only stories written by Lawson, but a collage made from these stories which ultimately poses to the reader a nearly answerable question. A puzzle in which each reader decides what the ending image will be; each reader gets to be a small god ...the author has created lives that are complex, maddening, baffling, filled with heart and breath and life.
...[an] impressively polished debut collection of stories ... Despite her limpid, supple prose, there's a creepy cast to Lawson's vision, with shades of Flannery O'Connor's dark humor and Southern Gothic sensibility ... Lawson depicts adolescent desire with humor and warmth ... Against a background of suppressed passions and sublimation, Virgin and Other Stories zeroes in on the hard-won, highly charged moments of awakening in these conflicted lives.
Lawson’s storytelling [is] psychologically poignant enough to avoid the generalizations often made about religion, chastity, and sexuality. Instead, Lawson explores a moral grey area, uncovering new possibilities for truth ... A refreshing take on desires both taboo and repressed, Virgin and Other Stories is a promising debut.
This project of asserting identity — I am an artist! I am a Christian! — drives the finest of Lawson’s work ... smart dialogue, spoken by eager, hungry, embarrassing, believable human beings ... Lawson writes teenagers well [but] certain details feel contrived just to make the story work ... When Lawson reaches for the concrete, the detailed, and the immediate, we get the best of what she can do ... When she avoids abstraction and resists exposition, Lawson’s prose grows sturdy, rich, irrepressible.
So what is the take-away, if anything, from these stories? For this reader, at least, one conclusion is that adolescence truly is another country, full of compulsive and little understood feelings, and worthy of adult sympathy. As for the stories about grown-ups, it’s a mixed bag ... In total, this collection conjures the dark, repressed mood of D.H. Lawrence more than it does such sexually liberated classics as the zestful Fear of Flying or the raunchy Fifty Shades of Grey. Maybe this is the pendulum swinging back, or maybe it’s just an intriguing start for a promising writer.
Throughout these stories, Lawson repeatedly returns to the same questions: How is desire created, and why do we desire what we desire? ... In the final two stories, decisions rooted in confusion and desire lead to moments of violent epiphany?—?climaxes that, more than the particularities of character or setting, truly do seem influenced by Flannery O’Connor. These are the most engaging and affecting stories in the collection, where the style, setting, and theme come together to form something unsettling and complex ... Virgin and Other Stories is a redolent, troubling read, both emotionally penetrating and intellectually probing.
...[a] dazzling debut collection ... This artful exploration of the excruciating limbo between love and apathy, desire and repulsion, affection and aggression, embodies all five stories set in the present-day South. But if there’s one takeaway from this intrepid book, it’s that the nature of human emotions render such binaries futile ... Lawson’s palpable prose carries Virgin and Other Stories, and like any whirlwind love affair, leaves us breathless and wanting more.
Here’s a young short story writer to rave over. Her name is April Ayers Lawson and her debut collection of stories, Virgin and Other Stories, marks the beginning of an auspicious career ... What I love about her stories is their complications. They are juicy and delicious.
...[a] superb debut collection ... The precision of Lawson’s prose brilliantly contrasts with the messy inner lives of her characters. These are stories that dare to tread where they shouldn’t, on uncertain ground that feels, in the hands of this talented young writer, remarkably concrete.
...several lurid scenarios that could have devolved into standard-issue Southern Gothic but instead convey compassion for Lawson’s damaged protagonists in straightforward but sharply perceptive prose ... Faltering marriages, uneasy connections to fundamentalist religious backgrounds, and the gray areas where powerful teenage sexuality meets adult desire in relationships that may or may not constitute abuse—these are among the recurrent subjects handled frankly yet with a delicate touch. Meaty, satisfying tales of a substance that suggests Lawson would make a fine novelist.
