In Baby, You’re Gonna Be Mine, Kevin Wilson’s first story collection in nearly a decade, Wilson combines his signature quirkiness with his keen eye for emotional complexity to explore the fraught relationship between parents and children.
Through a series of sometimes strange and mysterious events involving his characters, Wilson shows us the often complicated nature of relationships between family, partners, and friends ... Overall, Baby, You’re Gonna Be Mine is a collection that speaks and reflects on the human condition and the relationships we build. Even though the stories are sometimes fantastical or so outside the realm of most people’s experiences, they manage to be relatable and heartfelt nonetheless, exposing some very real elements of humanity.
"Kafkaesque absurdism, Southern Gothic, domestic dysfunction, sci-fi playfulness—throw it all in a blender, and what comes out will look something like Kevin Wilson’s new story collection ... In style, the collection is divided between what used to be called dirty realism—moody tales of sordid lives, though those here are infused with Wilson’s knack for levity, even in the most dismal circumstances—and magical realism ... a writer as nimble and generous as Kevin Wilson reminds us that a great story can assure us, at least, that we’re not alone.
Tolstoy would have approved: In the short story collection Baby, You’re Gonna Be Mine, Kevin Wilson finds an impressively wide-ranging assortment of punishments to make 10 different families uniquely unhappy. Yet it’s a thrill to read these stories, proving yet again that even bleak material can be exciting in the hands of a great storyteller ... What makes Baby, You’re Gonna Be Mine moving rather than lurid is Wilson’s compassion for his characters and his beautiful writing. He has a gift for heartbreaking detail ... a nuanced book.
