In 'Cutting Horse,' the appearance of a horse in a man's suburban backyard places a former horse breeder in trouble with the police. In 'Holler, Child,' a mother is forced into an impossible position when her son gets in a kind of trouble she knows too well from the other side. And 'Time After' shows us the unshakable bonds of family as a sister journeys to find her estranged brother-the one who saved her many times over.
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.
