Thrillville, USA: Stories

(Paperback)

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A raw and remarkable debut story collection concerning substance abuse, societal alienation, and doomed romance from a writer whose work has appeared in prestigious literary journals including The Paris Review.

An amusement park employee overdoses after eating the gel of a fentanyl patch. Two homeless men discover the body of a drowned woman. A sister encounters a dangerous stranger while driving her brother to rehab. Ex-lovers seek to rekindle their relationship with the aid of an earthquake.

In the nine masterful stories that comprise Thrillville, USA, debut author Taylor Koekkoek depicts Americans living on the margins of society, seeking escape from isolation and underemployment in drugs, booze, and self-destructive relationships. While the action is set largely in the rural Pacific Northwest, the characters malaise and disaffectedness is endemic of the country as a whole. The title takes its name from the aforementioned amusement park, but Thrillville is as much a state of mind as an actual placea sardonic commentary on contemporary America consumed by opioid addiction, social media obsession, wealth inequality and political polarization.

Yet as haunting as these stories are, they are not hopeless. Gorgeously written, they share a transcendental qualityan acknowledgment of and appreciation for the beauty in all things, even the most profane and grotesque.

Reviews

"These nine stories capture Americans at society's margins." The New York Times
Desperate situations, mordant humor, and a wonderfully skewed stance introduce characters who are blessedly without self-pity. A distinctive new voice that avoids the predictable, and takes a reader somewhere so much better.Amy Hempel
"Koekkoek treats the reader to moving, sometimes painful tales of calamity and waywardness in perfectly tuned, gaspingly funny prose that is itself a joy and consolation. Thrillville is a wondrous debut."Wells Tower, author ofEverything Ravaged, Everything Burned
"Arip-roaringride. Koekkoek delivers thrills and laughter-inducing shocks of insightvia electric prose and some of the most unpredictable characters in literature. Hands down the sharpest sentences Ive read in years.Thrillville, USAis storytelling at its finest."Jonathan Escoffery, author of the national bestseller and National Book Award longlist selection If I Survive You
"This is maybe forbidden in blurb-speak but let me address the question on your mind: yes, absolutely, TaylorKoekkoeks stories are fun to read. Pure fun. Also, beautiful. Are they also Western, teased by that old dreamand its torments And is this our new Oregon Trail, winding up in Thrillville, USA That, I cant say. While thelives of Taylor Ks characters may be scrappy and improvised the stories they inhabit are absolutely workeduntil the art is done saying all that it sees. This isnt a world that holds still for quiet epiphanies but thestrange and brilliant images we encounter along the way remain in the minds eye for days, burning asmiracles burn, not for heat but illumination." Charles DAmbrosio, author ofThe Dead Fish MuseumandLoitering

Author Bio

Taylor Koekkoek received his MFA from Johns Hopkins University and was a Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His work has been supported by the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and Oregon Literary Arts, and has appeared inThe Paris Review,Tin House, Glimmer Train,Ploughshares,The Iowa Review, and elsewhere.He lives in Portland, Oregon.