Review: 'Antipodes: Stories' by Holly Goddard Jones

Often truth is weirder than fiction. There is something about the weirdness of coincidence that makes me double-take quite often. Did that really just happen? Are we really in year 2 of a global pandemic? Is there really war in Europe again? And did that bird just say 'hello' to me? So of course I was immediately intrigued by the stories promised in Antipodes. And I'm glad to say that Holly Goddard Jones delivers on the weirdness! Thanks to University of Iowa Press and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 5/10/2022
Publisher: University of Iowa Press

A harried and depressed mother of three young children serves on a committee that watches over the bottomless sinkhole that has appeared in her Kentucky town. During COVID lockdown, a thirty-four-year-old gamer moves back home with his parents and is revisited by his long-forgotten childhood imaginary friend. A politician running for a state congressional seat and a young mother, who share the same set of fears about the future, cross paths but don’t fully understand one another. A woman attends a party at the home of a fellow church parishioner and discovers she is on the receiving end of a sales pitch for a doomsday prepper.

These stories and more contemplate our current reality with both frankness and hard-earned hopefulness, realism and fabulism, tackling parenthood, environment, and the absurd-but-unavoidable daily toil of worrying about mundane matters when we’ve entered “an era of unknowability, of persistent strangeness.”

The stories in Antipodes are full of disruption and unquiet. As such, they are the perfect stories to come out of the last few years. Nothing typifies this more than the collection's opening story in which a mother serves as a committee member for a temple built around a bottomless sinkhole. The endless void of this sinkhole, its cool chill, its undeniable pull, it all feels utterly real to the many of us who have been staring into something of an emotional abyss during the COVID-19 pandemic and the many other disasters, great and small, that have befallen us the past few years. With stories so deeply focused on emptiness and sadness, it is surprising how gentle Jones' stories are nonetheless. Reading Antipodes is not a depressing experience as one might expect. Instead I experiences a growing sense of reassurance that I wasn't the only one who explored some dark depths during this time. 

The titular story 'Antipodes' is the one mentioned above, of a mother circling a massive sinkhole while worrying about the maybe-imagined hole in her own head. 'Exhaust' is a story of a couple, an early morning departure, and growing sense of loss. This one, oddly enough, stayed with me for a long time. The third story, 'Stars', works through contrast, starting with a smooth yet weary politician, pausing on a weary and worried mother, before ending on her contemplative child. It is a story of missed connections and of what impressions we leave behind. 'Fortress' focuses on a once-hip interior designer who begins to reckon with the choices he made during his life. I connected deeply with 'Distancing', a story about female discontent, the call of nature, and of letting go. 'Axis' was a bittersweet insight into the relationship between a mother and daughter, their regrets and loves, and their deep desire to be more connected. 'Visitation' was probably my least favourite story, perhaps because its focus on a disappointing middle-aged man moving back in with his parents and confronting his own childhood didn't entirely click with me. The fascinating 'Ark' sees stay-at-home moms guilt-tripped into potentially investing in a doomsday prepper's haven in case "the libs come for your guns". 'Shelter' and its group of adults trying to grasp at youth and easy was an odd story, yet one whose images have also lingered. Some of the stories feel utterly vicious, emotionally that is, like 'Machine' in which a writer copes with the ending of her relationship and her ongoing struggles to "be a writer". Elements of this story cut so deep that they're almost belied by the straightforward prose. 'Swallows' was a beautiful story to end the collection on, a story about love and its pitfalls, how we expect the worst, and how sometimes good can nonetheless come.

Antipodes was my first introduction to Holly Goddard Jones, despite her extensive oeuvre so far. What struck me most with Jones' writing was its precision. Each of these stories is meticulous in how it builds up a crescendo of doubt, or angst, or anxiety, or just unease. In some cases, this build up is one that happens due to your own experience, which Jones then lovingly overturns. As I mentioned above, I found an odd comfort in this collection of messy people, messy worlds, and messy moments. There is real darkness in the world and not all of it is made up with clear violence. Sometimes it's just a side glance, an overheard whisper, or a moment of embarrassment that is enough to give rise to that internal void. How Jones manages to not make this a depressing reading experience I'm not sure, but I do know that for me it wasn't. I will most definitely be looking for more of her books in the future, like The Salt Line and Girl Trouble: Stories.

I give this collection...

4 Universes!

Antipodes is a confronting collection, but not a dark one in and of itself. Dont' be fooled, these stories all circle around a void, around a darkness, but Jones never entirely abandons you there as she demonstrates that we are all there, circling.