The rapture index A suburban bestiary

In this unforgettable collection of moralized fables, Reid brings the tradition of the medieval bestiary into a dozen modern narratives of suburbia. The stories are an obsidian version of hilarious, repeatedly juxtaposing human incompetence and animal violence within the tidy streets of a subdivision. The book includes both clear, formulaic bestiaries and longer stories of human relationships and families, with animals featured in the periphery. In one memorable story, a daughter with a penchant for the macabre discovers via Ouija board that her mother could have done more to save her father in the hour of his death. In another, the majority of a small town is murdered by the alligators they raised and released to solve a pesky beetle problem. In the titular tale, an elementary-school boy raised by agnostic parents manifests an obsession with religion and accurately predicts disaster in his regular contributions to an online journal called The Rapture Index. Thought-provoking, unthinkable, and fun, Reid's debut is perfect for fans of David Lynch, Alissa Nutting, and George Saunders.--Courtney Eathorne Copyright 2019 Booklist

Animals are animals, and humans are animals too in Reid's imaginative debut collection of 13 stories and eight pieces of flash fiction (here called bestiaries).A bestiary is traditionally a tale about animals, usually offering a moral lesson. In Reid's fictional universe, animals are everywhere, but more often than not, they symbolize nothing. In "Happy You're Here," the collection's strong first story, a dead whale, washed up across from the hospital where the narrator's mother is dying, is reduced to a sad spectacle. People come with picnic baskets in anticipation of the body being blown up and, later, hack it to pieces. The story's final image"flying blubber like falling stars"is both poignant and hilarious. Elsewhere, we see her characters' misguided attempts to make everything in the natural world reflect human matters. "Summer People" features Shasta, a newlywed whose life feels claustrophobic. When she frees her creepy neighbor's parrots because "it felt good, like she was doing something good," she realizes too late that she's done the birds no favors. In "Anatomy Is Destiny," a woman on a sexy weekend with her lover becomes convinced that hummingbirds are talking to her instead of owning her own discomfort with her icky boyfriend. In fact, most animals are utterly indifferent to human concerns, as Reid shows in many of her darkly comic bestiaries. The real beasts in these magical stories are, of course, humans: creatures of lust and cruelty, deception and selfishness. But Reid, to her great credit, doesn't resort to cynicism. In the collection's strongest stories ("The Permutations of A," "Adventures in Wildlife," and "The Rapture Index"), Reid reveals a talent for discovering the humanity of her flawed human characters.Promising work from a writer interested in all creatures, great and small. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Laundromat Bobcat This bobcat looks much like the one found in the glossy pages of your National Geographic: long legs, large paws, tufted ears similar to those of their larger relative the lynx. Most are brown or brownish red with a white underbelly and short, black-tipped tail, which appears to be cut, or "bobbed." They are fierce hunters and can kill prey twice their size. A solitary animal. They prefer the barnyard cat's hard-boiled autonomy to the co-dependence of some of the larger wild breeds. This particular variety of bobcat can be discerned by the sloping back and drooping belly resultant of a life accustomed to lazy dryer afternoons, a glut of unhurried heat-seeking mice. The first one appeared around the time of the contentious mayoral campaign. Some believe our current mayor ultimately won the race due to the hard line she took on preservation. Her opponent was advocating capture and release, and she reacted to this position with considerable public outrage. Her campaign immediately switched gears, from a platform of family values and more park and pool security, to animal-human co-existence. You probably remember those commercials: bobcat stretched out atop the dryer, looking as if it just swallowed a bottle of Vicodin, and our mayor, surrounded by her five angelic children: "For whatever reason, this magnificent beast has chosen our Laundromat as a place it would like to inhabit. Who are we to deny it? Who are we to say, no, bobcat, I'm sorry, but you're sitting on my whites?" The camera panning from her dazzling smile to the coached cherubic faces of her children, then back to the bobcat, which made it appear, at least to the discerning viewer, that they were not even in the same Laundromat. Then the slogan, so catchy you can still hear it recited mockingly on the playground or in the Applebee's parking lot: "Respect the Laundromat Bobcat. Avoid eye contact." There have been other cats since spotted in and around the Laundromat, and if you can believe the photographs, they have become progressively larger and more ferocious-looking, dagger incisors that no longer fit inside mouths set in bemused satiety. Last month the local paper published the image of a10-foot trailer unable to fully conceal a set of hulking paws. There have been disappearances. A dozen or so cats, a few small dogs. A toddler snatched from his backyard, a ten-year old in the parking lot after swim practice, a female jogger at rosy dusk. It's been rumored that Mrs. Harding, retired divorcé, and Roger Powers, bad-boy bag-boy, were ripped limb to limb one night five years ago, after sneaking into the Laundromat after-hours. You usually hear the story from a friend-of-a-friend: scattered organs on the confetti linoleum, sprays of blood across tacked-up ads for tai chi in the park, Spanish lessons, missing poodles. But every community must make sacrifices. It's important to maintain some wildness at the edges, to remind people there are boundaries that shouldn't be crossed, natures that just shouldn't be troubled. Excerpted from The Rapture Index: A Suburban Bestiary by Molly Reid All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.