Blanche Deveraux Of Southern Lit Is Here In The Dark

Fuck yes I’m Here in the Dark with the Blanche Deveraux of Southern Literature. Thankfully I brought a flashlight.

I don’t get many opportunities to write about many chicks releasing literature, especially southern literature so this is actually a treat to dish on a book by a chick a lot of people don’t know about. I certainly didn’t before coming across this book. Let’s bump up the flashlight in the dark and say Meagan Lucas is a different type of writer giving us those familiar tropes of the south we’ve seen on Golden Girls with a bit more pepper. Here in the Dark is her swan song of collected works published all over the place, giving a showcase of hot johnny cakes most might have wanted without the molasses but with the sweet cream butter that is too rich but you eat it anyway.

In many aspects she shares similarities with one of my all time favorite female writers Jackie Collins (Muvah Collins to you squares and the initiated). Both of these chicks are foreign nationals, as Muvah Collins was born in Hampstead and raised in London on a small island called the United Kingdom and Lucas (according to her bio in Here in The Dark) was born and raised on a small island in Northern Ontario. Both are transplants that write about stereotypical Americans; Collins writes about bombastic Mafiosi and Lucas about wingding Rednecks. Interestingly enough both of them write about bitches and whores living life trying to find independence and sanity, though Collins takes the high road writing mostly about wealthy women and Lucas writing mostly about poor or middle class women. I have to admit from those comparisons alone my fucking curiosity was peaked.  Well, that and the fact that any white woman from Ontario that is the Blanche Deveraux of southern crime literature using Maya Angelou as a conduit for ableist white apologies definitely takes my curiosity up a notch.

Before I jump into the dark let’s talk about the book cover because you know I’m going to talk about the cover. From a graphic design perspective it’s very well done, highly professional, and has just a glint of lipstick lesbian approval from any agent in Manhattan. If you’ve seen some of the more modern book covers over at PenguinRandomSchuster that can’t make up their minds on whether are they paintings in an old folk’s home or stogy poster that doubles as a book cover (you’ll know what I’m talking about if you’ve seen them). Here in the Dark’s cover ain’t bad.  In fact it’s one of the better high end covers I’ve seen in the indie community I might add, so goddamn it I’m passing out gold stars for that.

That being said, from a theme perspective it missed the mark. Redneck southern lit stories featuring a parade of fucked up rednecks in really fucked up redneck situations with a slightly harder edge than Dukes of Hazzard episodes doesn’t translate well into the painted canvas of vivid watercolors depicting a warm summer night with plants not stepped on and butterflies floating like lightning bugs. The cover is misleading to the graphic nature of many of the stories in the book which has me side eyeing to some degree because the cover is a window into the soul of the story (in this case stories). After the third story I literally found myself looking at the cover after every story, trying to figure out what the fuck did butterflies with pretty flowers have fuck all to do with junkies, baby mama drama, and a gold rush among other deplorable mental shit going on with these characters. It’s equivalent to putting a Babysitter’s Club picture on a Mike Myers anthology and using plastic butter knives instead of a kitchen knife. Just know that going into it so you’re not shocked and confused that the carpet ain’t matching the goddamn drapes.

Now we are here in the dark, let’s let go find some fucking landing light Holly.

Sixteen stories make up this book, all dealing in some way shape or form with fucked up working broads, battered bitches, and junkie whores struggling in some type of way in all walks of podunk stereotypical southern life at the bottom of the pudding cup in the Carolinas. Nothing‘s wrong with focusing on that aspect, since fucked up rednecks in really convoluted fucked up redneck situations leave us with an even mix of some memorable stories and some stereotypical ones.  Don’t get it twisted, if you’re down to clown with a guilty pleasure of reading non-genre poverty lives of  random trailer park piss running through vinegar veins and junkie whores fucking and sucking to get back on the straight and narrow featuring beat up bitches taking love in their own hands and horrible mothers making bad decisions over questionable dick choices Here in the Dark got you got that tea kettle on the stove you for.

Here’s the recap:

Voluntary Action: A sick cop that should have her ass at home has a shitty no good fucked up ass day at work when a redneck junkie acquaintance she arrests George Floyded herself swallowing her stash under her partner’s watch and she just can’t get a guilt trip break.

The Carcass: A podunk ass junkie mother who can’t pay her utilities and barely feeds her crumb snatchers stumbles upon a gold rush in her backyard that changes her shitty fortunes.

Only Comfort: A chick with a sleeping bag fetish backtracks the steps of her missing lover.

Buttons: Childhood rough housing between two podunk ass kids that appear to be sweet on each other turns into a fucked up childhood game of them playing doctor.

Sitting Ducks: Two lovers serving jail time bicker of their fate when a hurricane floods the prison they’re trapped in.

You Know What They Say About Karma: A podunk ass underpaid nurse struggling to make a life for herself with her jailbird baby daddy stubbornly turn the tables on each other to prove to one another they are good parents with cringe results.

Kittens: A married podunk ass couple struggle to make sense of their junkie daughter’s life.

Asylum: A podunk ass Latina maid with PTSD from illegally migrating to the United States struggles to cope with the heavy losses the trip brought her working at a dingy motel.

The Monster Beneath: A newly appointed deputy in a podunk town haunted by the mysterious disappearance of her deputy father thirty years prior tries to get closure through her position solving the Scooby Doo Mystery of the rumored monster of lore in Lake Superior as it pertains to her latest case.

Glass Houses: A guilt ridden paramedic living an alternative lifestyle is involuntarily forced into the world of her fucked up fanatic neighbors through the son they left behind.

Molasses in Winter: A North Carolina housewife struggles with weight loss and keeping secrets from her dick of a husband when she stumbles upon trouble by accident.

Hell or High Water: A podunk new mother is struck with Stockholm Syndrome dealing with the cruel realities of her baby daddy.

Porch Light Salvation: A podunk battered bitch with a bastard of a husband makes hard choices dealing with the future of her marriage.

Frogs In A Pot: A housewife discovers her husband isn’t the night and shining protector she assumed him to be when its time to clear debts with the government.

And Then The Forest Will Burn Down: A beguiled chick walks away from her life and into the firery forest for purpose.

Here in the Dark: A podunk ass junkie fresh from rehab gets thrown into a bunch of shit with her baby daddy after finding her forlorn lover creeping on her.

Now this ain’t as salacious as Charmaigne Hollingsworth’s Vixen: Story of a Woman but its got its moments. The standout stories that just blow you the fuck away are You Know What They Say About Karma, Molasses In Winter, and Porch Light Salvation. I really loved that You Know What They Say About Karma!  That should have been a damn book by itself. Five fucking stars time five on that one being worth the price of admission. Brittney and Kyle are two characters that you cannot forget, forlorn lovers that at any other time and place would have been productive members of society, but life and chance fucked up their happiness and they are the last to really realize it. When they do, it’s too late to repair what’s lost. But before they get to that point they are here in the dark of the past hoping it gets them to the fucking future unscathed into the light, which is the best they can hope for since they are underpaid, out of opportunities, and struggling to give stability to their great kid in an unstable situation. Hell yes, get the damn book just for that story alone.

Now I’m going to keep it real in the field here and say Dorothy Allison this ain’t. Despite the accolades and endless nominations for awards for the stories per Lucas’ website I found the entire collection AS A WHOLE underwhelming. I want my southern lit collection honest in the sauce. I can blame Bastard Out Of Carolina for setting the bar high on the uncensored and uncompromised south. This was more of a showing a bit of fang on the hair of the dog with a growl here and there but the overall bite at the end barely nicked the skin. Podunk characters should never be PG-13 when these real life people are visceral and unadulterated. A lot of the stories held back their orgasm when they should have came all over the pages and left them stained and sticky. More than half the stories left me feeling like there was parts of the story missing because they were just too fucking politically correct and too fucking careful. I wanted the motherfucking tea piping hot on these characters, down to their smallest flaw. Give me that dark, grimy, spitting snuff, tying nooses to the back of pickup truck dirty bitches and bastards that wash their hands in the blood, guts, and jizz of the people they fuck with. I want to marvel and be on the edge of my seat with the type of motherfuckers that will drop you off in Deliverance if you wear a wire, not the potpourri version that comes out smelling like a rose. As I’ve said in another review I want to voyeuristically enjoy the characters fucked up lives falling apart as they are sucked into sins.  Fuck the trigger warning crowd, fuck the easily offended – if you’re going to throw us into the trailer park world of southern lit I want that real nasty gushy shit.

This overall is an impressive collection of greatest hits. Some will stay here in the dark and others will breeze right by it. Hopefully the You Know What They Say About Karma will get its own novel, and if it does I hope its balls to the wall and not as caught up in the broach as the great infamous southern classic such as Scarlet Dawn at Boca Raton or So Dark The Waves On Biscayne Bay by Barbara Thorndyke.