Black Cloud

The stories in Juliet Escoria’s brilliant and elegantly crafted debut introduce us to a series of narrators who tell us about bad situations and surviving them in lucid, darkly humorous prose. Surface straightforwardness belies the complex web of conflict just under these stories’ smooth exterior. Each is named for an emotion, and there are twelve of them. Some trace the path towards sobriety and some describe addiction, but without cliche and without romance. All of them are indelible, shrewd and frank and real.