Idling away in punk rock uniforms, with glowing cigarette coals warming their dry knuckles, teens and twenty-somethings gather nightly along the curbs of Jersey streets. The Suburban Swindle, a short story collection by Jackie Corley, depicts the wander-lust of a generation of kids piecing together their lives in a world moving too fast to stop and give them directions. They are the bored, the lonely, the hopeful, the helpless and the redeemed young adults of suburbia.
The Suburban Swindle
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
Sharp, bold, and deeply affecting, Jackie Corley's stories are like poetry made from the gritty stuff of hard-scrabble life. Dead garden snakes and forgotten video games, gravestone statues that seem to dance in the night: in Corley's able hands, the mundane, even the ugly, are transformed. The young men and women who struggle through her slim, piercing collection, stay with you long after you've finished reading; tough-talking and scarred, tattooed and tender, they search Corley's dirty, sparkling New Jersey streets for something always just out of reach.
A fiercely original debut. Corley is a talent to watch. --Scott Snyder, author of Voodoo Heart
Finally a 20-something author who is neither precious nor coddled. Finally a young writer who writes about life as it actually is instead of some trust fund prick's fantasy of America. Jackie Corley is almost completely alone among the new set of writers in that she is actually telling stories about real humans. And she is telling them well, with the kind of immediacy that most young writers have had beaten out of them in MFA factories. Corley is original and unforgiving. I cannot say enough about Jackie Corley. She doesn't flinch. Read this book. --Ian Spiegelman, author Welcome to Yesterday and Everyone's Burning
I am tempted to compare Jackie Corley's writing to a strong cup of coffee. It wakes you up, it gets you addicted, and sometimes it's burning hot. Or I could say it's like whiskey it's strong, it blurs your vision, and gives you the guts to face the hard truths and bitter pains of life. But forget about those liquid comparisons, because Corley's work is solid! The Suburban Swindle unleashes a new, bold, American voice that you'd be foolish to ignore. --Kevin Sampsell, author of Creamy Bullets
A fiercely original debut. Corley is a talent to watch. --Scott Snyder, author of Voodoo Heart
Finally a 20-something author who is neither precious nor coddled. Finally a young writer who writes about life as it actually is instead of some trust fund prick's fantasy of America. Jackie Corley is almost completely alone among the new set of writers in that she is actually telling stories about real humans. And she is telling them well, with the kind of immediacy that most young writers have had beaten out of them in MFA factories. Corley is original and unforgiving. I cannot say enough about Jackie Corley. She doesn't flinch. Read this book. --Ian Spiegelman, author Welcome to Yesterday and Everyone's Burning
I am tempted to compare Jackie Corley's writing to a strong cup of coffee. It wakes you up, it gets you addicted, and sometimes it's burning hot. Or I could say it's like whiskey it's strong, it blurs your vision, and gives you the guts to face the hard truths and bitter pains of life. But forget about those liquid comparisons, because Corley's work is solid! The Suburban Swindle unleashes a new, bold, American voice that you'd be foolish to ignore. --Kevin Sampsell, author of Creamy Bullets
About the Author
Jackie Corley was born in 1982. She co-founded Word Riot, an online literary magazine and small press, in 2002 with the help of Paula Anderson. She lives in Freehold, New Jersey. She doesn't know Bruce Springsteen.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Jackie Corley is a very talented writer with a powerful voice. She has a real knack for capturing the angst and confusion that accompanies early adulthood. Reading this book took me right back to my early twenties - I could almost taste the cheap vodka again. She has a way of dragging you headfirst into her scenes and making you rub up against her characters, even when you really don't want to. Some of them are downright repulsive but, then, I like it that way sometimes.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
"The Suburban Swindle" is gritty, witty and exposes the underbelly of boredom in suburbia. Corley's themes echo with traces of post-modernism, yet she makes them her own, through the eyes and pen of a suburban inquisitor. Bohemian when compared to the white picket fence, white middleclass, white washed society of suburbia...but true to the free thinking people whom are trying to survive in a demographic which is truly devoid of art, culture, individualism and suffocated in designer everything, with the exception of designer self. Two thumbs up....
~John J. Petrolino III: October 26, 2008
Author of Galleria: A collection of poetry and the short story "Three Lonesome Travelers"
~John J. Petrolino III: October 26, 2008
Author of Galleria: A collection of poetry and the short story "Three Lonesome Travelers"
