Review
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
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
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
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
Product Description
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.
