Moonflower, Nightshade, All the Hours of the Day

Stories

by JD Scott

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Pub Date 3 Apr 2020 | Archive Date 8 Jul 2020

Northwestern University Press | Lake Forest College Press

General Fiction (Adult) | LGBTQIA

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Description

A Lake Forest College Press Book

In this debut collection of short stories by the winner of the Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writer’s Residency Prize, the sly fabulism of JD Scott’s fiction casts its own peculiar spell upon the reader as it outlines a world unsettlingly similar to our own. Scott troubles the line between what is literary and genre, fairy tale and parable.

In one story, a perfumer keeps his boyfriend close at hand by dosing him with precise measures of poison. In another, a comical domestic drama hinges upon the life and death of an ancient chinchilla. Scott pushes liminality with magical scrolls, a drowned twin returning from the sea, and a witty retelling of the Crucifixion where a gym bunny chops down a tree in the Garden of Eden—only to transform the wood into a cross for himself.

The collection ends with an epic novella in which a heroic teenager comes of age inside an otherworldly shopping mall that spans the entire globe. Visceral, dreamlike, and full of dazzling prose: Moonflower, Nightshade, All the Hours of the Day announces the arrival of a distinctive talent who challenges us to see our own endless possibilities—to find luminescence inside and beyond the shadows.

A Note From the Publisher

JD SCOTT (they, them, their) is the author of the poetry collection Mask for Mask. Scott’s writing has appeared in Best Experimental Writing, Best New Poets, Denver Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Indiana Review, and elsewhere. Moonflower, Nightshade, All the Hours of the Day is Scott’s debut story collection.

JD SCOTT (they, them, their) is the author of the poetry collection Mask for Mask. Scott’s writing has appeared in Best Experimental Writing, Best New Poets, Denver Quarterly, Prairie Schooner...

Advance Praise

“This strikingly original collection is at once magical and achingly real, distinctive in its formal invention and its sly, inviting wit. Scott’s characters grapple with loss and desolation, but this is also a book about possibility and transformation. Moonflower, Nightshade, All the Hours of the Day marks the arrival of a major new talent.” —Dawn Raffel, author of The Strange Case of Dr. Couney “I didn’t read JD Scott’s vivid and visceral collection Moonflower, Nightshade, All the Hours of the Day as much as I absorbed it. Scales sloughed from my eyes. These richly saturated fictions flood the senses endlessly and everywhere. Look, there are new blues! See, there is a spectrum of ultra and infra delights! Not since Edmund White’s Nocturnes for the King of Naples have I felt so steeped, immersed, swaddled in liquid syntactical fictive maps, scaled to disorientated worlds of words more detailed than the things they represent. This light is all osmotic. These fictions, I see, make me see to see.” —Michael Martone, author of Brooding and The Moon Over Wapakoneta "The stories contained in Moonflower, Nightshade, All the Hours of the Day are true bursts of light. JD Scott has curated a collection that takes all the wild magic of youth and love and transformed it into tender aches, beautiful little pains. The stories sit lodged in your chest and refuse to leave. Compulsively readable and immaculately written, Scott has honed their incredible craft into a book that readers will return to again and again." —Kristen Arnett, author of Mostly Dead Things

Available Editions

EDITION	Other Format
ISBN	9781941423059
PRICE	US$16.95 (USD)
PAGES	120

Additional Information

Average rating from 32 members

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Featured Reviews

Reviewer 635975

This was such an interesting collection. The author really knows what they're doing. I would go on and on about the beautiful writting and the stories but I believe the best thing you could do is walk into Moonflower, Nightshade, All the Hours of the Day blind. This book is not what you're expecting. I'll let you decide whether that's a good thing or not.

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Meg M, Librarian

I really enjoyed this book! Although, as happens with short stories, I found myself wanting to spend more time with some of the characters (particularly the title story and The Teenager).
The writing is spellbinding and so emotionally evocative. One of my favorite excerpts: "The truth is: sometimes there are endings and they occur so unapologeticlly that no sense can be made of them. You're bound by your love in a tiny box, and then you emerge from the shroud, unaccompanied, walking through the presence of so much open space" (From Chinchilla). There are moments where the plot, writing or language completely tears me open emotionally, but there are also delightful moments of whimsy and humor (like getting "sassed" by a deer). This book made me cry, and laugh out loud, which I think speaks to it's range. A fresh and sophisticated approach to magical realism.

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Jackie O, Educator

I really enjoyed these short stories. They all have very different angles to them, very emotive topics and some are moving to read. Over all I world recommend this book, it’s lively, fast paced and makes you think.

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Reviewer 618411

A wonderful and genre-expanding collection of short stories that culminates with a never-before-published novella. Each story is driven by a complex character with entirely surprising motivations. Woven throughout are elements of magic-it's ability to enchant and wreck carnage on our lives. And yet the works are so firmly rooted in the real world that it feels as though these things could really happen, whether in our present dystopia, or in a near future dystopia.

Amidst the high stakes and difficult choices each character is faced with, the collection offers hope, and an alternate way of looking at the world and relating to it. It imbues the every day with a spark that will challenge readers to peer out into their own world in wonder.

A powerful debut collection from a unique voice transcending genre and audience. From Young Adult to Seasoned Reader, the stories and the character will captivate with their complexity.