Megan Howell’s debut short story collection, Softie, addresses several themes: motherhood, fetishized violence, casual racism, political timidity and the physicality of fear and loneliness. But across all of these stories, the control of bodies and minds is present in one form or another. There are stories about the dark feelings of helplessness that accompany teenage angst, while others show how parental instability can be expressed in a need to subdue their children. The danger of idealizing youth appears regularly alongside the consequences of rejecting—and accepting—loss. Like with any collection of short stories, some are more successful than others. But on the whole, the book presents a uniquely weird perspective on our increasing desire for mastery over things we can’t change.
“Lobes” opens the collection with a story about control, desire and physicality. Carla, the teenage protagonist, admits to being in an unsatisfying relationship with an older man named Sam because she’s fixated on his perfect ears.
A lot of relationships like ours were only about good body parts: muscles, big dicks, large hips, pretty faces—all of it was just flesh, the same stuff ears were made of. I knew there was nothing wrong with me compared with the rest of the world even though I felt like an alien who was just visiting.
The story addresses the importance of physicality in romantic relationships while also showing how a dependence on the physical can lead to intellectual and emotional disconnect. Carla knows that her attraction is nothing to be ashamed of, yet she still feels removed from the people in her life. Her interactions are like experiments, cold and self-centered to the point where she dehumanizes others. Sam and his lovely ears exist for her pleasure and the relationship with him gets so disturbing that it would make any visiting alien squirm.
Strange relationships abound in “Kitty & Tabby,” a high-school story of unrequited love, stunted empathy and shapeshifters—not to mention a birth scene that will be burned into my brain for a lifetime. “Bluebeard’s First Wife” explores how when a teenage girl tries to ignore the racist tendencies of her best friend’s brother, it skews her understanding of the obvious problematic realities and radical, violent divisions in her community.
The US’s problematic realities and violent divisions are difficult for the main character to miss in “Vacuum Cleaner.” The protagonist, Cheyenne, takes a Craigslist job as a caretaker for a troubled man. But before she arrives for her first day, she gets caught up in a protest outside an abortion clinic. An old man grabs her, thinking he’s stopping her from going into the clinic.
Cheyenne tries to pull back, but he won’t let her go. She’s afraid she might break him if she pushes too hard. She’s never been the fighting type. In her family, which is her mom and three older sisters, she’s the brainy one and sometimes the smart-alecky one, but never the one to assert herself physically.
When the old man scuffles with a male clinic volunteer, they break Cheyenne’s glasses. By not asserting herself physically, she has allowed arguing men to turn her world into a blur. Starting with this example of masculine violence, the story becomes more complex when Cheyenne meets her forty-two-year-old charge, a man who regresses in age whenever he’s upset. Instead of male emotion leading to physical aggression, here it causes fragility. The story explores how, in both cases, men losing control over their emotions brings about violence.
“Age-Defying Bubble Bath with Tri-Shield Technology” is another fountain of youth story; or, as the title suggests, a bubble bath of youth story. Alda is a high school teacher who has just lost her mother and has subsequently lost her self-control. Her sister notices she’s high on the day of the funeral.
“Maybe you should just go,” Maureen said. “Just leave.”
Alda nodded. She couldn’t tell if her sister was being serious or not. She didn’t try to. Nothing felt real anymore. She wouldn’t have been surprised if her mom were waiting outside. Somehow, she managed to find the door.
The casual tone of the exchange implies that Maureen is used to dealing with Alda’s drug use. Alda’s immediate acquiescence shows a shame and uncertainty in herself, which may be explained as an addict’s behavior.
Then in a pharmacy on the way home, she sees an age-reversing bubble bath. She uses it and wakes up the next day noticeably younger-looking. The reactions she gets from her students show a microcosm of how American society talks about women.
“Question,” one of the boys said to Alda […] He could be very annoying. He liked pushing people for laughs. “What did you do to your face?” he asked.
[…]
“I think the change looks nice,” the belly-ringed girl said. Her name was Katie. She bugged her eyes again. “It’s a free county. People should be allowed to do what they want to themselves.”
Alda’s drug and magic bubble bath usage highlights how societal pressures don’t necessarily translate into direct regulation of women’s bodies. Still, nefarious effects persist. The students aren’t talking to her as much as they’re talking about her to each other. This kind of discussion, whether mocking or supportive, can peel away at one’s selfhood. But it’s primarily the moralizing, judging gaze of Alda’s sisters, students and colleagues which has a dehumanizing effect, leading her to uncontrolled excesses.
Finally the titular story, “Softie,” handles all the collection’s themes of youth, physicality, control and emotional disconnect in the first sentence: “Before I was born, I tried to kill myself.” Clio is seventeen and is being raised by her father who everyone knows from the tabloids: “Carter Banks, the film producer who threw scuzzy parties.” Her inability to sleep in a room that’s too close to his, her recoil from physical contact and her simultaneous obsession with weight as well as suicide make it hard to imagine that this father-daughter relationship isn’t abusive. Clio doesn’t accuse him directly, but you can feel the unsaid throughout the story. Like for many outside observers of abusive families, a cloud of silence covers up the father’s actions—until it doesn’t.
While not all of the stories in Softie hit the mark as well as others, this collection is a unique and original exploration of not only how our sense of control affects our perceptions of not only our bodies and relationships, but also our understanding of physical and emotional maturity. A strong debut of thought-provoking, skin-crawling stories.
Publisher: West Virginia University Press
Publication date: December 1, 2024
Reviewed by David Lewis
David Lewis’s reviews and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Joyland, Barrelhouse, Strange Horizons, The Weird Fiction Review, Ancillary Review of Books, 21st Century Ghost Stories Volume II, The Fish Anthology, Willesden Herald: New Short Stories 9, The Fairlight Book of Short Stories, Paris Lit Up and others. Originally from Oklahoma, he now lives in France with his husband and dog.