Daughters of Monsters

Melissa Goodrich joins the ranks of such writers as Brian Evenson, Kelly Luce, and Been Loory who find their niche in literary variations on genre tropes. Goodrich's stories range from post-apocalyptic narratives to a richly imagined vision of everyday life aboard Noah's ark. Her title story is a tour de force of playful language and inventive imagery chronicling a young woman's futile commitment to not become like her monstrous family. The story is dazzling and pulls off effects that fall flat in some of her other more abstract creations.

When she gets down to telling a more straightforward story she usually does a good job of it. The family at the center of "Lucky" is on the move as a poisonous green gas moves across America. The story condenses what would be a by-the-book, end-of-life-as-we-know-it novel into scattered vignettes that provide all the satisfactions of that sort of narrative with all of what suddenly seems like filler removed. A young man gives himself an annual birthday party attended by an ever-increasing number of his past selves in the melancholy "Birthday People."

This is a good first collection from a writer to watch.