In May, Ravenna published Veer, its second collection of edgy and provocative short fictions by Kim Chinquee, following Oh Baby.
Some of these collected pieces appeared in the pages of Noon, Denver Quarterly, Willow Springs, Story Quarterly and Conjunctions. Combined for the first time, these stories artfully apply unspecified menace like a fine-bristled brush to first the background then the uncertain foreground of ordinary events.
Susan Henderson said of these stories, “Kim Chinquee’s VEER invites you into what, at first, may seem like an ordinary event—a family meal, a child talking to a cow, sisters playing with dolls or magazine clippings, a mother and daughter out celebrating—then she adds a hint of menace,a damaged caretaker, an unreliable partner, a bad mood, and you sense that everything has tipped toward danger. But pay attention to the female narrators, who know what will, or might, keep the peace for the moment, and yet crave a chance to disobey, to assert their own wants, to break rules. Because it is their turbulence that you’ll feel like an aftershock when you close the book.”
