“The eight stories collected here poignantly dissect a group of trapped people—mothers, lovers, students, dads—all doing the best they can....While the stories glow with intelligent empathy, Jones is never sentimental. All of her characters are damaged...but, through Jones's sure telling, we understand the how and why of their lives and catch glimpses of the dreams that sustain their days....The beauty of these stories (and they are exhilarating) stems from how deeply we're pulled into this complex world, nudged to recognize the thin line between missed opportunity and despair, inarticulate love and loss.”
– O Magazine
“Jones' sparkling debut collection zeroes in on lonely searching souls making do in a quiet Kentucky town.”
– People magazine
“In her debut collection, Jones roams deeply familiar short-story territory: small-town betrayal, violence, grief. Fortunately, she also seems to have mastered the genre’s best trick: a charismatic energy, down in the spaces between every word, that makes you feel like she’s the first to ever write about these things.”
– New York magazine
“The stories from Girl Trouble are poignant and approachable-ripe for any audience. The human touch and prairie isolation of her characters are pitch-perfect. . . . Sharply intellectual. With a debut as striking as Girl Trouble, Jones could very well join the tradition of America's great Southern writers.”
– New York Press
“Nothing is contrived; every story is steeped in reality, and clarity comes with a price.”
– Nashville Scene
“This masterful debut dramatizes the fortitude of small-town southerners confronting situations gone terribly wrong and the shadowed boundaries of love, morality, and violence….Jones’ seemingly effortless style makes the eight tales quietly powerful and achingly human.”
– Booklist
“The eight stories in this debut collection maintain a sense of isolation and loss while depicting and dissecting the lives of drifting characters making questionable decisions in a quiet Kentucky town….Throughout each, the fallible characters are handled with delicate honesty…. Jones writes with grace and ease, the selections adding up to a powerful sum of reflection, loss and regret.”
– Publishers Weekly
"No politician should ever again use the phrase 'The American People' without reading this book, preferably twice, so that they understand at last just who the hell they're talking about. Holly Goddard Jones has a voice as expansive, complex, and beautiful as the country itself."
-Joshua Ferris, bestselling author of Then We Came to the End
"A powerful, resonant short story collection from the uniquely talented Holly Goddard Jones.”
-George Pelecanos, author of The Turnaround and writer/producer for HBO's The Wire
“Holly Goddard Jones is blessed with wisdom beyond her years, a gimlet eye and an enviable literary talent; her debut collection Girl Trouble is a fierce and exhilarating achievement.”
– Claire Messud, bestselling author of The Emperor’s Children
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STORIES FROM GIRL TROUBLE HAVE APPEARED PREVIOUSLY IN:
Best American Mystery Stories 2008,
guest-edited by George Pelicanos
From Kirkus Reviews: The 12th annual edition of this anthology, whose general editor is Otto Penzler, collects 20 blue-ribbon entries, all dressed up in impeccable noir. In his introduction, Pelecanos calls the stories that make up the collection "wonderful," and it's true that the quality of the prose is unfailingly high. That's no surprise, for the names are stellar: James Lee Burke, Michael Connelly, S.J. Rozan and, from outside the genre, Alice Munro and Joyce Carol Oates. These people can write…."Proof of God," Holly Goddard Jones's story about love gone disastrously wrong, manages to be at once ugly, brutal and deeply affecting.
New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, 2008,
guest-edited by ZZ Packer
From the Louisville Courier-Journal: Of the collection's 20 tales by such big-name authors as Clyde Edgerton and such edgy newcomers as Merritt Tierce, among the most poignant and polished is "Theory of Realty" by Murray State University professor and Kentuckian Holly Goddard Jones. Thirteen-year-old Ellen negotiates the fine and, ultimately, final line between adolescence and adulthood, between innocence and the knowledge that heartfelt emotions and actions can contort until they are too twisted to categorize.
New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, 2007,
guest-edited by Edward P. Jones
From the San Diego Union-Tribune: A less-than-happy ending awaits at least one of the two (or perhaps three) central characters of Holly Goddard Jones' “Life Expectancy,” about a high school basketball coach who has gotten one of his players pregnant. This story does the near impossible: It manages to keep a focus on both protagonists and make you feel their plights equally. It even manages to weave in a minor subplot about a dog (dogs do seem to figure to an inordinate degree throughout this anthology) to excellent effect.
