There’s a lot of aspects about an author’s life that seep into their fiction, but it’s often that writer’s home that seems to leave the biggest footprint. Some of the more well-known examples of this are the creepy hamlets of Stephen King’s Maine or the crime-riddled backwoods of Chris Offutt’s crime fiction. Kenzie Jennings might be adding Florida to the list of literary locations explored on the printed page with her short story collection Always Listen to Her Hurt.
Many of the stories from this collection hail from the Sunshine State, particularly those that look beneath the seedy, sweltering underbelly of Florida’s thriving tourism industry. These tales include the story of a harried mother at Walt Disney World or a woman whose vacation destination is a little more out-of-the-way, learning with frightening consequences why some beware of what some locals call “a local thing.” There’s one tale that’s even a revenge fantasy of obnoxious tourists getting their comeuppance from assassins whose specialty is dealing with unwanted guests.
However, the stories in this collection aren’t all gleefully wicked gorefests. Jennings offers an explanation about all the stories here, but the horror becomes all too real when she explains how some writings are more biographical. These works are typically shorter, but they also offer some revealing glances at true emotional pain. Some might call it jarring, but the purpose of a collection is often to introduce readers to a writer’s overall body of work. What this collection does is show Jennings at her most creative and her most confessional.
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