近距离内射合集

鈥淭he man, September told me at the start of it, was not all there in the head, had a screw loose, a shifty disposition, not unlike the feral children in the outskirts beyond the outskirts who had no grandparents or conception of death.鈥�

The almost breathless runaway opening of Devyn Defoe鈥檚 debut novel proceeds with a cadence that reminded me of the opening lines of Maurice Sendak鈥檚 classic, 鈥淲here the Wild Things Are,鈥� its voice incantatory or delirious, tugging the seams of familiar scenes to reveal a landscape dreamy and dangerous.

Instead of rambunctious Max, the unnamed narrator of 鈥淏urnside鈥� is a mordantly alienated, college-age bookstore employee living in Sacramento, California, with her close friend, referred to as September because she is Miss September in a pin-up calendar promoting the 鈥渂reastaurant鈥� where she waits tables in a skimpy cowgirl outfit.

In the course of a hazy summer with wildfire smoke billowing into town, the friends navigate precarious jobs; boyfriends and self-styled protectors who unfailingly betray desires of their own; and news of bodies being found by the river, all while September and our narrator drift inexorably apart.

The novel is named for the homeless man who is the antagonist in September鈥檚 telling of an unpleasant encounter at the book鈥檚 opening, an ordinary man whose figure grows more sinister each time September repeats the tale. Her story gets away from her, sparking a moral panic in a local business community that proceeds to scapegoat him for a widening range of environmental and economic travails.

And on the 鈥渙utskirts of the outskirts鈥� of the city, there are troubling clues about the deaths and a lawless hamlet that may exist at least in part as dream 鈥� a more dangerous vision of sailing 鈥渙ff through night and day, and in and out of weeks, and almost over a year to where the wild things are鈥� (again, Sendak).

Defoe鈥檚 antic prose presents Sacramento鈥檚 neighborhoods and local history through a crooked lens with setpieces that are often funny and theatrically absurd, such as a home invasion by the most polite, business-like burglars one could imagine.

Sometimes style takes over and indulges itself. I know not what it means to flee from a social interaction 鈥渓ike a hawk into a bath of acid,鈥� but can鈥檛 deny it is a disorienting image. Disorientation is often the point, as Defoe, on the whole, deftly adjusts the ratio of hallucination-to-sense while exploring social relations among late capitalism鈥檚 precariat and class violence, climate despair and mutable perceptions of victimhood.

This playful book lopes from ragged nightmare to exuberant scherzo while somehow conveying the emotional reality of what it takes to tear oneself free from relationships that are past ripe and poisonous, being torn in the process of moving on. It鈥檚 not Max waking up to find his supper waiting for him after his wild rumpus, but 鈥淏urnside鈥� concludes with a struggle to wake up and live.

This is not a book one will necessarily remember fondly and return to over time, but it is an intriguing debut and an arresting canvas introducing a voice who, like the filmmaker David Lynch (to whom the publisher eagerly compares Defoe), understands how ordinary life hangs on dreams.

鈥淏urnside,鈥� by Devyn Defoe. 272 pages. Astra House, New York. $22.