The History of Vegas: Stories

by Jodi Angel

Overview

A collection of dark short fiction about neglected and troubled teenagers, named a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year.

Trouble. From the first page of each of the edgy and unrelentingly intense stories in this debut collection, the teenaged characters are headed for big trouble. The adult world has mostly failed them, and they find themselves entering into highly charged situations where they make their own rules, with misguided understanding of the consequences. The stories burn hot and fast, providing searing insights into their world of sex, drugs, drinking, violence, and accidental grace, played out in small, tough towns. Written with raw directness and understanding that makes these stories impossible to forget, The History of Vegas announces an exciting, fresh talent.

“Bright, brooding, iconic, and dark.” —Anthony Swofford, New York Times bestselling author of Jarhead

“In essence, Angel is writing a kind of abbreviated naturalism, the kind of fiction that writers like Raymond Carver and Larry Brown honed to perfection. Angel excels at it as well, whether the setting is the urban jungle of Las Vegas, the dirt roads of the lonely, expansive West or even the seemingly placid suburbs.” —San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781452126548
Publisher:	Chronicle Books
Publication date:	10/12/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	534 KB

About the Author

Jodi Angel won a skateboard in a writing contest at age seven. She lives in Northern California and teaches creative writing at UC Davis.

Editorial Reviews

"Jodi Angel's first collection of fiction, "The History of Vegas," is a promising beginning and a thoroughly enjoyable read. Though the title may bring to mind the opulent Las Vegas of yesteryear, that vision is only the backdrop to a grittier, almost film noir present, where only aging gangsters remember the good old days.

These 10 stories are mostly populated by street-smart adolescents trapped in a continual "now," but no matter how smart they are, they lack the experience needed to keep them from being devoured by a hungry, heartless world.

In essence, Angel is writing a kind of abbreviated naturalism, the kind of fiction that writers like Raymond Carver and Larry Brown honed to perfection. Angel excels at it as well, whether the setting is the urban jungle of Las Vegas, the dirt roads of the lonely, expansive West or even the seemingly placid suburbs. "

San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

"This precarious world is putty in Jodi Angel's nimble hands. Really bad parenting lurks in the corners of most of these stark stories, the kind that makes clever survivors out of innocent children. In "Portions," a teenager serves as substitute mother to her grossly overweight little sister, who is threatened with suspension from school if she does not show up for swim class. Rather than solve the problem in an adult way, big sister teaches her sibling the fine art of binging and purging.

In "The History of Vegas," a 17-year-old boy is caught in the middle when his mother lures her sister away from a violent husband. In Angel's world, children are frequently used as human shields -- white flags of purity held up as a last defense against completely sordid lives. Several stories have coffee cans filled with life savings or next month's rent lurking in the corner. They inevitably end up empty, and not for the right reasons. Angel's metaphors are often the only tentative details that tether her characters to the real world: "I felt Husso's hand slide off my back like a fish sinking from the surface of a pond," thinks a character in "Supplement. "There were clouds stacking up against the mountains and the sky had dulled." The future, according to Jodi Angel, does not often look possible, much less bright. "

Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Angel, who is in her mid-30s, is one heck of a writer. Her stories drag you through at such a breakneck pace that it's a relief to step away from them. She's got gripping tales to tell, and each comes across as that rare bird in fiction -- the utterly fresh story."

Buffalo News

"Angel's tales are, each and every one, brutal kicks to the gut, harsh and voyeuristic reminders that the world is a messed-up and dangerous place where even the absolutions of youth offer little sanctuary."

San Diego Union-Tribune

The adolescent narrators in this smutty, sad and occasionally violent debut collection are neglected, nearly grown children of the American West. In the title story, a 17-year-old finds himself duped by a "jailbait" hooker and then kidnapped by the very uncle he, his mother and his abused aunt went to Vegas to escape; the cliffhanger ending has the clipped pseudo-profound dialogue of a crime flick. Angel is best when she reveals the disappointment her characters are in for, but can only half see. In "Rounding Third," an unnerving wail interrupts Norma Jean and her boyfriend, Spark, as they attempt to celebrate her 17th birthday in a cheap motel. They discover an abandoned infant in an alley, which Norma Jean takes as a sign that the three of them should "get on the highway and go South." When Spark proves undependable, she makes an ugly bargain with the motel owner for a few more night's lodging. Sexual degradation and loss of innocence are the norm: stories feature light incest, a lesbian hair-grooming scene and wooing by fried chicken. Some of them are oddly tensionless, and though Angel documents the difficulties of family life, particularly sibling responsibility, these stories aren't the ones that readers will turn to for insight. (July) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Nightmarish memories from high school make up Angel's weightless and grim first collection. The characters in these ten stories here aren't necessarily the kinds you'd want to spend a lot of time with. Take the teenagers, for instance, high on pot in "Donny," with nothing better to do than torture the narrator's family dog. They're on their way to college, maybe, but first they have to initiate the younger sibling of the high school senior of the first story, "Portions," who returns from getting high by the river with her friends to show her overweight younger sister the health benefits of vomiting. "The History of Vegas" is a depressing tale of hopeless youth given little glimpse of more uplifting lives than those to be spent in battering and prostitution. A 17-year-old boy making a trek to Vegas with his mother and bruised Aunt Dolores to get her a divorce meets a pubescent hooker he befriends and takes back to his motel room. Even their idyllic moment together is tainted and cheapened by the arrival of Dolores's brutal ex-husband, Uncle Charlie. Elements deliberately undeveloped, like the presence in Charlie's Crown Vic of his silent co-worker, who makes no addition to the denouement except as a menace, lend the stories unfinished if surprising endings. The young protagonists take comfort where they can, with no help from parents, as in "Supplement," set during harvest-time on a vegetable farm. The young narrator, Jaycee, becomes entangled in the romance of a neighbor couple while having to quiet the fears of her younger brother, who is nervous about their parents' feuding. "The Skin from the Muscle" finds a young man home alone (his mother having abandoned him and his father monthsbefore) when two women deer-hunters come knocking to use the phone. The startling turn of some of these pieces is mitigated by the overriding bleakness of tone and setting. Dispirited young people with small dreams and short sight.

Kirkus Reviews