I Am Faithful

by Jenny H Irish

Overview

In this collection of stories, Jenny Irish’s sparse, raw prose gathers briny New England interiors, the eyes of old dogs, absent mothers and cold lovers. Each character is filled with the ache of absence, each story a Russian doll packed with glass. You’ ll want to cradle them to your chest, even knowing that, as you open them, the shards will cut you. A quiet, confident, and unassuming work. -Jen Michalski,

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781625570116
Publisher:	Black Lawrence Press
Publication date:	12/01/2019
Pages:	150
Product dimensions:	(w) x (h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

JENNY IRISH is from Maine and lives in Arizona, where she teaches at Arizona State University. She is the author of the hybrid collections Common Ancestor and Tooth Box, the short-story collection I Am Faithful, and the chapbook Lupine, and most recently, Hatch. She facilitates free community workshops every summer.

Read an Excerpt

My father kept dogs, and was particular about them in the way that other men are about the cars they'll drive, or the women they'll date. Within a month of my mother leaving him, he had a new woman moved in. She was a dishrag soul, and he treated her as a dog, absent the respect he gave chosen members of that species. He refused to be seen with her in public, but liked having her around the house. Without expectations for her treatment, she seemed grateful to be of service, and was content to be reprimanded—warranted or not—so long as it meant she might eventually be forgiven.

But, about the things that truly mattered to him, my father had his standards. Red Nose Pit Bulls were his dog of choice: forty pounds of muscle and snap. His were smaller than generally preferred in sporting circuits, but were all descendants of a lion-eyed Irish Old Family Dog named Haul, a celebrity so far as an animal who has never taken or saved a human life can be, a weight-pull champion on dirt, snow, and rails. It was a pedigree that forgave my father's dogs their size.

Before the Pit Bulls, there was a high-strung Doberman, and later, an inherited Rottweiler bitch, and overlapping, an assortment of small, long-lived lapdogs with free run of the house: my mother's pets. With their little faces between her hands, she would say, "I sha'n't be gone long—you come too." So we all knew some Robert Frost by heart—me, and the dogs alike.

Once, I found my college roommates, three Connecticut blonds, gathered around a newspaper, making shrill noises of excitement and distress. I assumed their enthusiasm to be over horoscopes, an especially favorable alignment of the stars. "Wait until you hear this," one said. "It's the worst thing ever." Then I thought there must have been a rape or robbery or killing on campus, and because of it, the cancellation of some event—no midnight swimming, or XXX bingo in the Union.

But no—

They were beside themselves over a man with more puppies than he could find homes. He shot two without any problem, but the third wouldn't stop squirming, making it difficult to aim. When he went down on his knees to pin it, there was an accident positioning the barrel. The puppy somehow managed to shoot the man, and he eventually died from the wound. The worst thing, the thing that so moved my roommates, was not the man's death, but his intention.

There is, I think, an assumption of malice when we hear a story like that. But, what if it were only matter-of-fact? Like, there's a kind of man who shoots a dog, because a dog is a dog. He's the same man who drowns newborn puppies by the sack-full every spring then ticks it from the list of chores in his head. He's seen the public service announcements: Spay and neuter your pets. But, he doesn't have pets. He has dogs. He's the same kind of man who is superstitious of bodies opened and altered. He doesn't say so—he wouldn't say so—but he believes the medical-arts to be a sort of dark magic. Doctors make him sweat. He's a man who doesn't admit to fear, and so when he is afraid he is angry. He's the man who dies of a slowly consuming cancer, an abscess left to fester. He's the man taken down by a clogged valve in his heart, thirty slow years in the making. That kind of man: he's a tough old bastard, but he's never meant any harm. On the anniversary of his death, his sons drink, because their father was a tough old bastard and they hated him, but he never meant any harm, and they loved him too.

Editorial Reviews

I Am Faithful is often beautiful, occasionally ugly, and true on every page. Jenny Irish is a writer of great skill and intelligence and most of all heart.
—Kyle Minor

I am so in love with, so in awe of, so grateful for I Am Faithful. Jenny Irish writes girlhood like none other, splaying its great intensity, its loneliness, sufferings, longings, imaginings, and let-downs all.
—Jenny Boully

Reader, witness: here, in burnished, exquisite prose, is a precise telling of class in America, a portrait of those who must compromise to survive, who scrape and save, and though acting out of the grim fury misery provides, they never, under whatever circumstance, deserve to be called 'trash.'
—Nickole Brown

I devoured these spiky, knowing, unforgettable stories, which keenly dissect the dangers of girlhood, of womanhood, in America.
—Belle Boggs

In this collection of stories, Jenny Irish's sparse, raw prose gathers briny New England interiors, the eyes of old dogs, absent mothers and cold lovers. Each character is filled with the ache of absence, each story a Russian doll packed with glass.
—Jen Michalski

Often slyly funny and always devastatingly observant, Jenny Irish writes about the precarities of our moment with gorgeous prose and heartbreaking acuity.
—Laura Kipnis

These are powerful and unsettling stories, and their publication establishes Irish as a truth-teller of the highest order: lyrical, insightful, and admirably fearless.
—Adam Wilson

Lovely, brutal, and absolutely mesmerizing. Jenny Irish is a genius, and I Am Faithful is a revelation.
—Jennifer duBois

In a world that seems to require at times our loss of hope, I Am Faithful is an intimate proclamation of faith.
—Jarret Middleton

Jenny Irish's stories are unflinching glimpses into messy human lives. Finely crafted, the beautiful sentences build. There is ache, there is longing, and then, inevitably, the story bares its teeth.
—Callan Wink

In sentences exactingly detailed, blackly comic, and genuinely poignant, Jenny Irish writes prose for the body: her stories stick to your ribs, jostle your heart, jag your muscles with their rhythm and thwack. I Am Faithful is a wondrous book.
—Murray Farish

Jenny Irish writes without fear, divulging the truths that we humans so often keep from one another. Each story resonates through its final sentence.
—Bojan Louis

From the Publisher