"A complete and complex world in a single sitting"
"A complete and complex world in a single sitting"
Q&A and book recommendations with Kelsey Norris, author of House Gone Quiet
I’ve frequently referred to 2023 frequently as my year of big books, and while that remains true, I could just as easily dub it my year of short stories. While I’ve never fully shied away from short stories, prior to this year, I wouldn’t say I had ever sought them out either. If a premise sounded interesting, I would read a collection in spite of the format. But it wasn’t until this year that I began seeking out new collections because of their format, and short story collections have lead to some of my most memorable reading experiences of the year.
This fall is an exceptional publishing season for short story lovers, and one of my favorite collections of the year is available today. House Gone Quiet by Kelsey Norris has everything I look for in a short story collection. The writing is rhythmic, playful, and efficient, introducing readers to people and places that become fully formed in a matter of mere pages. Each story contains moments of revelation as Norris deftly shifts the plot, tone, or theme in ways that unsettle and surprise. Mostly, I appreciated that House Gone Quiet reads like a true collection. These stories aren’t linked by character or setting, but they are very much in conversation with each other. The themes grow in depth and nuance throughout the collection, with stories offering different answers to the questions Norris poses. As a reader, I loved getting a sense of Norris’ writing style and the themes she was exploring in her debut. Every single story fit in this collection, but the variety in genre and tone delighted me, making for an adventurous and surprising reading experience.
If you’re looking for an entry point into short fiction, House Gone Quiet is a perfect place to start. Here you will find stories reminiscent of classroom staples from Shirley Jackson and Ray Bradbury, but with a thoroughly modern sensibility and voice. This is also a perfect collection for anyone looking for eerie, unsettling, but not too scary October reading.
I was thrilled to have the chance to talk with Kelsey and celebrate her debut collection for today’s newsletter! In the following Q&A, Kelsey shares what she loves about short fiction as a reader and a writer, the themes that tie her collection together, and what she wants readers to know going into House Gone Quiet. She also gives a fun fact about the collection’s title and offers more collections that convey the power of short fiction.
You can find House Gone Quiet on Amazon, Bookshop, Libro.fm, or your favorite local indie.
Sara: Short story collections can be hard to describe to curious readers! How would you describe your debut collection House Gone Quiet? Can you give us an elevator plot pitch for 2-3 of the stories within the collection?
Kelsey: House Gone Quiet is a collection of ten short stories about what it means to call a place home. The collection blends genres like magical realism, satire, and horror to explore the bonds and bounds of community. The collection’s opening story finds an apartment complex of women shipped across a border to become wives to the enemy contemplating whether or not they’ll kill their husbands. Another story sees a southern town replace its confederate monument with a rotating cast of residents. Be it an island community, a family, a tribe, or a support group of traumatized joggers, the characters within these groups strive for or against belonging.
Sara: As a writer, what do you find pleasurable and what do you find challenging about the short story format? How about as a reader?
Kelsey: I love short stories! As a reader, I so appreciate being able to experience a complete and complex world in a single sitting, and I also think that short stories can give a little more leeway to literary weirdness–be it with premise, structure, or language. As a writer, I love the fact that a short story can maintain a really tight sense of rhythm within the prose. When the writing’s going well, I can usually hear the sentence that follows the one I’m writing, and that flow combined with the fact that I typically finish the first draft of a story in a couple sittings means that the story usually turns out closer to what I initially intended than a longer work might. The revisions are also key, of course, but short fiction–as a reader and a writer–continues to challenge and delight me.
Sara: One thing I love about your collection is that many of the stories are thematically urgent, while still feeling somewhat untethered from a particular time and place. In that way, they reminded me of great classic short stories like "The Lottery" that will always be relevant no matter how much the world changes. Was this intentional and were there any particular stories or writers who inspired your style here?
Kelsey: I started out reading short fiction like “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” by Gabriel García Márquez and “Reeling for the Empire” by Karen Russell, and I think that sort of legend-making mode of storytelling stuck with me and, by extension, with many of the stories in this collection. It feels like a throwback to how short stories would’ve initially been shared–that is, verbally around a campfire or a good meal, or as a means to share a group’s history. Because this collection is interested in the idea of community, that sense of, Sit down with me and let me tell you a story, is present throughout.
Sara: Unlike many collections, the title House Gone Quiet is not the title of an individual story within the collection. I won't spoil where that phrase shows up for readers, but can you share how this title encapsulates the collection as a whole?
Kelsey: Sure! In this story where the title appears–as part of the closing sentence–the house has gone quiet as a consequence of disconnection as a family unit has grown further and further apart. For the collection as a whole, I like that “House” works as a container as a stand-in for the communities or relationships throughout. “Gone Quiet” lends a sense of foreboding to the stories that skew that way, but it also speaks to the role that sound has in the collection. Many of the stories hinge upon either a moment of silence or clamor, and I tried to be conscious of how volume worked when organizing the book.
Fun fact: the original title for the collection did borrow from the title of one of the individual stories, “Certain Truths and Miracles.” While I love that title for that particular story, I don’t think it worked as well for the larger collection. Shoutout to my wonderful agent, Stephanie Delman, for helping me find the collection’s final title!
Sara: What else do you want readers to know about your collection that they might not learn from reading the back cover copy?
Kelsey: While I love story collections that are tied to a particular place or linked by a group of people, the stories in House Gone Quiet are thematically linked instead. The stories are alike in their interest in community, but the subject matter and premises range widely. For example, in one story, a mayor decrees that his whole town should go naked while in another, a woman living on a Namibian salt pan strives to build a life and legend for herself.
Between that and the varied genres within the collection, what a reader will find here is variety. There’s a love for lyricism in the collection, too, and humor, and a sense of play! I hope that readers of my debut will find and appreciate that House Gone Quiet isn’t one-note.
Sara: Where can readers follow you to learn more about your work?
Kelsey: You can find me at kelseynorris.com, or follow me on Twitter @_Kelsey_Norris_ (before that platform implodes or whatever).
Sara: FictionMatters is built on the idea that fiction matters because it has the power to illuminate the world and transform readers. Can you share a few books that matter to you?
Kelsey: Of course! Here are some of the short story collections that have taught me about what fiction–and by extension what empathy and connection–can do:
Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell
Salt Slow by Julia Armfield
Jesus’s Son by Denis Johnson
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Happy reading!
Sara