Sunday, July 15, 2018

Santa Cruz Noir--blogging the book. Day 21, "It Follows Until it Leads" by Dillon Kaiser

(To learn more about my "blogging the book" challenge to myself, go HERE.)

The gun on the kitchen table is not mine. Yet there it lies, insisting upon its own fealdad, its ugliness. Infecting my home. Sunlight streams through the window above the sink where Martha has set a vase of flowers and glints upon the gun. It breeds disease. And there, on the table beside my daughter Lupe's Doll, the disease spreads. 

The gun is not mine. Worse, it is my son's. 

Dillon Kaiser's story ends this anthology on a powerful note.People have their own definitions of what noir is, but "It Follows Until it Leads" is the kind of story I think of when I think of noir. There is an inevitability to the sequence of events, but  the outcome does have something to do with the protagonist's choices. It's just that the errors don't start with him and don't end with him and it would be hard to pinpoint exactly where he made the truly crucial choice.

Audible sample of "It Follows Until it Leads" by Dillon Kaiser HERE. Performed by Thom Rivera.


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