Barb Johnson’s debut collection More of This World or Maybe Another is the kind of collection that acts as apprentice work for a writer. It gets the person’s name out into the public, if you like it, fantastic, but it is nothing more than a sign of bigger things to come from a fresh face with great potential. The name Barb Johnson meant nothing to me a few months back when I was seeking out a new collection of short stories, and had picked this up and read the author blurbs from Donald Ray Pollock (who, if you read my reviews, knows a thing or two about the landscape of rural America) and Robert Olen Butler, who won the Pulitzer for his story collection A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain. With those two thoughtful recommendations, I bought this book, and while it does suffer from plainness and lack of narrative drive I found the story collections I have read this year one story at a time, I am glad Barb Johnson’s name and work is now a part of my memory, for when she really arrives with the great book I know she can write. I wouldn’t describe her fiction as country noir like Pollock, but she uses that same setting to tell a story with more pathos and melancholic nostalgia than violence and aggression. I was very impressed with the first story, which is the title story. It takes place during senior prom in a Louisiana high school during one girls discovery of her love for her female best friend, that reminded me of The Virgin Suicides, even with the bayou setting. These are linked stories, which I thought was the books major problem, it did so well describing high school and youthful hope, that I did not care about the lives these people would end up leading. It made the stories kind of small-minded in its focus on these four people, when I thought the school could be a great character in itself. Not a perfect book, but Barb Johnson is someone to be watched.
Rating: 4/5
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