We Agreed to Meet Just Here

Entering Blackwood’s debut novel is like plunging straight into a dense, white fog. You have to keep your arms up, because you know something is coming, even if you can’t see it. And Blackwood plumbs that sense of dreadful anticipation for all it’s worth in this numinous, abbreviated tale of suburban woe.

A number of tragedies befall the people of this unnamed Austin suburb. Winnie Lipsy watches as her son falls from a tree, shattering his arm. Her husband, Dennis, makes some questionable decisions in expressing his admiration for 19-year-old town sexpot Natalie Branch. P.G. McWhirter steals Winnie’s car and accidentally strikes Natalie as she walks along the edge of the woods, knocking her down into a gulch. War vet Odie Dodd’s mind unhitches, and he wanders off into the woods, conversing with the voices in his head, only to witness Natalie’s tumble.

Like Joshua Ferris in Then We Came to the End, Blackwood writes from the plural first person, the “we” of the town discussing its residents with the tone of a regretful gossip. The book alternates out of this voice, into a third-person narrator that brings us close to each of the characters, but it’s the town’s voice that proves most compelling, if at times too precious for its own good. But its greatest trick, in an atmospheric novel like this, comes with spreading all of that grief and pain among the town’s residents. And that means its less salutary side—the lust, jealousy, vindictiveness—is shared by all, as well.

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