Minus the Spine

It seems like so much of good writing takes what is unknown and makes familiar or alternatively takes what is familiar and makes it unique. A story from Agni Online, Humpies by Mattox Roesch, does both by recreating a bizarre family drama within a small town fishing community in Alaska. There’s a touch of the familiar in the provinciality, the teenage reluctance, and the fractured families, which is then injected with idiosyncrasies like the nearly biblical arrival of the “humpies” and the unthinkable crime that a father commits. What really stood out in this short story was the way it suggests a whole past — an entire family history of out which comes a gang-banging brother, a deserted father and a concerned but aloof mother — through subtle, whispered details.