Between

With a kaleidoscopic narrative of small, shifting plates of time, Nicholas Hayes's Between deftly plays out its terrible story. Set in the nowhere of exurban America, his protagonists are serving out the sentence of their adolescence. To say they live like animals would deprecate animals. These boys subsist on pork fritter sandwiches, cherry limeade, whatever booze and dope they can cadge. Sex is jacking-off to single porn video on an endless loop. Friendship is desultory camaraderie punctuated by violence. The future extends before them as an already written calendar of days exactly like today. Love, what would that even look like here? Hayes stares his subject down. He doesn't blink. He's made a brave book.  -Carol Anshaw, author of Aquamarine and Carry The One