Witness

March 1, 2023

From National Book Award finalist Brinkley, Witness offers 10 New York City-set stories about characters from children to ghosts who must decide whether or not to take moral action (75,000-copy first printing). Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 12, 2023
In his dazzling sophomore collection, Brinkley (A Lucky Man) digs into the promises and dangers of intimacy and the costs of speaking up or staying silent. In the title story, a Black woman named Bernice, who is suffering from an unknown illness, advises her brother “when it... comes to those white doctors... always, always, exaggerate the pain.” In “Comfort,” Kelvin selflessly cares for Simone, a woman whose life has been derailed by her brother’s killing by police officers years earlier. “Bartow Station” centers on a young man who is unwilling to get help to deal with a past tragedy and is warned by the woman he’s dating that “one day it will all come out as a violence, like water spewing forth from a hose.” Elsewhere, a lonely woman imagines a deeper connection with a food delivery person, and a young father tries to justify relocating his aging father to assisted living. Throughout, Brinkley crafts unforgettable portraits, humming with barely restrained tension, of Black men and women exploring what it means to be part of families and communities that are awash in hope and disappointment alike. These intimate vignettes have the power to move readers.

August 1, 2023
Brinkley's remarkable short-story collection explores identity, connection, and lives in transition. Set in New York City's changing neighborhoods, many of the ten stories deal with how the traumatic effects of heartache can expose internal vulnerabilities. In "Bartow Station," when a solitary UPS delivery driver begins dating one of his customers, their burgeoning relationship uncovers a haunting tragedy from his past and, with it, uneasy truths. The stirring "Comfort" reveals grief's complicated depths. It follows a day in the life of Simone, adrift in the wake of her beloved brother's death at the hands of a police officer four years prior, as she intentionally avoids those around her. In the masterful title story, Silas crashes with his sister, Bernice, while searching for a job. When Bernice marries aloof DJ Dove in a whirlwind romance, tensions rise, becoming more complicated when Bernice's health suddenly deteriorates. Brinkley's rich stories offer compelling explorations of life's borderlands and the quietly stunning revelations that can be found there.

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Starred review from June 15, 2023
Short stories that in their depth of feeling, perception, and sense of place affirm their author's bright promise. As in his debut collection, A Lucky Man (2018), Brinkley sets these stories in New York City ethnic neighborhoods on the edge of transformation, vividly and, at times, hauntingly showing how the people in those enclaves struggle to withstand, even transcend the changes around them. "The Happiest House on Union Street," for instance, focuses on a young girl named Beverly, old enough to be "past the phase of making words up," who spends the days and nights leading up to Halloween trying to mediate tensions between her father and her uncle (both named Ray) as a developer is showing interest in the Brooklyn home that's been in their family for generations. Then there's "Bartow Station," in which a delivery-truck driver's encounter with an abandoned subway tunnel triggers unwanted memories of a personal tragedy. In this story, as in others, characters' presumptions are upended, secrets revealed, and wounds, both physical and psychological, are exposed. These factors come together most strikingly in the title story, in which a young woman named Bernice embarks on a romance with a club DJ to the consternation of her truculent, disapproving brother, and the petty disputes among the three of them obscure the fact that something is terribly wrong with Bernice's health. In some ways, the plots of these stories, however engrossing, are less significant than their vivid physical details, graceful language, and acute observation of even the most bewildering of human behavior. Brinkley's stories carry a rich veneer worthy of such exemplars of the form as Chekhov, Eudora Welty, Alice Munro, and James Alan McPherson. At their best, these stories provide inspiration to all of us, no matter who we are or where we live, on how best to deal with those moments in life when, as one of Brinkley's characters puts it, "all we can manage...is halting small talk, and the awkwardness of it resounds in our ears." After just two collections, Brinkley may already be a grand master of the short story.

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Starred review from December 22, 2023

After bursting on the scene with the debut collection A Lucky Man, an Ernest J. Gaines Award winner and National Book Award finalist, Brinkley takes risks in a looser-limbed new work with stories set in New York City. His characters range widely, from grandparents to children to ghosts, with some of them helpful to others, some resistant to receiving help for themselves, and with solace found in unexpected places. Whatever their situations, they must ultimately decide whether to take action, and the narratives wind up in surprising places. In "Blessed Deliverance," for instance, a group of rowdy teenagers wending their way somewhat aimlessly through life end up gently feeding rabbits, while "Comfort" begins with a woman hot and bothered by summer and insomnia but opens into a memory of a young man's wrongful arrest. VERDICT A refreshing second book from a talented new writer.--Barbara Hoffert

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.