When readers consider the South as a literary backdrop, more often than not, it comes along with more than its fair share of cultural touchstones provided by authors like Faulkner and O’Connor: rural weirdness, an almost gothic sense of the sublime, quirky characters with a homespun charm. In “The Juveniles Lack Green,” Beth Gilstrap delivers on all these characteristics, but yet its familiarity in voice also points the reader in a direction which defies regionalism. What makes this story (courtesy of Quiddity) so instantly readable is the balance between nature and narrator. There is a vulnerability which comes through in the narrator’s voice which echoes the easy going drawl one may imagine rolling of the character’s tongue.
