REVIEW

Sweet Nothings Are a Diary If You Know How to Read Them by Keith J. Powell is a tour de force of twenty-two stories about love, sex, and the gulf between the two.

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Powell’s imagination is seemingly endless. The collection starts off with the microfiction “Cannonball” where tween Ben becomes acutely aware of friend Dani’s body one July afternoon at the beach. It then quickly tacks left and right, zigging and zagging from there. A couple buys a preserved human hand while on a trip to fix their ill-fated relationship. A college student brings her boyfriend home although he’s admitted that her movie star mom gave him his first erection. A pirate-type has a one night stand with Ariel the mermaid. (This story includes the line, “Sex is important, sure, I mean, who doesn’t love a good shiver me timbers”—a simply delicious moment in this wonderfully campy piece.)

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Yet for all the collection’s bravado, there’s a vulnerable side to Powell’s characters, a desperation. Because sex is important, sure, but it’s also an ersatz cure for whatever psychic itch can’t be scratched. Sex becomes a surrogate for Powell’s characters—a game, a refuge, a sabotage, a diversion, a space to heal. Often, it’s a quick way to spice up an otherwise quotidian life, a way to feel alive. In “Mile High,” for example, a first person narrator recovers from injuries sustained in a near plane crash. His wife, Jane, sits by his side as he recoups. But the narrator, we learn, experienced an epiphany on the plane. In what he believed was his final moment, all he thought about was having sex with an ex-girlfriend one more time. And so, he’s on his phone in the hospital—his wife right there—on the socials, waiting to see if the ex accepts his friend request.

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Wending through Powell’s vast array of characters and situations, the reader slowly becomes buoyed by the absurdity of it all. Because life is weird and sad and unexpected and disappointing and exciting. It’s all those things. Life is, also, funny and a bit surreal. And it's here, in this deeper register, where the reader can hear Powell’s larger question: if we’re not going to play, to have some fun—to laugh—how are we going to make it through?

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BOOK DETAILS

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Sweet Nothings Are a Diary If You Know How to Read Them can be purchased here.

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Published by ELJ Editions. The volume is 5.5”x 8.5” and is comprised of 35 pages of prose. The book is hand-made. The cover is designed by Powell himself and brilliantly suggests the collection's breadth. It's great fun to figure out which photo represents which story. Enjoy!

 

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