Strip Mall: Stories

A young lawyer moonlights as an ersatz psychic; a woman struggles with the caregiver burden caused by her boyfriend's satanic possession; a suburban mother reckons with Kafka's The Metamorphosis in mass-casualty form. In the blank quotidian spaces of Matthew Meade's debut collection, circumstances of profound and surreal horror-reanimated corpses, conspiracy theorists attacked by "energy weapons," highbrow artwork that's alive (and acting like a jerk)-dissipate with shockingly deadpan ease into sensitive accounts of ordinary human relationships and resilience. With its heartfelt portraits of a magical world where late-stage capitalism has blurred the boundaries between the living and the dead, Strip Mall presents a strangely grace-filled vision of the dystopia already upon us.