Ricochet Press

57 pages, $10.00

Review by Matt Pincus

In late February Matthew Kirkpatrick wrote an article in The Believer about a McDonalds constructed to seem like it’s floating at a shopping plaza in Berwyn, IL. He discusses how an architecturally significant building is antithetical to the corporate notion of a “less is more” philosophy, where the space is a container so one associates with and attaches it to the brand name. Corporate stores are homogenous because they make the consumer familiar and comfortable with their products.

Kirkpatrick’s style, in his novel, The Exiles, on the surface, consists of simple sentences that act as similar containers. The language is generic, abstract in a sense, such as when discussing the protagonist James: “The boy says they have not seen Dad in years.” The girl across the street from James “sits at the dinner table inside the dark dining room, eating her salad, and watches her father on the weight bench in the living room.” The text breaks through the small container of sentence with adjectives, little vignettes of Gothic context. One wonders first of all how James does not recognize his Dad, who is possibly trapped, locked in the basement. Another instance is the parents across the street who run on treadmills during the day and lock their daughter in the house during the night, and the way she accepts and fears their negligence as well as their omnipresent parental authority, which she expresses through her habit of running in circles out in the backyard. Continue reading →