Review: The Curs of Curzon County by Thea Verdak

Thea Verdak unleashes a swirling storm of a story in The Curs of Curzon County, a rapid-fire tale of acute dangers and chronic pain, growing up and leaving home, and all the obstacles along the way that can derail a young life. Richly layered with an original and unforgettable narrative voice, this gritty short story will leave your heart pounding.

All the crises and conditions of Lucretia’s young life distill themselves in this well-penned crucible; the ramshackle pound at the end of the airstrip is the closest thing she has to a home, yet it is also a source of fear in a town where wild dogs recently tore out an old man’s throat. The hurricane is blowing straight into town, tempers are rising, and men are becoming beasts.

As is the case in any short story, there isn’t time for patient exposition, so readers are dropped into the middle of a storm, both literal and figurative. The unfurling story is like a Greek tragedy – we know something terrible is waiting around the next corner, yet readers will be inexorably drawn in. The brief anecdotes and mental offshoots readers see through Lucretia’s mind paint the scene of Curzon County remarkably well, and there is consistently sharp tension on every page.

Lucretia has been weathered by life, and to capture that no-nonsense facade, while also exposing her innocence and uncertainty, requires a deft storytelling hand and a deep understanding of the masks we are forced to wear. The mind of the narrator is a wild and wonderful landscape, filled with tangential distractions and a deeply colloquial voice that is both enrapturing and endearing, but the events of this brutal snapshot tale is what makes this an excellent read. Readers are transported to the end of that cracked runway, to the broken-down pound, to the scene of the narrator’s heartbreaks and hardest decisions.

Punctuated with unique, intimate descriptions and secondary characters who are summoned into crystal-clear view, this tangled plot plows ahead, without a clear endpoint, yet delivers a very satisfying conclusion. There is only so much one can say about a short story plot without spoiling the suspense, but Verdak knows how to tie up loose ends in a thoughtful and meaningful way. Symbols are carved throughout this short, gutting tale, which is packed with sudden violence and cutting lines that stab into memory.

The illustrations, slapdash as they initially appear to be, are a wonderful accompaniment to the relentless prose, giving brief spaces for breath in this nonstop story. They also have the rough-edged energy of the writing itself; the style suggests an unedited screed, scribbled off and thrown onto the page – raw and honest and unplanned. Stream of consciousness writing can often lose steam or become monotone, but the speed and unpredictability of the narration in this story makes it impossible to lose focus.

Short stories have the unenviable task of delivering a believable, immersive world where something powerful occurs in a short stretch of words. The Curs of Curzon County achieves that and more, with unadulterated narrative energy and a savage mastery of language that Verdak wields like a whip, in this relentless, well-spun tale.