Dating Silky Maxwell
TJ Butler’s Debut short story collection
“An office worker, whose wealthy fiancée just canceled their engagement over text, lingers in a truck stop trying to decide what to do next. A motel clerk is mailed a box containing the ashes of her musician father who gave her nothing in life. A pig farmer whose husband is serving time discovers their new potential neighbor is a menacing preacher with ill intentions. The characters in TJ Butler’s short-story collection, Dating Silky Maxwell, have definitely seen some shit. Her stories are gritty, realistic, often unnerving, and far from glamorous. Protagonists make some bad choices, some desperate ones, and no easy ones. Yet they all find a way to become the hero in their own story, despite what has been expected of them in life.” -BUST Magazine
“Butler’s sharp short-story collection focuses on women’s choices.
All the tales in this set feature female central characters, from a woman who falls in love with a controlling man in “Bird Girl” to a tender of livestock in rural Virginia whose husband is locked away in “Black Dog.” In “A Flame on the Ocean,” there’s a bartender who caters to burly sailors, jilted by a lover who voyages to the Faroe Islands, and, in “South of the Border,” a wife recovering in an intensive-care unit following a disastrous accident on a cross-country road trip; the latter story is told from the perspective of the woman’s remorseful husband. Butler communicates the stories of these women in clear, unadorned prose, which allows her to focus on potent symbols of resistance and resilience.
These are deceptively simple tales, told in accessible and insightful ways. In “Bird Girl,” for example, the main character—nicknamed “Bird”—becomes caged when her boyfriend gives her a surprising piece of jewelry: a padlock on her wrist. The plot is sparse, but final line reveals a lot going on beneath the simple surface: “She looked at the keyhole for a moment and realized she'd never thought to ask for the key.” In “Black Dog,” by contrast, the title creature effectively comes to represent liberation, when a woman’s pet helps guard her home from a Bible-wielding intruder. Later, in the title story, a pie comes to symbolize an influencer’s humanity outside her public persona. These are stories that are interested in women’s agency, and the ways they make choices (or not). Silky Maxwell finds herself limited in the dating world by her own online presence; it’s a topical story, skillfully woven into a collection that intriguingly ends with a character exploring their androgyny.
Timely tales that speak to a variety of women’s experiences.”
-Kirkus Review
Enthusiastic praise for “Dating Silky Maxwell”
“Timely tales that speak to a variety of women’s experiences… Butler communicates in clear, unadorned prose, which allows her to focus on potent symbols of resistance and resilience. These are deceptively simple tales, told in accessible and insightful ways.” - Kirkus Review
“There’s so much to love about these stories, but it’s the characters who’ve been haunting me, vivid and flawed and human and as beautifully written as any I’ve met in life.” ~Amber Sparks, author of And I Do Not Forgive You, named Best Book of 2020 by The Washington Post, NPR, Bustle, Good Housekeeping, and Tor.com.
“Dating Silky Maxwell introduces readers to an important new voice. TJ Butler’s poignant collection about uneasy lives will be well-remembered long after you close this exquisite volume that hauntingly touches both the heart and mind.” ~Pete Earley, Pulitzer Prize finalist author of Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness
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