Reviews

Howard and Charles at the Factory by Dave Housley

shimmer's review

5.0

Some of the best fiction — or writing in general — I've read in response to the 2016 presidential election and its aftermath. The two main characters, Howard and Charles, are a bit like the cast of Stewart O'Nan's Last Night at the Lobster, i.e., working class people trying to maintain some dignity while watching the options for their futures closing before them. But they're also selfish and absurd in the manner of Magnus Mills' The Restraint of Beasts, and I really appreciated and enjoyed that Housley managed to depict his characters with empathy without letting them off the hook for racism, sexism, and all the other cruelty wrapped up in the awful 2016 euphemism "economic anxiety." There's a real effort at understanding where men like Howard and Charles are coming from and how they make their political choices — the description of Howard arriving, like a pilgrim, at a Trump campaign rally is a standout passage — but the hollowness of those choices is never out of sight. And the deceptively straightforward style of the prose (again reminiscent of Mills), often relying on repetitions that become mantras in the manner of political slogans, serves the story well. I hope this novella gets the notice it deserves because it's worth dozens of cliché journalistic trips to "the heartland" to interview voters.