Mormama
A postmodern Southern gothic tale of fractured familial relationships, combining elements of No Exit and Long Day's Journey into Night with the sensibilities of Joyce Carol Oates
You know boys are not welcome in this house.
Kit Reed's supernatural Florida noir has been compared to the work of Joyce Carol Oates and James M. Cain, and the ghost isn't the most frightening aspect.
Dell Duval has been living on the street since his accident. He can't remember who he was or where he came from. All he has is a tattered note in his pocket with an address for the Ellis house, a sprawling, ancient residence in Jacksonville. He sets up camp under the house in the basement, unknown to the residents upstairs. He just needs time to figure out why he's been sent here.
Lane and her son Theo have returned to the family home — their last resort after Lane's husband cleans out her bank account and leaves. The old house is ruled by an equally ancient trio of tyrannical aunts, who want to preserve everything. Nothing should leave the house, including Lane.
Something about the house isn't right. Things happen to the men and boys living there. There are forces at work, one of which visits Theo each night — Mormama, one mama too many.
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Kit Reed
Kit Reed (1932-2017) was an American author of both speculative fiction and literary fiction, as well as psychological thrillers under the pseudonym Kit Craig.
Reed was born on June 7, 1932 in San Diego, California. Her first short story, "The Wait" (1958), was published by Anthony Boucher in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of a five-year grant literary from the Abraham Woursell Foundation.
The New York Times Book Review said about her short fiction in 2006: "Reed has a prose style that's pure dry ice, displayed in dystopian stories that specialize in bitterness and dislocation." The Wall Street Journal said: "The title of Kit Reed's [2013] selection of her own short stories, The Story Until Now (Wesleyan), reminds us that although she has been writing award-winning fiction for some 50 years, she's still accelerating. The scope of these 35 stories is immense, their variety unmatched."
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