Pinkies: Stories

In Shane Hinton’s debut story collection, gritty Florida realism collides with the absurd, and fears of fatherhood materialize in surreal scenarios. In one story, Shane Hinton struggles to protect his frightened family from cars that keep crashing into their home, while in another he’s imagined as a vehicular menace. Father-to-be Shane Hinton combats roving pythons in the suburbs. Shane Hinton loves trash more than his own family. Shane Hinton throws a barbecue for all the Shane Hintons he’s met on the Internet and fears he might lose his wife to one. A sharp commentary on the mundanity and absurdity of modern life, the world of Pinkies is a terrifying and hilarious introduction to an unflinching new voice.

In Shane Hinton's debut collection, gritty Florida realism collides with the absurd, and paternal fears materialize in surreal scenarios. A young Shane Hinton catalogs his dead pets. A father-to-be Shane Hinton combats roving pythons in the suburbs. Yet another Shane Hinton throws a barbecue for all the Shane Hintons he's met on the Internet and fears his wife might leave him for one. Hinton, a father of three, inserts himself into these fictions as a way of confronting personal anxieties. ''It's cliché to say that one thinks of writing as therapy,'' he says, ''but I think these stories represent an exorcism of intrusive thoughts.'' In ''Intersection,'' a father struggles to protect his frightened family from cars that keep crashing into their home, while in ''Driving School'' he's imagined as a vehicular menace. ''Fumes'' portrays a father crippled by a rabid dog, bedridden and unable to play catch with his son or help his wife pay the ever-growing medical bills. A sharp commentary on the mundanity and absurdity of modern life, Hinton's stories explore the horrors of death, abandonment and insurance agents with spare prose and deadpan humor. The world of Pinkies is a terrifying and hilarious introduction to an unflinching new voice.

Shane Hinton holds an MFA from the University of Tampa. He lives in the winter strawberry capital of the world. His fiction has appeared in Word Riot, Fiction Advocate, storySouth, The Nervous Breakdown, The Butter, Dead Mule School, Atticus Review & elsewhere.