Dating Silky Maxwell

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.

In an era in which mainstream fiction all-too-often focuses on characters who are pampered, urbane, and a little bougie, it’s refreshing to read about working women wrestling with and breaking free of cycles of poverty and abuse. Each story in this collection marks that moment of liberation, however messy, and they all leave readers wanting to know what happens next. 

"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 an assault 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 that explores drag artistry, 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