It’s a study in escalation, in a situation getting worse and worse, never losing sight of the lingering threat of worst. But the tension isn’t just in the action of the moment - it’s been simmering in the story’s preexisting relationships as well: the ones between cousins, between neighborhoods, between worlds. “Toll for the Passengers” is no exception. With Holmes’s writing, the reader is rarely let up up for air. Sometimes that danger is literal and physical, and sometimes it’s more psychological: the danger of exposure, of excommunication, of humiliation. His stories, as a result, crackle with constant danger. One of JM Holmes’s many gifts is his ability to pull these bands in subtle steps tighter than we’d think possible, and then - with impeccable timing - SNAP! Or the band, unable to stretch any farther, might simply snap in the middle. At any moment, someone might step backwards, pulling a band tighter, making everything more fraught. I sometimes visualize the tension within stories as a maze of elastic bands stretching from character to character. Rebecca Makkai Recommends a New Story by JM Holmes
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