Now You Know It All (2021) by Joanna Pearson

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Now You Know It All (2021)

by Joanna Pearson

Shelby, North Carolina

North Carolina: 13/20

    Now You Know It All is a debut collection of short-stories by psychiatrist/author Joanna Pearson.  It was published by the University of Pittsburgh press- the first work I've read published by the University of Pittsburgh.   It also won the Drue Heinz literary prize, which I'd never heard of before but must be linked to the Heinz ketchup family.  The prize was decided by Edward P. Jones, Pulitzer Prize winner and he was attracted to the straight-forward story telling embraced by Pearson- no metafictional fuckery here.  Clocking in at 224 pages with wide margins and large type, I read Now You Know It All in a single sitting and as is the case with many collections of short stories I found myself driving to grasp the links between the stories.   

   At least most of the subjects in these short stories have college educations. Beyond that it's the familiar constellation of female characters grappling with the fissures between jobs and spouses, kids and parents. There are a couple stories that edge into speculative fiction- my favorite was the story about a woman hitch-hiking in a perpetual-pandemic future who encounters a car of masked revelers on their way to an infection ball.