Last One Out Shut Off the Lights (2020) by Stephanie Soileau

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Last One Out Shut Off the Lights (2020)

by Stephanie Soileau

Bayou d’Inde Drive, Sulphur, Louisiana

Louisiana: 9/28

   The Gulf coastline between New Orleans and Houston is a bit of a petro-chemical nightmare, filled with petroleum processing plants and related businesses and supervised by state governments that are hostile to business regulations.  It's also a region that is very exposed to the consequences of climate change, particularly the increased number and intensity of hurricane's making landfall from the Gulf.  This double whammy of environmental degradation makes it entirely possible that whole communities will simply cease to exist, and soon.

  This, I presume is what the title of this book references. Another layer is the weakening of the traditional Cajun community- French speaking Acadians who came down from Newfoundland after the French lost control and the English took over.  From the perspective of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America, Soileau rates as a minor find.  Certainly, a book of interconnected short-stories about folks on the margins of life in such an interesting area rate higher than YA titles and chick-lit.   Beyond that, however, Last One Out Shut Off the Lights, continues to explore the lives of the losers in American society, by far the most frequent subject of titles that aren't YA or chick-lit.   Where are the folks in this book going? Nowhere.  What are they doing? Nothing.

  The first story, about a teen mom who is bummed about the consequences of her actions and not that into being a Mom, really sets the tone.