Hot Singles in Your Area by Jordan Shiveley: Review by Gabino Iglesias
Hot Singles in Your Area, Jordan Shiveley (Unbound 978-1-80018-341-4, $18.00, 208pp, tp) February 2025. Cover by Jack Smyth.
Some books are hard to categorize. Jordan Shiveley’s Hot Singles in Your Area is one of those books. Strangely funny and dancing to the strange sound of its own drum, this novel has one foot in body horror and one foot in something akin to bizarro fiction (think authors like Carlton Mellick III and D. Harlan Wilson, for example) while also engaging with elements of noir, surrealism, and even science fiction.
Noah mops bodily fluids for a living, and he hates it. Sadly, he needs money, so quitting is not an option. Then he reads an ad for a new gig that requires no experience. Before he knows it, Noah has received something that resembles training and he’s sent on his way to do business for Printed Matter. But the gig is far stranger and more dangerous than Noah could have predicted. In a nutshell, he has no idea what he’s doing, and things go from weird to weirder.
Meanwhile, Malachia is the only person left in Silence, a big city that once housed many. Alone, a little confused, and looking for love, Malachia sets out on a small mission that will change the way she looks at Silence. It’s also a journey that will intersect Noah’s in unexpected ways.
Sure, that sort of makes sense, but that doesn’t mean that this book usually does. No, Hot Singles in Your Area is bizarre, and some of it doesn’t make much sense. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In this narrative, the only one who knows what’s happening and why is Shiveley, and despite the plethora of footnotes in the story and the way the characters provide a sliver of context for each of the predicaments in which they find themselves, the truth is that this novel is best enjoyed by giving up all hope of understanding everything and embracing the author’s particular kind of eloquent, religion-infused strangeness. I know that this might not be a selling point for some readers, but it needs to be discussed here. In fact, I think this is the kind of book most readers can’t remain neutral while reading; you love it or you hate, but there is no middle ground.
Shiveley did something many authors do: He created an entire universe and then left most of it out of the story. However, while many writers focus on what’s on the page instead of on what was left out, Shiveley constantly reminds readers of that other world via footnotes and mentioning things that are seemingly important but offering no explanation. Again, this might not work for some, but folks who eagerly embrace the unknown will have a blast with the many things the author hints at or, in some cases, merely mentions.
Noah and Malachia experience a lot of weird things and that, more than its plot, is what makes this novel enjoyable. There are also an entire religion and what could only be called a government system in Silence that we are not privy to and there are things – like a tree inside an office that uses dead bodies to talk and a red orb that comes and goes – that showcase the author’s imagination while also playing a role in the story (I’ll let others make up their mind about the exact role of the red orb.)
Hot Singles in Your Area is a long joke, an experimental novel, and a conversation starter. It also has some great writing and visuals that are a perfect fit for its strange nature. For example, the classified ads that kick off the novel are visually engaging and contain a tale about a woman surviving alone on an island and becoming obsessed with the place’s moss. Also, some of Malachia’s chapters are ‘‘framed’’ by DARKNESS, and I mean that in the literal sense (yes, the word is used time and time again to frame the rest of the writing).
This novel might be too strange for some, but those who want to experience something different and don’t care about not knowing exactly what is happening at all times will definitely enjoy this wild debut. I, for one, look forward to whatever Shiveley does next.
Gabino Iglesias is a writer, journalist, professor, and book reviewer living in Austin TX. He is the author of Zero Saints and Coyote Songs and the editor of Both Sides. His work has been nominated to the Bram Stoker and Locus Awards and won the Wonderland Book Award for Best Novel in 2019. His short stories have appeared in a plethora of anthologies and his non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and CrimeReads. His work has been published in five languages, optioned for film, and praised by authors as diverse as Roxane Gay, David Joy, Jerry Stahl, and Meg Gardiner. His reviews appear regularly in places like NPR, Publishers Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle, Criminal Element, Mystery Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and other print and online venues. He’s been a juror for the Shirley Jackson Awards twice and has judged the PANK Big Book Contest, the Splatterpunk Awards, and the Newfound Prose Prize. He teaches creative writing at Southern New Hampshire University’s online MFA program. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.
This review and more like it in the January 2025 issue of Locus.
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