Introduction:
When Devin Jacobsen, author of the novel, Breath Like the Wind at Dawn, reached out to me in the of Fall 2024 requesting a review of his short story collection, The Summer We Ate Off the China, it was the year-end— never a good time—so I read a sample of his work and added his book to Southern Literary Review’s never-ending list of review requests. From the sum of what I had read I was intrigued, more than intrigued. I asked Jacobsen to reach out to me in 2025. Let me just say that I am so glad another SLR contributor didn’t select The Summer We Ate Off the China, that his request didn’t blow away in the wind, because I would have missed out. Jacobsen is a talented author with massive potential in the literary world.
Review:
Though the author harkens from Baton Rouge, LA, and attended the University of the South, he also studied in the United Kingdom and currently lives in Paris, and this is all to say that writers are constantly told to write about what they know, or to stay in their wheelhouse. But Jacobsen, who is well-travelled and obviously an eavesdropper-extraordinaire, is the rare bird who can articulate characters and settings from the Deep South as seamlessly as those from the New York, Washington D.C, and the United Kingdom. His thirteen stories are a dance between comedy and tragedy, and as eclectic as I’ve read in an extraordinarily long time.
With “Possum on the Roof,” Jacobsen honors his roots in this classic Southern Gothic story of sister rivalry. This one took me back to Carson McCullers—flawless vernacular, gallows humor, grotesque symbolism.
“Secret Anna” is a darkly humorous piece about boy who blames his imaginary friend Anna for his deviant behavior. This is the sort of story that makes you wonder if there were no pen and paper to dispel the voices in their heads would writers turn into serial killers.
“St. Petersburg” is witty with a touch of melancholy. While their newly wedded daughter and son-in-law are honeymooning, grandparents Donette and Claude babysit their grandson, Baby Henry. Donette decides to redo their honeymoon, and they land themselves at the same hotel they stayed at in St. Petersburg, Florida, so long ago. However, the real reason Donette wants to visit begins to become clear at the reception desk. Donette feigns that well-known Southern malady, a migraine, pushing Claude and Baby Henry out of the hotel room for “playdates,” similar to parents sending their kids outside during the summer holiday. Though of a certain age herself, Donette is a symbol of ageism who henpecks and constantly cuts off Claude at every opportunity. Claude is as voiceless as Baby Henry, reduced to an insignificant old man in the purgatory of irrelevance. He is silenced with Honeybuns and Little Debbies.
In the title story, “The Summer We Ate Off the China,” the author piles on the imagery with page-long sentences in the style of William Gay. The imagery around the helicopters had the effect of subliminal messaging; read between the lines with this story. It’s easy to get caught up in the author’s language so much that you lose the plot and wonder what just happened:
It was early, and she lay in the bed very still except for the shallow breathing as the light around the curtains grew stronger, the barking of the seagulls perched on the chimneys redounding off the stone, slate, and moss, heard down by the harbor. Already the lobstermen have returned from their run, and a man in waders is pressure-washing the brine from the creels while a gaggle of sailors are sipping coffee and confer on a boat, a seagull watching them from the hawsers with the hauteur of its snide yellow eyes. The tide is going out, and in the revelation of mud a heron stalks, darts his strong orange bill in a pool and lifts up proudly his catch, which is flexing in the dawn.
Even if you must go back and reread a paragraph, you won’t mind. With Jacobsen’s mesmeric wordsmithing, you want to return again and again for the sheer beauty of his lyricism. This is high prose.
With “Bob,” Jacobsen’s character Barry faces the inevitable fate of working in corporate America—tread water or go mad, not necessarily in that order. Jacobsen paints a sardonic picture of the never-ending monotony of working on the company hamster wheel and the pretense that companies project that they care about their employees’ wellbeing. Barry rages in silent resentment, not knowing if he fits in at work (and not exactly caring) or even in his marriage. Everyone is Bob and Bob is everyone.
I’m still scratching my head over “Tauroctony.” Ekphrastic poetry? Notional Ekphrastic poetry? Was “Tauroctony” inspired by real or imagined statuary or both? With its narrative intrusions, I even contemplated that Jacobsen’s story was inspired by a video game, but perhaps, that is the point of this experimental piece…to game the reader. “Tauroctony” shoved me down the proverbial rabbit hole. I brought the bunny back and it’s boiling on the stove. I’m still Googling to this day.
With “Dagonet,” Jacobsen does a full one-eighty, moving from the sweeping prose found in “The Summer We Ate Off the China” and shifting into a quasi-rant poem full of alliteration and allusion. This story had a Jonathan Franzen flavor to it. Set on a literal stage, the actor, Author Eugene Dagonet, plays both the antagonist and protagonist in a Me-Tooish “who-is-telling-the-truth” backdrop. The scene: Dagonet speaking on the phone with his manager, Dyson, discussing his career resuscitation, a.k.a apology tour, whilst making French toast for his daughters. Dagonet, who Jacobsen describes as a “tragic comic…[a] white male upper-class sissily genendered tragicocomicasurus” (you got to chuckle at Jacobsen’s creative word choices) is a Justice Brett Kavanaugh type. Keeping with the elements of the classic Arthurian fool, Dagonet laments his own predicament while commenting on society’s failures. Unlike the author’s title story which feels as intimate as reading a diary, Dagonet and Dyson’s harangues combined with Jacobsen’s artful diction should be read aloud, hence the reference to a rant poem. In an environment of cancel culture that values the entertainment factor of a celebrity takedown more than the truth or even how sickening the truth may be, Jacobsen leaves the reader pondering who is more damaged here. And Dyson is just as culpable. He is more concerned with spin-doctoring his client back into a paycheck and covering up his own foul part in the pursuit of mutual fame than the allegations of rape. Dyson offers ways to avoid being cancelled, a fate worse than death:
you agree to do a cameo of repentance on, oh, I don’t know, say something like The View, which would be a godsend, in which case we get the high priestess Barbara Walters to absolve you before God and country for your wayward ways to the hysterical Cult of Death, I had my new intern write published in the Times, in which you come clean to having been molested as an altar boy—we won’t name names but seeing as you’re from Boston, anyone’s guess is good as to the antecedent—and you admit to undergoing therapy for years to curb your problem.
“Dagonet,” is a story within a story within a story, a sidesplitting, stream-of-consciousness satire that’s obscene in the best conceivable way.
I’m convinced to be a great Southern short story writer you must author a story about a dog. There’s simply no getting out of it. Once you figure out that “Let Dogs Delight” is being told from the point-of-view of a dog, two things occur: 1. You hope the dog doesn’t die, and 2. You wonder, is that what my dog really thinks about me, about life? This is a deeply moving story about predestination or lack thereof. We really don’t get to write our own endings.
Ageism, racism, trauma, rape versus consent, the fallout of school shootings, corporate soul-selling, marital angst—the list goes on and on, and all this under two hundred pages. The Summer We Ate Off the China is Americana unfiltered, for better or worse. Keep your eye on Devin Jacobsen.
About the Author:
Devin Jacobsen
Devin Jacobsen was born and grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His debut novel Breath Like the Wind at Dawn was published by Sagging Meniscus Press in 2020. His fiction has appeared in Consequence, Pembroke Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, and other places.
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