Wilson’s witty depiction of a country obsessed with this bizarre contagion-and determined to cash in on it-doubles as a compelling portrait of anxiety.
Now Is Not the Time to Panic is the heartfelt culmination of many years (and many pages) spent probing the tension between the urge to make a mark on the world and the costs of doing so-and the push-pull between art’s disorienting and generative powers. They are quirky, fleshed-out figures who seize on second chances to find purpose and connection-often through creative means. Wilson’s protagonists aren’t scratched records, doomed to replay past terrors for the rest of their lives. As if he’s never fully outgrown the hyper-self-consciousness and melodramatic aspirations of adolescence, Wilson’s fiction will have you laughing so much that you’re not prepared for the gut punch that follows. In story after story, he takes what would seem like key ingredients for claustrophobia -damaged characters prone to rumination, flashbacks, and inertia-and whips up something utterly inventive and outward-looking. It’s also about the secrets that haunt us-and, ultimately, what the truth will set free.Wilson’s mission turns out to be outwitting the trauma-plot trap, and doing that with antic energy.
Might Frances know something about that?Ī bold coming-of-age story, written with Kevin Wilson’s trademark wit and blazing prose, Now Is Not the Time to Panic is a nuanced exploration of young love, identity, and the power of art. Twenty years later, Frances Eleanor Budge gets a call that threatens to upend her carefully built life: a journalist named Mazzy Brower is writing a story about the Coalfield Panic of 1996. Satanists, kidnappers-the rumors won’t stop, and soon the mystery has dangerous repercussions that spread far beyond the town. The posters begin appearing everywhere, and people wonder who is behind them and start to panic. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us. The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers.
Romantic and creative sparks begin to fly, and when the two jointly make an unsigned poster, shot through with an enigmatic phrase, it becomes unforgettable to anyone who sees it. Sixteen-year-old Frankie Budge-aspiring writer, indifferent student, offbeat loner-is determined to make it through yet another summer in Coalfield, Tennessee, when she meets Zeke, a talented artist who has just moved into his grandmother’s house and who is as awkward as Frankie is. An exuberant, bighearted novel about two teenage misfits who spectacularly collide one fateful summer, and the art they make that changes their lives forever.
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