Vicious Children and Other Stories

Vicious Children and Other Stories contains four stories, each concerned in their own way with boyhood, friendship, masculinity, and alienation. Vicious Children is a novella that follows two brothers, Jesse and Danny, as they explore a time in which their roles in their community and family are changing. In “What Else Are We Going to Do With Them?” a group of young boys fight betta fish to the death, leaving one of the boys, Josh, questioning his enjoyment of the fight. “Gash” deals with the main character, Adam’s, memory of a traumatic event in contrast to the lighthearted way he and his family tell the story in the present. Finally “Don’t You Have a Name?” follows Zach, a content moderator for a social media platform, who finds that, although he excels at the job, it comes at the cost of his mental health.