barbara

All the Devils Are Here, by David Seabrook

by

seabrook

This is a strange book. Seabrook creates a portrait of Kent, though not the popular “Garden of England” image and not the sort of portrait you’d expect. It is a form sometimes called a psycho-geography or an odd sort of travel memoir, where we are drawn into his mind, the odd things that interest him, the associations they carry with them. It’s like listening to a chatty passenger in the seat next to you whose inescapable monologue takes you to unexpected places, places you perhaps would never go, sometimes leaving you floundering as you try to figure out how he got from here to there.

Seabrook explores a number of coastal towns, down on their luck now that the boom for such seaside resorts has passed. Margate became England’s first bathing resort in the early eighteenth century with other fishing villages following suit. That time is over now, and Seabrook is drawn to the seamier side of what remains.

Margate is where Eliot wrote “The Wasteland” after World War I as he recuperated from a nervous breakdown. Seabrook says “Margate plays a deeper game” than putting up a blue plaque to mark the connection. He describes the poem as being unlike “a war poem in the accepted sense of the words,” instead “highlighting what was lost by describing what was left.”

This is a good description of the book as a whole. In Rochester and Chatham, Seabrook draws a tenuous link between the painter Richard Dadd who murdered his father and the last, unfinished novel of Charles Dickens. John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps is of course our first association with Broadstairs but Seabrook also introduces us to a pre-World War II fascist network based at Naldera, the holiday home built for Lord Curzon whose daughter married Sir Oswald Mosley. “We still don’t know what’s buried there,” he says.

A later section find him in Deal, where he unearths anecdotes about disgraced English comedians, Robin Maugham (jealous nephew of William), the Stripper murders, and tales of several gay writers, actors and athletes.

I was drawn to the book because the summary on the back cover reminded me of W.G. Sebald’s Rings of Saturn, a fascinating book of a walking tour in Suffolk where places and people bring scraps of history, literature, art, and philosophy to the author’s mind. We learn little about the author himself except through his choice of material and meditations stimulated by them.

Both are first person monologues, both are journeys into a singular mind, one that is on the verge of a nervous breakdown—explicit in Sebald, implied in Seabrook. Both are assemblages of tesserae that resist forming a recognisable mosaic, pushing the reader to explore their own imagination and ability to find connections.

I found Sebald’s fragments far more interesting, but what is intriguing here is the way Seabrook’s bits and pieces lead you ever deeper into seedy and shocking stories. You’d think starting with a murder, the book could only go up, but you’d be wrong. We learn almost nothing about the author except his note early on that his fiancé has just died of cancer, yet we know him intimately from the juddering rhythms of his mind, the peculiar trail of associations that he follows. And still he surprises us.

Some people love this book; some hate it. If you are curious about the peculiar way one mind can work or about what goes on beyond the pretty postcards of Kentish oast houses, check out this book. But I warn you: abandon all preconceptions you who enter here.

Have you read a book that baffled you but you couldn’t stop thinking about it?

The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead

by

Nickel

As a high school student in Tallahassee, Florida in the 1960s, Ellwood Curtis studies hard and is chosen to attend classes at the university. When he isn’t studying, he listens to a record of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speeches which fires his idealistic determination to stand up to injustice.

However, it only takes one innocent misstep to suck him into the criminal justice system. As one member of my book club who is a lawyer remarked, we don’t see the trial. Another pointed out that for a black teenager it was a foregone conclusion that he would be incarcerated.

Ellwood is sent to the Nickel Academy, a reform school for boys that Whitehead based on Florida’s actual Dozier School, which was not closed until 2011 amid longstanding accusations of beatings, sexual abuse, and even murder. For Ellwood, a young man from a protected environment, cared for and encouraged by his grandmother, the gritty truth of Nickel is a shock.

A member of my book club noted how quickly things can go wrong—something I well recall from my time on welfare—saying, “One thing unravels, and if you don’t have anyone to help it’s like a pebble rolling down a hill creating an avalanche.” Ellwood’s grandmother tries to help, hiring a lawyer, but he takes the money and disappears.

Luckily, Ellwood is befriended by Turner, another inmate who understands the system at Nickel and how to work it. A member of my book club pointed out that Turner is a fascinating character because he is so adaptable, finding ways not just to survive but to thrive even in this horrific environment. The two boys—so different—admire and support each other. Turner’s cynical realism makes him try to persuade Ellwood to keep quiet rather than speak truth to power. Yet Ellwood clings to his earlier role model: Dr. King.

The boys’ time at Nickel is framed by a story set in the 1960s where Ellwood is a successful business owner living in New York City. News stories of graves found at the now-closed Nickel Academy lead him to remember his time there.

Most of us in my book club had some quibbles about the ending, but all attested to the power of the writing.

As a writer, I paid particular attention to Whitehead’s treatment of the abuse. He himself has talked of how difficult it was for him to write about such subjects, saying in a USA Today interview, “I think if I was angry or sad every day I couldn’t create art. So the subject of slavery and the subject of the abuse in the reform school had to be held at a distance on a day to day basis.”

In order to start reading what was obviously going to be a serious book, many of us in my book club had to summon our resolve. We knew that we would be confronted by painful and terrible truths, yet knew too that it was important our eyes be opened and that we bear witness.

Though we thought that we would not be able to read some of the scenes, in fact the author pulled back and left the details to our imagination, giving us instead scenes of the aftermath, the wounds, the scars—physical and emotional: an effective technique. This is a good book to study to see how we as writers can handle shocking or gruesome scenes so that they don’t turn off readers while still moving them.

I found myself thinking of a recent talk by Heather Cox Richardson about the news of graves being found at indigenous schools in Canada. She reminded us that the people who originally created the schools were do-gooders who thought they were helping the children. They meant well. Today we see them as misguided, but at the time most white people believed that indigenous people were “savages” who needed to be “civilised” if they were to succeed in what had become a white man’s world.

How did things go so wrong? How did benevolent intentions become institutions even worse than Charlotte Brontë’s Lowood School? I’m afraid I’ve become as cynical as Turner. Too many people are willing to exchange whatever moral code they have for the rewards of corruption and power.

As Turner himself thinks, in response to Ellwood’s invocation of King’s nonviolence, “The law was one thing. You can march and wave signs around and change a law if you convinced enough white people . . . You can change the law, but you can’t change people and how they treat each other.”

How people treat each other. Starve them in order to steal food and medicine and sell it elsewhere. Sexual abuse. Power plays. It can be hard to believe that human beings can be so selfish, so unfeeling, so greedy, especially when it comes to children. But there it is.

Whether this cruelty is simply human nature or learned behaviour is not a question I can answer. The only way I can think of to combat it is to expose it and bear witness to the suffering of the victims.

Have you read this important and timely novel? What did you think of it?

The Right to Write, by Julia Cameron

by

Cameron

I’m preparing to teach a workshop on creativity, so have been scavenging in my bookshelves for relevant books. In this book, subtitled An Invitation and Initiation Into the Writing Life, Julia Cameron asserts that everyone can lead a creative life.

She makes it easy for the reader to take one small step after another by having brief essays—the invitation—followed by an exercise—the initiation. With each essay, she follows her own advice of starting where you are. She may describe the scene outside her window, something that happened earlier that’s on her mind, or simply an idea.

For example, one essay starts: “Much ado is frequently made about writers and their rituals.” She goes on to talk about special pens, phones silenced, etc. before saying, “I don’t like to make such a big deal about writing.”

Thus, the essays are entirely accessible. The exercises that follow are simple to do, but help the writer dig into themselves and find the will and confidence to write. In addition to the “self-cherishing” and self-discovery sections, there are practical suggestions for living a creative life.

For example, she talks about how writing is actually physical work—“an embodied experience.” She describes writing through the body and suggests a walk, possibly taking along a specific question or topic, and then writing about your experience when you get home. I also like her discussion of writing as being not a monologue but a conversation between the writer and reality. From there she talks about the need to pay attention and closely observe what’s going on around us.

In addition to the essays and exercises, Cameron deploys the two main tools she debuted in her bestselling workbook The Artist’s Way: Morning Pages and Artist Dates.

For Morning Pages, she tells us to write three pages longhand, first thing every morning. What you put down can be about anything; just keep writing. These serve a number of purposes, such as getting you used to writing on the spur of the moment, setting aside your inner censor, and accessing deeper levels of consciousness: “dropping into the well.”

For Artist Dates, she recommends scheduling a play date with your inner artist. This could be a visit to a museum, a film, a walk in the woods: whatever feeds your creativity. Art is process, and the process is supposed to be fun.

The book is a response to people like the Great Writer who over dinner complained to her that too many people were calling themselves writers without having suffered enough, without having come up the hard way, and “‘all that slush keeps the good writers from being published. Writing isn’t for amateurs.’”

Cameron’s response is that too many beautiful voices have been silenced, either by mockery or poverty or some other “creative accident.” She wants everyone’s voice to be heard.

I agree. Just as it’s uncommon today for families and friends to gather around a piano for a sing-song, believing instead that singing is for professionals, many people in our time think that in order to write you have to be a Great Writer—though how one is recognised as such is a minefield—whereas in the past everyone who could wrote letters, diaries, poems, etc. I want to hear those stories, the ones that are buried. That’s why I call my memoir classes Sharing Our Stories.

In another of her books, The Sound of Paper, Cameron reminds us of our purpose as writers:

We say the unsayable and in saying it we name not only ourselves but also the human condition. By being willing to characterize our lives in art, we begin to have the character necessary to make living itself an art.

Do you think that creative writing is for everyone or just for a select few?

Declaration of Independence

by

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett

by

vanishing

As this popular novel opens, a 30-year-old woman returns to her hometown. Residents are shocked to see her, and word quickly travels around that one of the Vignes twins has been spotted. There are two reasons for this outsized reaction, one being that Desiree and her sister Stella have not been seen since they disappeared when they were 16 while everyone else was at the Founder’s Day Dance, dismayed that their mother pulled them out of school to start working as domestic servants. But the greater reason for the town’s shock is the dark-skinned daughter Desiree brings with her, described by the owner of the diner as “blue-black . . . like she flown direct from Africa.”

Mallard, Louisiana is an all-black town, like Eatonville in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. Fictional—though based on a real town the author’s mother heard of—Mallard has a peculiar philosophy, created by the town’s founder: the best way to combat racism is to lighten their skin by always having children with lighter- and lighter-skinned people.

By the time of this story, most people in town can pass for white, which is exactly what Stella began doing when she applied for a job in New Orleans. She married a white man and neither he nor their daughter knows Stella grew up identifying as black.

Rebellious Desiree married the darkest-skinned man she could find, hence her daughter Jude’s dark skin. Now, in 1968, only a few weeks after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, she’s come home with a scarf hiding the bruises on her neck, hoping her husband won’t be able to find her. Unknown to her, he has hired a bounty hunter to find her.

There’s plenty to like about this story. The situation carries dramatic potential: Desiree adjusting to being back in the small town; Jude suffering the prejudice against her due to her skin color; Desiree and her mother trying to find a new connection; Stella wrestling with her reaction when a black family moves into their all-white neighborhood; and the threat of the bounty hunter on top of all that.

I was particularly interested in Stella’s story, having recently read Nella Larsen’s Passing. I’m fascinated by the strain of pretending to be someone you’re not. Of course, it’s not hard, and even fun, to do it for a little while, but to keep it up for years would not only make you feel as though you are always in danger, but would also cut you off from your past. Those memories and the narrative through-line that we create from our life experiences are foundations of our identity, so walling off part of them must have consequences.

There’s another aspect of this story that is fascinating: the hold that the culture we grow up in continues to assert on our actions and reactions, our emotions and desires. We may think we’ve left those childhood beliefs behind, no matter how hard our parents drilled them into us, but they crop up when we least expect it.

As a writer, one thing I’m taking away from this book is the subtle way we can use the works of our literary forebears. In addition to Hurston and Larsen, there are also references to Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. If the reader recognizes these works, the references add depth to the story and provide a sense of familiarity. At the same time, the story stands alone; a reader who doesn’t know these works won’t notice the difference.

What underpins the entire story is the one-drop rule, that one drop of black blood makes you black. Of course, that terrible rule was commonly accepted in 1968, so it’s appropriate for the story. However, we still see its effects today in who identifies as white and who as black. There are other aspects of racial prejudice, such as descriptions of people as an Oreo or a snowball, and colorism itself. And of course, the concept of race itself is a social construct. Still, Mallard’s obsession with lightening their skin through successive generations makes me wonder when, if ever, they would consider themselves white. What vanishes? What remains?

Have you read this best-selling novel? What did you think of it?

The Trespasser, by Tana French

by

French

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Tana French’s mystery series. The early ones are police procedurals, with members of Dublin’s Murder Squad as protagonists. Since it’s the same squad, a minor character from one book sometimes reappears or even stars in a later book.

That is the case here. The protagonist and secondary character from the previous book swap places. In The Secret Place, Detective Stephen Moran has been looking for an opportunity to get on the elite Murder Squad when it arrives as a new clue in the unsolved murder of a popular boy on the grounds of a girl’s boarding school.

Stephen’s previous contact with one of the girls, Holly Mackey, daughter of detective Frank Mackey (protagonist of Faithful Place and a character in The Likeness), led her to bring him the clue. His ability to communicate with the girls persuades the lead detective Antoinette Conway to keep him on the case—provisionally. We follow Stephen’s twists and turns as he tries to figure out the best approach for each witness, determined to impress the bad-tempered Conway. She believes that the entire squad is out to get her for being a woman and that she’ds been given this one for her first case on purpose to see her fail.

In The Trespasser, Conway is our point-of-view character. Stephen Moran is still working with her, now as her partner and member of the squad. They are assigned minor cases, mostly domestics, when finally they are tapped to investigate what is apparently a domestic gone wrong: a woman found murdered in her own home amid the wreckage of what was obviously meant to be a romantic dinner for two.

They are also given Jimmy Breslin, star of the squad, to work with them which makes Conway bristle. She’s unsure whether this is more harassment or a lack of confidence in her, both equally maddening. Breslin pushes them to arrest the boyfriend, despite the lack of evidence, but Conway and Moran see more paths to investigate.

The interplay between the partners is what makes this book spectacular. Throughout, but especially in the interview room, Conway and Moran bounce off each other, inspire each other, support each other, tiptoe around each other’s wounds—all the things good partners should do. Until they don’t.

Nobody does friendships like Tana French. While most stories rely on love stories for emotional content, French gives us friendships, intense as any romance, whether the working friendship of partners, the intense intimacy of teenage girls, or—as in The Likeness—the friends who can become another family.

I’m not really sure how she does it, beyond the individuality and authenticity of their voices. It’s partly what they are willing to do for each other. It’s partly what they understand intuitively about each other. In this book, Moran and Conway have worked together long enough that when they are interviewing a suspect they can anticipate what the other is about to say. Acting as one, they can volley questions and statements to guide the suspect where they want them to go.

With the girls at the school, French brings out the passionate loyalty and secrecy of their friendships. Through interviews we learn what others say about them. We see and hear how little they themselves give the detectives. We learn more about them in the contrast and conflict between different cliques. And when the girls are alone, we sense through their thoughts and actions the volatility of their emotions and the potential for devastation.

This book in particular also examines the stories people tell themselves, stories about themselves and about others, and the influence of these stories on their actions and reactions. I’m fascinated by this theme and looking for other books that might examine it.

As you can tell, there’s a lot more going on here than simply a puzzle to be solved, though that’s here too, and it’s a knotty one. This layered and intricate story is captivating on so many levels.

Have you read any of Tana French’s novels? Which one is your favorite?

We Are as Gods, by Kate Daloz

by

gods

Recently I attended a talk about the flood of hippies and other progressives moving to Vermont in the 1970s and this book was mentioned. Having lived in a rural part of the state briefly in 1971, I was well aware of how conservative it was and so have always been curious as to how these two wildly different populations managed to coexist. Daloz’s book, subtitled Back to the Land in the 1970s on the Quest for a New America, helps me understand.

The story of the Myrtle Hill commune provides the narrative backbone, with digressions to describe the commune movement in the U.S. In 1970, three young people—Lorraine, Fletcher and Craig—found the 116-acre former potato farm and within a few weeks Craig had bought it, using his inheritance following his father’s sudden death for the down payment. Craig then created a land trust so it would be owned in common with everyone taking turns covering the mortgage payments.

After the group, which quickly swelled in numbers, discovered the joys of mud season in Vermont, they spent an idyllic summer living in tents, tipis and lean-tos. “It was like a weeks-long camping trip, but more romantic because this was not a mere vacation, but, for all of them, their new way of life.

They were determined to be self-sufficient, acquiring chickens, two milk cows and a beef calf who all had to be cared for. Besides building a rough shed for the chickens, they dug an outhouse and planted a garden. Water for cooking and washing had to be hauled in five-gallon buckets in the back of Craig’s truck. Lorraine prepared meals over an open fire, while Nancy cared for the children. The group had big plans for the future—a school for the children, wind-powered generators, a radio station—but their immediate task was to build a geodesic dome for winter housing.

We also get to know their neighbors, some who were original Vermonters and some, like the author’s parents, who wanted to go back to the land but were not interested in the communal part.

As with other groups during this idealistic period, the Myrtle Hill residents had no leader, making decisions by consensus. They embraced free love and shared occasional after-dinner marijuana; their open-door policy welcomed curious hippies and others. However, as seen by the division of labor above, they had brought gender role assumptions with them. And then, of course, winter arrived.

Daloz follows the group from its idealistic beginnings through the gradual disenchantment, conveying their stories realistically yet with sympathy. Even in describing her parents’ path, her journalistic tone doesn’t waver.

It’s a fascinating book, combining the intense focus on Myrtle Hill and its neighbors with a wide-ranging summary of the counter-culture of the period, the growth and brief life of the commune movement, and the gradual recognition among the commune members that no one is actually self-sufficient. We all, including their original Vermont neighbors, rely on our community, and some jobs are full-time so are better left to someone else.

At first the book saddened me, as I remembered my own back-to-the-land dreams of the same period. But as I read on, I realised that my reasons for not eventually choosing that path had been good ones. I’d had the good fortune to work on a friend’s dairy farm for a season and quickly saw that while I enjoyed the work, such a life was not for me. The idea of writing at night when the farmwork was over turned out to be a ridiculous fantasy, for all the reasons that plagued the young people in this book.

So when I did start visiting communes thinking I might find one where I could prosper, I knew what to look for. I ended up choosing community over commune, and do not regret it. Still, this book brought back many pleasant memories and also helped me to better understand the culture in today’s Vermont.

Have you read a book that took you back to an earlier period in your life?

The Lost Apothecary, by Sarah Penner

by

apothecary

In a back alley in 1791 London, a wooden door opens to what appears to be a storeroom. However, those in the know are aware that behind a hidden door lies Nella Clavinger’s apothecary shop. Like her mother before her, she caters only to women and dispenses powders and salves to ease their pains. However, unlike her mother—and this is why her shop is secret—she also sells poisons to women who need to get rid of a man who is mistreating them.

Nella’s work with poisons has prematurely aged her, and she suffers pain and weakness. One day she is surprised when it is not a woman who arrives at the appointed time to collect a poison, but a 12-year-old girl, Eliza Fanning, a maid picking it up for her mistress. Eliza is fascinated by Nella and begs to be taught her skills. Nella refuses, but Eliza’s presence still has catastrophic consequences.

There’s more: This book has a dual timeline.

In present-day London Caroline Parcewell is visiting from Ohio. Although this long-planned trip was to celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary, she has left her husband at home, after discovering that he has been having an affair.

As she wanders disconsolately around the city, she stumbles on a mudlarking tour, mudlarks being the name for people in earlier centuries who dug in the edges of the Thames looking for anything they can sell. She finds a mysterious vial and eventually suspects she’s on the trail of eighteenth-century London’s “apothecary murderer.”

The two stories intertwine, both speaking of women trying to control their own destinies. Nella keeps a register, the one started by her mother, noting the name of each customer, the date, and what they purchased. She knows that women like her—not wealthy, not royalty—are not recorded or remembered. So her register is one small way to recognise women who would otherwise be forgotten.

Even as Nella tries to find a way out of the troubles that come upon her, Caroline looks back over her marriage, assessing where she has abandoned her own dreams and debating whether she can continue with the marriage.

There’s a lot of suspense, with as many twists and turns as a back alley in eighteenth-century London. As always, after my first immersive read, I examined some technical aspects of the book. In this case, I was interested in how the two timelines bounced off each other, sometimes reflecting, sometimes diverging. I was also interested in the way information was gradually revealed, heightening the suspense. I have a few minor quibbles, but overall the book was a good read and a fine way to while away a rainy afternoon.

Can you recommend a book with a dual timeline?

The Topeka School, by Ben Lerner

by

topeka

This final novel in Lerner’s autofictional trilogy has been much written about and much praised. Minimally framed by his present-day adult self, the bulk of the book is Adam Gordon’s account of his teen years in Topeka, Kansas, during the 1990s. The events and circumstances mirror Lerner’s own.

A debating champion, Adam uses words aggressively and defensively both onstage and off. He’s a master of “the spread,” where debaters spout multiple arguments as fast as they can spit them out, making it difficult for their opponents to respond or, I would imagine, for the audience to follow. If this sounds a lot like mansplaining and talking over people, if it reminds you of everything hateful in our current public discourse—whether on social media, political circles, or family get-togethers—welcome to the club.

I disliked this book from the opening scene where teenaged Adam, unmoved by the romantic potential of being on a moonlit boat with his girlfriend, is so busy sharing all the marvelous wonders of his mind that he doesn’t even notice his girlfriend is no longer beside him. Some members of my book club found this sequence hilarious while I was only reminded of too many teenaged hours pretending to listen to boys orate.

Since it was our book club’s selection, I kept reading and found much that was interesting, especially about the uses and misuses of language, about language as power.

Chapters about Adam’s teen years are interrupted by a two chapters each from his parents’ point of view. Adam’s parents are members of “the Foundation,” a progressive clinic and training center for psychiatry (Lerner’ mother is connected to the Menninger Foundation). Jane, like Lerner’s mother, has written a popular feminist book, which incites anonymous calls from angry men and envy among her colleagues. Jonathan’s research involves “speech shadowing” where words repeated at increasing speeds turn into nonsense.

Adam’s chapters are also interspersed with chapters from the point of view of Darren, a townie adopted by Adam’s group of friends who mistreat and befriend him at the same time. Not gifted with the verbal fluency of the Foundation kids, Darren’s only power is physical. The threat of violence winds through these chapters, providing a bit of tension, a story question we read to answer. The other tension comes from Adam’s preparation for a debating tournament.

Our book club discussion was enlivened by one member’s actually having grown up in Topeka where her parents were associated with the Menninger Foundation. Others had a more positive reaction to the book than I did, though I recognised the critique of modern culture and the idea that much of what is so hateful today is rooted in the toxic masculinity the teens in this novel are steeped in.

Some members spoke of the blurred boundaries in the book, such as Jane having her friend become her analyst as well. Others mentioned that the characters all sound the same, except for Darren, though of course that could be because they have all been brought up in Foundation-speak. Some people thought the author was trying to put in too much, perhaps because autofiction—using real events with some fictional tampering—tempts you to include everything.

I am not a fan of autofiction. Though I appreciate the fun for the writer of playing with the boundary between fiction and nonfiction, and recognise that novelists have always drawn on their own experiences, I miss the alchemy whereby fiction transforms the dross of everyday life. Also, I’m not happy with the way lies have replaced facts in our political discourse, so blurring the line seems to me to go in a less than productive direction.

Lerner’s prose is occasionally quite beautiful. One of the benefits of novelists also being poets is increased attention to the music of language. However, I did find myself skimming sections, especially the many about debating, being bored and a little disgusted.

Writers are sometimes admonished to make their main characters more likeable, leading to debates among writers as to the necessity of having the main character be likeable (and a side discussion of whether this only happens to women writers). As a reader I don’t have to like the main character, but I have to find some common ground with them or I cannot engage with the story.

I didn’t here. My dislike of Adam only increased as I continued reading. At the same time, I appreciate the use of his specific story to shed light on much of what is wrong with our society today, at least here in the U.S.

And I’m clearly in a very small minority, as this book is both widely popular and critically acclaimed: another reminder that not every book is for every reader. It may be that I would have enjoyed it more if I were reading it 20 years from now instead of still suffering the fallout from this kind of behaviour. Still, I’m glad it being my book club’s selection pushed me to read it. I don’t have to like a book to admire it, and as a writer to learn from it.

What book of autofiction have you read? What did you think of it?

The Moment Before the Wilt: Poetry, by Michelle Rose Goodwin

by

wilt

This chapbook of poems by my friend Michelle Rose Goodwin documents a year, starting with “June” and ending with “May (3).” It was a terrible year, perhaps the most difficult year of the author’s life, and the raw vulnerability of the poems speaks to our deepest fears and sorrows.

The voice in these poems—steady, not looking away, sounding like your best friend whispering at night after the lights are out—draws us into her world. Even if I hadn’t already known the author, I would have been captivated by her first meeting with a man she thought “a cherry popsicle prince” and would have wanted to stay for her subsequent experiences.

It’s well-known that writing can be therapeutic. Often, though, what we write to help ourselves work through some trauma is either too private to share or not something that will interest others. The trick is what Stephen King recommends in his excellent book On Writing: write the first draft for yourself and then revise with the reader in mind. Clearly that is what Goodwin has done here.

These poems find the right balance of genuine emotions and engaging language. Goodwin transforms ordinary things into evocative imagery, as in this excerpt from “September:”

When it was over
He packed a suitcase with his dreams made of grit
And left her alone with her moment of cloud smoke
Rising up from the chimney and then gone

By not punctuating the ends of her lines, Goodwin creates an unsettled feeling in the reader, a sense that something more is coming, something just around the corner. A form where nothing is final contrasts with the content of the poems, creating tension and interest. At the same time it provides a kind of comfort.

In reading poetry, I love a startling image, something freshly imagined, such as this first stanza of “January:”

The juice drips down from every moment
And we fall to our knees in worship to lick it up

In the end, though, it is the emotional twists and turns of this journey that make these poems so real and this chapbook so satisfying.

Is there a poem you’ve read recently that drew you entirely into its world?

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a copy of this book free from the author. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.