Isla McKetta, MFA, Author at A Geography of Reading

The Pure Power of Rage in The Bride by Maggie Gyllenhaal

March 14, 2026 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

“Darling, something is cracking.” – Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Bride

It’s easy to argue, watching the news over the last decade, that something needs to crack. We’re raising the right questions about racism, misogyny, and broken class structures, but as much hope as those questions give me, the thwarting of progress at every turn simply increases my rage. Somehow I didn’t realize how very angry I was until I watched The Bride with my husband this week on an all-too-rare date night. This review will contain spoilers, but I hope you will read it anyway, because there is no way anything I write will capture the strange energy of actually watching the film.

Who We Belong To

I didn’t think much about ownership and power structures in the films opening scenes as Ida becomes possessed by the ghost of Mary Shelley and starts acting out against her dinner companions (and general decorum) as Jessie Buckley does an extraordinary job of inhabiting three separate characters at once.

But the moment Ida is on the table waiting to be reanimated by Frank and Dr. Euphronius I found myself asking, “What fucking right do you have?” Because they didn’t. Just as Dr. Frankenstein didn’t have the right to make Frank.

One of the most successful parts of the movie is how Frank’s relationship to The Bride evolves from possession to admiration. Christian Bale does a beautiful job in this, portraying a character who is heartless and deeply pained at the same time, and he was able to inhabit a reverence of The Bride as she learned to inhabit herself that is aspirational. Frank loves The Bride as she is and as she will continue to grow.

Because of all of this, I was actually not in love with the scene where she proclaims herself “The Bride,” for the reason that a bride is always in relation to something else, a husband or wife. This insane, wild, powerful, uncontrollable character still defined herself in relation to another. Which is different than being in relationship with another. It felt limiting and the last thing I wanted to see was this character putting limits on herself. I mean, did she hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it?

Bartleby and the Art of Passive Resistance

I remember when Melville House reprinted Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener as part of their novella series. I hadn’t read the story before and I was so enchanted with the power that planting your feet in one place can hold that I bought the “I would prefer not to” tote bag and carried it around for years (until I realized it wasn’t a great look at work).

So I was delighted when The Bride started to quote Bartleby. At first it was a lark, but after the film was over, I realized how that passive resistance is sometimes the first power we feel like we can really hold. And, like a rooted tree, it is strong. It’s no longer my favorite kind of resistance (we have to actively make the change we want to see), but it’s not The Bride’s either, it’s merely an opening into the power she can begin to wield.

As good as this metaphor is, I couldn’t quite get over the wonder over whether the Bartleby timeline was right. Which worried my mind during the movie when I wanted to be fully in the fictional dream. Having looked it up today, I was right that Bartleby came out after Shelley died. But in a story like this, who knows, the ghost of Mary has probably been reading all the best books.

Things I didn’t Quite Get (This Watch)

Speaking of Mary Shelley, the interjections by her ghost did not always work for me. I was open to it at first and understood how her intrusion was shaping the actions and fate of Ida, but there were too many to start and it was a relief in the middle when they faded. There is a lot going on in this film (more on that in a moment) and Gyllenhaal artfully uses repetition to underscore a lot of her major points, so I am excited to see how the layers meld on rewatch.

And while the mob boss storyline helps with the pacing and gives some anchors for the plot, it felt like more than the movie needed. To lift it out would have required some deep reworking, but I would have loved to see what the film was like without this drag.

The Raw Power of Not Giving A Fuck

The Bride is loud, in every aspect off the word. The imagery is brash (often employing strange camera angles to further unsettle the audience), the music and plot are frenzied, and the acting is deliciously uncontained. I loved every bit of the raw feeling that imparts on the film. Of course it is not actually raw, it takes a great deal of work to put this many big things into a film and have them all (mostly) fit artfully. I wasn’t 100% there for how the movie came together, but I was 98% there and I can’t wait to see what Gyllenhaal does next.

Most of all, The Bride is a creature of impulse, and she is wild in her pursuits and her rage. While I don’t see myself painting my face black and going on a rampage, I sympathized with the women in the film who did, because we have held ourselves back too long.

I remember being told in the eighth grade by a creative writing teacher that I was a “very angry young woman,” and I wonder now why I let that be a rebuke. I was filled with all the surging emotions of a teenager and also reeling from years of fear and resentment around my mother’s illness. My teacher’s comments only made me more angry, but I also felt like I had to turn that anger inward, because I couldn’t make it go away, but I could hide it. This rage is what ultimately gave birth to my next book, Naked Driving to the Witches’ Graveyard, a project I can only dream of Gyllenhaal translating to the screen.

I am lucky in having the kind of husband who will ask me out on a Tuesday (arranging for the child care himself) to see a movie he knows I desperately want to see but that he really is not that interested in. Maybe next time I’ll be the kind of woman who asks him. Or a group of girlfriends. Maybe it’s time we all stood up and ran after the world we want to see.

Writing from the Margins in No Friend to This House

February 28, 2026 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

I grew up aspiring to a “classical education” where I would read all the tomes of great thinkers from the Greek poets to the French Enlightenment, in their original languages of course. I didn’t achieve this (not only because I failed at teaching myself Latin) and my ambitions have changed. To be clear, I think versing yourself in these books is a wonderful way to exercise your mind and engage in western traditions. But as I grew and came to see what was missing from those stories—me. It’s been reported that only 0.5% of history is about women’s stories, which is why I’m loving the more contemporary retellings of classic stories from the point of view of women in books like I Am Cleopatra, Fates and Furies, and She Never Told Me About the Ocean. Medea is hardly an ignored character in literature, but the upcoming publication of No Friend to This House by Natalie Haynes coincides perfectly with my hunger to learn more about the past without feeling erased by it.

From One Voice to Many

I’m well acquainted with the choral narration of some Greek stories—it’s actually something I’m using in Naked Driving to the Witches’ Graveyard, the book I’m finishing up right now—but telling Medea’s story from within an anonymous mass of voices would defeat the point. Instead, she provides myriad individual voices in No Friend to This House. The story is almost entirely told from the alternating points of view of women, including Alcimede, Aphrodite, Hypsiple, Hera, Glauke, and, of course, Medea.

What this means is that we see the events of the book almost entirely through the eyes of these women. Which is a switch, for sure. We see the power of the goddesses in lines like, “The men’s impossible quest would become possible once they had Artemis’ advice.”

We also see how live continued outside the heroic quests: “So the women did as they always did when their menfolk were away: tended to their homes, their children, their livestock, and tried not to think about the spears and arrows of the Thracians piercing their beloved flesh.” We see possibilities where the women cope so well that the men might not be welcome home at all if they misbehave, as is the case with the Lemnians. And we are inside the conspiracy between these wronged women and the Thracian slave women their husbands tried to replace them with.

The Power of Perspective

Most of these are told in third person, but some (including Kleite, Erato, Chalciope, and Medea) burst into the narrative with a first person perspective. This is sometimes jarring, but it allows for characters like Kleite to speak for themselves for once.

“Did you just try to miss out on my part of the story? Why? No, don’t tell me, I already know the answer. It’s because no one remembers my name. That’s right, I’m just glossed over every time.” Kleite, No Friend to This House by Natalie Haynes

I appreciated the sentiments of these interjections, but the forcefulness of the shift sometimes made them feel like they were serving the conceit of the book more than the narrative itself (even if I was glad to have the stories they contained). There are others, though, where this intimacy with even minor characters offered a poignancy that would otherwise be missed, as in the testimony of Theophane mother of Chrysomallos (the sheep with the golden fleece):

“So they killed him, they cut his skin from his warm body, and they kept it as a trophy. No one thinks it matters because he was only an animal and they are nothing. And no one thinks I matter because I am nothing too. Just the mother of a miracle that men chose to see as a thing.” – Theophane, No Friend to This House by Natalie Haynes

It’s Medea’s narration where this first person perspective feels most essential. Because she doesn’t enter the book until the correct chronological place, it’s easy (especially if you’re as rusty on this story as I am) to forget how important she is.

“I’m aware that this is how I’ve been portrayed by many people. You will no doubt pride yourself on your independence of mind, and believe that the impressions you have of me, the conclusions you have reached about me are all your own. You are astute, observant, analytical. You couldn’t have your assumptions swayed by prejudice.” – Medea, No Friend to This House by Natalie Haynes

It’s not an understatement to say that this direct access to Medea’s thoughts are critical to the success of the book.

Feminism Writ Large

Unpacking and challenging old ideas is difficult. They are deeply ingrained and also so many people are at so many different stages of learning. This is what made Lessons in Chemistry appeal to so many women of my mother’s generation and yet appear quaint to women of mine. This means that some of the lines ring very true to me and what I’ve seen women experience, like this from Medea near the end of the book:

“I needed to be clever but not too clever, to fit in but not too well, to be popular but not more than him, to be Greek but never Greek enough, to be his wife but still out of reach. I believed I could change and adapt sufficiently to hold him, and it never occurred to me that this would not—could not—be enough.” – Medea, No Friend to This House by Natalie Haynes

And others, as when the Peliades describe Medea as “sweet as honey dripping from the comb…None of us could believe it, when we found out who she was and what she’d done,” that set up an enmity between the women that made me uncomfortable. This enmity makes a certain sense given the cultural divisions, but there was also a current of androcentric jealousy that I wish we could move beyond.

All of this to say that I enjoyed the story of this book and the way it made me think.

If you are interested in exploring Greek myths from a gynocentric angle pre-order a copy of No Friend to This House from Bookshop.org before it’s released on March 10. Your purchase keeps indie bookstores in business and I receive a commission.

Tyranny and Narrative Timelines in Heir, Stones from the River, and Homegoing

February 21, 2026 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

It’s no accident my reading centers around tyranny lately. Reading is how I understand the world, and there’s a lot to try and understand. This is no accident, either, as artists of all kinds process through the creation of their work: see this interview with Tony Gilroy about making Andor. Three books have stood out in my reading so far this year. Each has something different to teach about tyranny, and each uses a different type of narrative timeline to do so, so I had to share them with you.

Narrowing Options in Heir by Sabaa Tahir

I just realized I’ve never written here about An Ember in the Ashes or All My Rage, two projects that cemented Sabaa Tahir as one of my favorite living authors. Heir sits beside the Ember tetralogy, continuing the rich world in which deeply imagined characters fight across kingdoms that could easily be modern countries. The political strife is exacting and yet the fierceness with which Tahir imagines the humanity that cuts across it all makes these books both deeply engaging and must-reads for right now. I haven’t done a good job of explaining any of them because I don’t want to spoil the unfolding, but one person who read these books described them to me as “The first thing I’ve read in a very long time that made me care about the characters.” They are fast-paced and you can read them for pleasure, but they are also exquisitely crafted…

What flipped my writer brain on while reading Heir was a timeline shift about halfway through. The book is told in alternating points of view between Aiz, Sirsha, and Quil—characters from different backgrounds and different lands whose narratives intersect in explosive ways. I assumed as I was reading that the timelines were concurrent. I think we are meant to assume this, because the narrative is driving so hard forward and we are pulled into that momentum.

So it’s a shock when it’s revealed that one of these narrators (I won’t tell you who) is actually speaking from a past timeline. What this did for me as a reader was immediately start to explore the limits for that character’s storyline. They became backstory for the other two characters and I mourned for the futures I’d imagined for that character. What had once been an infinite sea of options now felt truncated, hemmed in. Like the walls of fate had closed in.

What this did for me as a writer is remind me that we all come to books with assumptions about what is normal. Things we expect and hope for unless we are told otherwise. Many of these are pretty human assumptions and can be assigned to most readers: the action moves forward, we want good things for the characters we are told are good, etc. By carefully playing with these expectations, we can build friction and power in our stories. We can create the unexpected.

Don’t worry, Tahir is an artful writer, and the way she works out of the limitations I then assumed for her character are magic and also feel inherently like part of the world she has created.

There are lessons to be learned here for life, too, where we are can subvert expectations. Step outside of the roles we are being assigned. Stand up when it is assumed we’ll be cowed.

Revealing Our Roles in Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi

Speaking of roles and expectations, Ursula Hegi’s Stones from the River feels like a documentary of a small town in Germany starting near the end of World War I through the end of World War II. It’s filled with an entire town of characters who play against each other in the way that we do with our neighbors. Everyday things happen as the country’s descent into fascism plays out in the background. In fact, the first time I tried to read this book I found it so quotidian I had to put it down. This time I realized quotidian is the point.

The quote that circulates during every cultural moment where we have the chance to move forward or backward is something like “What you are doing now is what you would have done in Nazi Germany.” This book allows the reader to see what actions a myriad of people take and why. It demonstrates the aftermath.

The timeline plods forward mercilessly forward as people report their neighbors. They cuddle up to power to get a little for themselves. They leave the country. They stay. They help their neighbors openly. They help their neighbors clandestinely. They are arrested. They are released. They are disappeared. They lose their minds. They move forward as though nothing has changed.

I had the chance to talk with someone I love this week about this book and our now. It can feel so difficult to know how to make a difference, but I urge you, if you feel like what is happening is wrong, to do something to change it. Even if you simply start by saying, “This is not okay.” Then keep doing more until you’ve realized how strong you can be.

Stones from the River feels like a personal excavation for an author who was born in Germany after the war, but you have the chance to make a different narrative now. It can feel dangerous, but if you are doing nothing, then what exactly are you preserving?

Documenting the Atrocities in Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

On the subject of atrocities that go on too long, Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi is the most effective history of slavery I’ve ever read. This novel begins with the story of two half sisters born in Ghana in the eighteenth century. Through the parallel tracks for their descendants, Gyasi shares vignettes from each generation that highlight moments of cultural import. We experience the trajectories of colonialism in Ghana and slavery and racism in the U.S. Ghanaians wrestle with colonizers and tribal strife, people are enslaved, escape, get kidnapped, and work in indentured servitude. Families endure and are severed.

This could feel like a history tome where important moments are thrown at a narrative. But because Gyasi so beautifully inhabits each of the characters and moments, we feel the deepest pain and highest joy along with the characters. She is able to document some of the worst of our history while also keeping the book focused at a human level, which makes it all the more effective.

From a craft standpoint, the fractured timelines of the vignettes allows the reader to feel the disjointedness of the family histories. We see how these stories relate and we have (some of) the cultural context to see where it started and how it’s going, but there are characters here who will never know their family histories and, fresh back from a family reunion where every story has three wonderfully different angles, I ached at the gaps that creates in a person’s understanding of themselves and their culture.

This book is very much in the zeitgeist around me, and I feel like I am late to read it. If you haven’t yet, it’s time.

If any of these books piqued your interest, order Heir, Stones from the River, or Homegoing from Bookshop.org. If you use that link to purchase anything, you’re keeping indie bookstores in business and I receive a commission.

The Books I’m Carrying into 2026

January 1, 2026 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

New Year, new me, right? Except that reading is the fundamental way I relate to the world, so it’s always books, and in 2026 I’m working on unknotting some of the same obsessions as last year (and the year before, and, let’s be honest, always). Three books opened something for me in the past few weeks that I think will take me deeper and more meaningfully into understanding and living the life I want to live: One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad, Skeleton Crew by Stephen King, and The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation by Chögyam Trungpa. Let me tell you how this eclectic mix of books is helping me see (and how they might help you, too).

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

I hadn’t thought about this book at all until I was at a National Book Awards watch party and I saw El Akkad’s gorgeous acceptance speech. My shelves are too full of the non-fiction books I am interested in but that often feel like blocks for me to overcome. But this book was so very worth buying and pushing to the top of the pile.

“Whose nonexistence is necessary to the self-conception of this place, and how uncontrollable is the rage whenever that nonexistence is violated?” – One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

The book is about Gaza, yes, and it is about everything. At the same time it is very simply about the fact that we are not living in the world we say we are living in. The book is beautifully human as he describes his family’s migration (something I always relate to), how colonialism positions the occupied as the aggressor, the delusions of capitalism, and the possibility of walking away.

I’ve been grappling with a lot of things in the past decade that this book helped clarify. From the unbearable pain and beauty that opened up inside me when I was pregnant and could see clearly (for a few years at least) that every single person I encountered was human to the day I looked at my face in the mirror of a house whose mortgage was being paid by the Saudi government to my dawning realization that the Democratic Party is more interested in gaining and retaining power than in helping its constituents (don’t get me started on the GOP).

This book can and should radicalize you.

“Every small act of resistance trains the muscle used to do it… One builds the muscle by walking away from the most minor things—trivial consumables, the cultural work of monsters, the myriad material fruits grown on stolen ground—and realizes in the doing of these things that there is a wide spectrum of negative resistance.” – One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

It is the book I most want to press into the hands of anyone I think will read it. It’s a fast read and it’s worth reading over and over and over until you see what it is you can do to change.

“What are you willing to give up to alleviate someone else’s suffering?” – One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

“Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut” in Skeleton Crew

Following a National Book Award-winning book about genocide with a Stephen King book might seem anathema, but Stephen King was an important part of my reading journey when I was a teen seeking to understand the darkness of the world. I don’t read a lot of Stephen King these days, but I’m still proud of how widely I read. More importantly, I found something new (or maybe so old I just forgot) in this book this week when my son asked me to read him what I’ve described as my favorite short story.

I first told him about “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut” because I wanted him to see beyond the bounds of the world as it’s presented. I thought he’d be fascinated by the idea of looking for new and interesting ways to get somewhere in less distance. What I didn’t realize until actually re-reading the story this week for the first time in probably three decades, is how much more I love about this story.

First, King does an excellent job of capturing the speech and cultural patterns of two old men jawing on a porch in rural Maine as they reminisce about the first Mrs. Todd, before she disappeared in her little “go-devil.” There is love in these descriptions for a particular way of life and in how closely he observed them to render them so well.

“Fold the map and see how many miles it is then, Homer.” – Ophelia Todd in “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut,” Skeleton Crew

Second, I still loved the way this story bends expectations of reality. How it pushes little by little into another view of the world entirely, one where you can get from Castle Lake to Bangor in fewer miles via car than as the crow flies. I’d forgotten about what happens on the dark roads, but the supernatural touches are beautifully gentle enough to put the full energy of the story on possibility.

“There was somethin wild that crep into her face, Dave—something wild and something free” – Homer in “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut,” Skeleton Crew

Third, I had forgotten the way Homer describes Mrs. Todd. There is awe in the way her former handyman sees her that both appreciates the real wildness of her and isn’t possessive of her. I’m not sure how my teenage self read these words, but as a middle-aged woman, the idea that someone can be so extremely beautiful for being free to be just who she is (and that appreciation not being about the viewer at all) is astounding and welcome.

I haven’t read him “Nona” yet, my other favorite story from the book, and I’m saving my own re-read to discover it with him. Who knows what treasures I’ll find.

The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation

I’ve been Buddhist-curious ever since my first non-western art history course as an undergrad. The professor showed us a scroll of hungry ghosts and described their constant striving and I knew I’d stumbled on something that explained more than I’d every been able to unravel. For Christmas this year my husband gave me The Myth of Freedom and I’ve been slowly chewing it over. It seems, after reading more about the six realms, that the human realm is more likely my major preoccupation these days than the gaki zōshi, but I’m appreciating this new lens to see the world through.

“If we can accept our imperfections as they are, quite ordinarily, then we can use them as part of the path.” – The Myth of Freedom

Primarily, I’m interested in the idea of sitting with what isn’t working rather than going around. There are a lot of things that aren’t working right now—personally as I try to figure out how to life a life that feels intentional and also feeds my family and globally as we all grapple with what kind of world we want to make. But I’m hoping to see it clearly and move forward into a better way, even if it’s just one step at a time. If there’s something you’re reading that’s bringing you comfort or spurring you to action, please inspire me by sharing it in the comments.

“Just as it has always been possible to look away, it is always possible to stop looking away.” – One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

If any of these books piqued your interest, order One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, Skeleton Crew, or The Myth of Freedom from Bookshop.org. If you use that link to purchase anything, you’re keeping indie bookstores in business and I receive a commission.

Senses, Memory, and the Sandwich Generation in Steph Catudal’s Radicle

December 6, 2025 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

I’ve been sitting on a review copy of Steph Catudal’s Radicle, or When the World Lived Inside Us for ages. I think I was afraid of reading the book, which explores motherhood and losing a parent, because of what it would open for me. I was right about the feelings. I was wrong to wait to read it, because the sensory detail and her gentle attention to the experience of being human make this book worth returning to again and again.

The Exquisite Beauty, Pain, and Hope of Watching a Child Grow

Parenting, especially in our modern isolation, is an on-all-the-time kind of thing. Which means it’s hard to slow down and see what’s happening as you go. Various apps send me snapshots of what we did on this day so many years ago, but I don’t slow down often enough to exist in and remember the moments as and when they are. Catudal perfectly captures this and the heartbreak of bringing a being that is perfect into an imperfect world in “The Starting Line.”

I thought I’d always remember
how precious it is
to breathe, to walk,
to wake with eyes wide open
but here I am now, unable to recall
the sweet desperation
reckoning with impermanence
can bring.
– from “The Starting Line” by Steph Catudal from Radicle

Later in the poem, Catudal brings us tight into one of these moments with a simple image that captures everything:

And then she reaches for the monarch
perched on milkweed,
her small hand yearning to hold
the brittleness of life.
– from “The Starting Line” by Steph Catudal from Radicle

Throughout the book, Catudal’s language is clean and clear with just the right amount of detail. She lets us see what is happening and feel alongside her as she parents her child and herself.

The Lessons We Don’t Want to Impart

In “New Moon,” Catudal writes of what we pass on to our children:

I give you my love and
I give you this anger,
embers of an untamed inheritance.

How will it forge you?
– from “New Moon” by Steph Catudal from Radicle

It’s a gorgeous testament to that thing so many of us experience when we become parents despite not being fully forged ourselves (because we are human), the feeling of trying to heal for ourselves and more so for our children, for whom we want better, only and always. I thought of these words while stroking my 10-year-old’s forehead this morning. He still wants to be near me (when I let him), and that’s everything. And I see the ways I wish already that I could have been different for him.

What of my stuntedness will you carry?
What of my brokenness will break you, too?
– from “New Moon” by Steph Catudal from Radicle

Letting Our Elders Go

One of the quandaries of the sandwich generation is parenting yourself and your children while also offering care for your elders. While I am no longer the primary caretaker for my mother, and haven’t been for a long time, I still wrestle with how I am needed where and how much I can give to those who need me (including myself) at any time.

In Radicle, Catudal is very expressly present with her father at the end of his life. In “It’s Beautiful, It Hurts,” she writes of being “too young to know / how to comfort a giant / stripped bare.” This reveals so poignantly the ways that we are always the children of our parents. How difficult it is to shift the roles, even when it becomes necessary.

The poem that broke me, though, was “Some Things Are Not Meant to Be Fixed” as Catudal writes of falling through a board on a tree house, her father scooping her up, and all the feelings they both carried forever after. The poem captures in a few spare lines one moment that encapsulates a whole relationship, and it left me asking what it is I remember. I have not lost a parent, if I’m lucky that may be decades away, but I’ve been having to prepare to lose one for the last 35 years.

Catudal opened a door for me this morning, asking me to check in with my own memory. Which got me writing again, for the first time in weeks. And I am grateful.

If you want to check in with your own exquisite joy or pain, order Radicle, or When the World Lived Inside Us from Bookshop.org. If you use that link to purchase anything, you’re keeping indie bookstores in business and I receive a commission.