A Geography of Reading

"It is by reading novels, stories, and myths that we come to understand the world in which we live." -Orhan Pamuk

A Man Called Ove – The Lovable Curmudgeon

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a_man_called_ove_-fredrik_backmanThis week my Facebook feed is filled with #meinthree posts: stacks and stacks of status updates where my friends describe their best traits in terms of beloved characters from Alcott, Rowling, and beyond. Also this week I met the character who might be the most like me: Ove from Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove.

Now, you might wonder what a thirty-something writer mama marketer from Seattle has in common with an elderly widower from Sweden. More than I’d like to admit…

Characters We Hate to Love

I was predisposed to hate Ove. He’s so upset about everything. “He’s the kind of man who points at people he doesn’t like the look of, as if they were burglars and his forefinger a policeman’s flashlight.” He knows nothing about modern technology and everything about the way the people around him should live their lives. As I read more and more about this irascible curmudgeon, I started to wonder why I was so upset at him and why I couldn’t stop reading his story. Because usually when I dislike a character too much (or at least can’t find any redeeming value in their narrative), I put the book down and never pick it up again.

Not so with Ove. The more he railed against drivers who disobeyed traffic signs and became frustrated with neighbors who didn’t understand the simple way things ought to be done, the more I recognized him and his unhappiness. Images of a certain blonde shrieking at drivers who won’t yield to pedestrians and muttering about neighbors who park improperly came to mind. I saw in Ove the same tightness I feel when I’m upset and don’t have the communication skills to express my feelings in any proper (or productive) way.

There’s an art to describing a character who’s so unpleasant to be around and Backman’s nailed it. Although we steadily learn more and more about Ove and why he is the way he is throughout the book, that reveal isn’t fast enough for us to forgive Ove’s “right fighting” straight out. Nor should it be. If we understood Ove’s reason for being immediately, we’d sympathize with him and maybe clap him on the back and ask him to buck up. But that wouldn’t be giving Ove’s feelings his due and we’d be in serious danger of reading the rest of the book in a pool of sympathy for Ove.

Instead, Backman lets us find Ove annoying and opaque, but he does two specific things that gave me reason to read on: 1) he slowly reveals good deeds Ove’s done (even if somewhat reluctantly) over time and in the present so I learned that Ove did have a good heart in there somewhere, and 2) Backman gives us Parvaneh, a character who believes in Ove and his goodness even when he (and we) do not. There are other characters like this in the book, including the glimpses we get of Ove’s deceased wife, but Parvaneh has the most faith in Ove. Even when she’s busting his balls.

The Language of Comedy

I struggle with books I know are meant to be funny. Maybe because I am like Ove, maybe because I’m tone deaf to comedic writing, who knows. But one thing I noticed about this book was the way Backman structured the tempo of his sentences:

“Ove is fifty-nine.

He drives a Saab. He’s the kind of man who points at people he doesn’t like the look of, as if they were burglars and his forefinger a policeman’s flashlight. He stands at the counter of a shop where owners of Japanese cars come to purchase white cables.”

– Fredrick Backman, A Man Called Ove

Beyond the fact that Backman does a wonderful job of conveying how out of his element Ove is in that moment, these first sentences of the book are so staccato that they must be meant to be funny. It’s obvious that Backman’s using these short sentences intentionally because he does us the favor of alternating them with longer phrases, but the sentences never flow, just as Ove never flows through life. There’s just enough detail to get us through and absolutely no unnecessary ornament.

Compare this with the final sentence of the first paragraph of Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood:

“She was a fat woman with pink collars and cuffs and pear-shaped legs that slanted off the train seat and didn’t reach the floor.”

– Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood

Here O’Connor, who is also writing a comedic book (according to the introduction, I’ve barely started reading it), takes exactly the opposite approach and not only feeds us a luscious running sentence with no punctuation to slow us down, she also overloads us with detail. There is still some staccato in this sentence with the alliteration of “collars and cuffs” but I love the way that plays against the melody of the rest of the sentence.

You won’t find this curmudgeon laughing out loud at either book, but I can recognize the craft that goes into this kind of writing and I hope you’ll fall in love with Ove as I ultimately did. Maybe he’ll even teach you a little something about yourself.

As for me, I’m embracing my inner Ove and squeezing some love on into that little stickler for rules to see if I can’t get myself to loosen up a bit. Even if you won’t find me in the Apple Store anytime soon. And if you’re wondering who my other #meinthree characters are, I think I’m also a little Elizabeth Bennett and more Sophie MacDonald (from The Razor’s Edge) than I’d like to admit.

If you want to hang out with Ove, pick up a copy of A Man Called Ove from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Reading into my Grandmother’s Bookshelves

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What stories do the books on our shelves tell about us as readers, as people? I had a chance to ponder this question recently as I read through a few of the last books my grandmother, my beloved Baba, ever owned. When she passed away in 2011, she had already diligently shed nearly all of her books, which means that my library is already full of tomes that were once hers from her French grammar books to a copy of Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses.

It was that last book that inspired me to write to my grandfather, my beloved Djiedo, and tell him that I was reading her books and thinking of the two of them. In reply, he offered to let me take whatever I wanted from the 30 or so books that remained. So I did. And less than a month later I opened a treasure box of Baba’s final books. Now my to-read shelves are filled with titles like Death in Kashmir, Great Cases of Scotland Yard, and The Judas Kiss.

The First Thing about Baba

She loved mysteries. I know that from the books left on her shelves but also from the years of Sue Grafton, Mary Daheim, and Dick Francis novels traded back and forth between her and my father and aunts. In fact, when I picked up Great Cases of Scotland Yard, Djiedo said that had been a particular favorite of hers. I haven’t read it yet. I’m savoring it. But what about the books I did read?

Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear

birds-of-a-feather-jacqueline-winspearThis second book of the Maisie Dobbs mysteries has a smartly dressed woman on the cover with fabulous roadster and a lot of birds flying about. It’s set in 1930s Britain as Maisie tries to figure out what happened to the daughter of her client because the girl seems to have disappeared. The mystery is interesting and well-plotted. There are even some unusual elements about it (no, I won’t spoil them for you), but what I loved most about this book is imagining Baba reading it.

That action itself is likely a fiction. There was a piece of paper left in this book about 60 pages in. A bookmark, I’d imagine, Baba was always kinder to books than I. So it’s possible that this is the last book Baba ever read. Winspear pays a lot of attention to Maisie’s wardrobe and I could imagine Baba reading through and happily recalling the fashions of her girlhood. Maisie is also quite a pistol, I think is the accurate type of phrase, and I loved imagining Baba celebrating each time Maisie outsmarted one of the men who looked down on her—a cultural phenomenon that still isn’t fixed but which must have been prevalent throughout Baba’s life. My Baba had a quick wit but a quiet way and I enjoyed picturing her delight as Maisie triumphed (quietly and loudly) once again, always beating expectations.

There were moments when the book was plain slow and I also wondered if Baba would have rankled at the tangents or sunk in for the ride. Whether she would have skimmed impatiently through as I did or savored every single word. On my own I don’t know that I would have had the patience to finish this book, but reading it “with” Baba made the whole experience special.

Gilgamesh as translated by Stephen Mitchell

This was the first book I read from my latest (and last) raid on Baba’s shelves. Perhaps the most surprising thing about it was that there was a letter inside from the friend who had given it to Baba. I won’t disclose the contents here, but reading the letter reminded me that Baba was a whole person and not just my grandmother. I know it’s a juvenile revelation, but it’s one I was finally ready for. In some strange way reading the story of this king who must step down from his throne and literally go to hell and back in order to become a more whole person while starting to think of Baba as human was just what I needed to start accepting myself as human. More on that in a bit.

The Right Attitude to Rain by Alexander McCall Smith

the-right-attitude-to-rain-alexander-mccall-smithI kept looking for the mystery in this quiet novel set in Edinborough because the other books I’d read by McCall Smith were in the Ladies Detective Agency series. Instead I was surprised by a smartly modern narrative about an older woman and the life she’s choosing the make for herself. I write “older” though the character is 40 because I mixed Isabel Dalhousie up with Baba somewhere in my brain and averaged them out at 60-something.

Although the jacket copy describes this as the next (second) installment of Isabel’s adventures, so little happens in the way of plot. Instead, we spend a lot of time in Isabel’s head as she contemplates whether to have a love affair with a younger man. It’s a slow but thoughtful read and I loved thinking of Baba reading through this book and pondering what she would have thought of the characters and their choices. I like to think she would have celebrated Isabel’s quiet brashness in the same way she would have celebrated Maisie’s.

I suppose that’s the beauty of “having” this “conversation” with her now, I can imagine any point of view that suits me. But I’ve often heard touted that Baba said when she turned 60 she could finally say whatever she wanted. And with her quick wit and winning smile, I bet she got away with a lot. I’m in a place now, nearing 40, where I’m ready to do the same and it was nice to have the encouragement. Even if only from my subconscious.

Why Baba, Why Now?

I believe if I pay attention that the right things happen at the right time, and I needed this box of books this past month. It’d been kind of a rough year, really. What I thought was a struggle to fit back into work after maternity leave turned out to be a fundamental discord with the strategic direction of the company I was working at. Though I didn’t speak my mind at the time, I see in retrospect how much happier I would have been if I had and if I had left earlier. Instead I was laid off one month ago, and while that was a bit of a psychic relief (because we really were going different directions), it also thrust me into an accelerated job search. All while all I wanted to do was snuggle with and stabilize my family. If I’d had the strength, I might have dug us an actual bunker because I needed that much to feel safe and surrounded by the people who loved me. Baba was part of that. An amazing support group of fellow laid-off employees was, too.

I was fortunate enough to be offered two positions on the same day and now I’ve been at the one I chose for a whole week. I’m settling in okay (though adjustment to a new crowd for a shy introvert takes a lot of energy). I like the people, the work, and the office. I think they even want me to speak my mind. That’s an adjustment, too, but I think Baba has my back.

Thanks for bearing with me through this long silence that had become my blog. I struggle to speak publicly when I’m truly unhappy which sucks, because sharing books with you is a source of happiness. I still don’t have a lot of time to read and write, but I’ll post here whenever I do.

Oh, and if you’re hiring for anything related to digital marketing, I know a fabulous group of people.

Lost in Translation: When There Aren’t Words

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lost in translation - ella frances sandersThere are a lot of reasons I haven’t blogged lately. Only one of them is that I’ve been having trouble finding the right book. I don’t have enough to say about my troubled relationship with Winnie the Pooh or a deep enough understanding of Taoism to make my thoughts on The Te of Piglet worth sharing. The random thoughts that catch my attention in Nobody’s Home aren’t concrete enough to justify me blogging about Ugrešić again. I haven’t had the attention span to properly read Mary Jo Salter’s A Phone Call to the Future yet, either. The big one, though, is that I’m wrestling with some pretty big relationship stuff with my mom and I’ve been spending most of my energy working on an essay about that.

So when I found Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World by Ella Frances Sanders at a nearby Little Free Library (I swear I still spend most of my free cash on books, but you really don’t want me to blog about There’s a Wocket in My Pocket, do you?), the idea of focusing on one word at a time seemed perfect.

This is not a new concept. I can’t tell you how many blog posts I’ve read about untranslatable words. I’m either especially drawn to them (likely) or they’re everywhere (oh, internet). But there is always something extra lovely about holding a book in my hands, and despite the fact that the illustrations sometimes occlude the words and that one of the snippets of exposition beside the words seems to fit a different word entirely, I will love this book more than I can love any blog post of the same nature.

These are the untranslatable words that speak to me…

Hiraeth (Swedish) – A homesickness for somewhere you cannot return to

Having spent a year in Chile under Pinochet’s dictatorship, a year in Poland as the country transitioned to the west, and a childhood in a strangely liberal and artistic Idaho town that’s now closing its theaters and opening up Baptist church after Baptist church, I feel more than my fair share of Hiraeth. This and the liminal feeling the exposure to and removal from places, cultures, and friends has likely shaped me more than any other thing. Hiraeth has shaped the deep, instant attachments I feel to friends and the strange way I expect almost nothing in return—simply the knowledge that my people are okay. Hiraeth also led me to settle into and create a home as soon as I possibly could after leaving high school—a home that so nourishes my sense of well-being that sightings of me outside of it (except when I’m at work) are quite rare.

Feuillemort (French) – Having the color of a faded, dying leaf

Language is ineffable. Life is ineffable. This word speaks to me of fragility and the gorgeous things that can happen to our languages and our soul when we take a moment to observe closely. Which is the only thing worth doing in art.

One of the things I enjoyed most about Lost in Translation is that many of the words themselves feel ineffable. They refer to things so momentary that we can’t quite catch them. I loved the feeling of trying to capture those feelings that I’d not yet taken the time to examine and appreciate.

Sobremesa (Spanish) – Time spent chatting over a table with friends long after the food is gone

This word is not in the book, but I discovered it recently on the internet and I used this word to change my life. Having a child, especially one who’s transitioning to solid foods, became an excuse (or created an imperative) for my husband and me to actually eat at our dinner table. Which was wonderful. But after we adults finished eating, my husband would spring from his seat and start cleaning the table and erasing all the evidence of our having cooked.

Don’t get me wrong, I love having a clean kitchen, but discovering “sobremesa” gave me the language I needed to ask my husband to linger, let the dishes rest for a bit, and talk with me. When you have a nearly one-year-old baby, any time you can actually have a conversation is a gift.

Kummerspeck (German) – Grief bacon or the excess weight we gain from emotional overeating

“Language wraps its understanding and punctuation around us all, tempting us to cross boundaries and helping us to comprehend the impossibly difficult questions that life relentlessly throws at us.” – Ella Frances Sanders

Except it doesn’t. There are some things that are still beyond language. Which brings me to the real reason I’m writing this blog today. My friend lost his newborn daughter on Thursday. When my husband spoke the words “lost their baby” as I was emerging from a nap, I thought, “How on earth do you lose a newborn? They aren’t all that mobile.” And then understanding hit me.

Feel that silence? That blow? That complete failure of language? I know I do. We reached out, like you do, like so many did. We offered love and support and love. I cringed in anticipation of the normal platitudes people send in response to loss—the things we say to reassure ourselves that there’s a reason behind such a thing and that it couldn’t happen to us. They were mercifully absent. I’d read a blog post earlier in the day about a woman whose friend lost a 21-month-old baby and her own experience with wordlessness. That post had made me sad, but it was nothing like the reality.

My husband, who is always better at translating the untranslatable feelings into words and action than I am, helped me find something to say, something to do. But language and all the love in the world cannot fix what happened.

“Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp, which isn’t very much.” – Eckhart Tolle

To my writing soul, language is everything. And although sometimes language just isn’t enough, I have to keep trying.

If you want to explore your own glossary of untranslatable words and feelings, pick up a copy of Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Interrogating Myself with Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

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between the world and me ta nehisi coatesWhen a dear friend sent me a copy of Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, he said it was because I had a son. I don’t think I would have read the book if I’d understood it was about race in American society. But that skirting of uncomfortable topics is exactly why I needed to read this book. It’s why I think everyone should read this book.

The Art of Persuasion

Because I’m white and because I (like everyone else) have no choice as to what race I am, I’ve often felt impugned by conversations about racism. I grew up in a very white town, but I’ve always had friends of all colors. I was pretty sure I’m not racist and so, while I know we are not at all post-racial, I haven’t really found a way to engage in the conversation about racism. So when I realized that this book was about being black in America, I was prepared to feel attacked once again for things that “aren’t my fault.”

Coates schooled me good. And he did it in two really effective ways.

Owning Your Own Experience

In reading Coates address responsibility, I began to understand the burden on the opposite side of my privilege:

“You are a black boy, and you must be responsible for your body in a way that other boys cannot know. Indeed, you must be responsible for the worst actions of other black bodies, which, somehow, will always be assigned to you. And you must be responsible for the bodies of the powerful—the policeman who cracks you with a nightstick will quickly find his excuse in your furtive movements. And this is not reducible to just you—the women around you must be responsible for their bodies in a way that you will never know. You have to make your peace with the chaos, but you cannot lie.” – Ta-Nehisi Coates

I realized the struggle African Americans are speaking of and experiencing isn’t about me at all. Sure, the actions I take have an effect on the world and I should do the very best I can to look beyond skin color, but I need to stop putting myself at the center of someone else’s suffering. The voice saying “this is wrong” needs to be heard. And saying “this is wrong” is not the same as saying “this is your fault.”

Reinforcing the Humanness of the Struggle

We’ve all read about slavery in school. Slavery was bad. We’ve read about racism. Racism is bad. There are some icons we remember from our history books and bandy about in conversation, but it’s far too easy for all of those struggles to seem past and pat once we’ve heard the same broad stories over and over again.

Coates unpacks the experience of slavery, racism, and being black in America in such a human, visceral way that it’s impossible to ignore.

“I have raised you to respect every human being as singular, and you must extend that same respect into the past. Slavery is not an indefinable mass of flesh. It is a particular, specific enslaved woman whose mind is active as your own, whose range of feeling is as vast as your own; who prefers the way the light falls in one particular spot in the woods, who enjoys fishing where the water eddies in a nearby stream, who loves her mother in her own complicated way, thinks her sister talks too loud, has a favorite cousin, a favorite season, who excels at dressmaking and knows, inside herself, that she is as intelligent and capable as anyone. ‘Slavery’ is this same woman born in a world that loudly proclaims its love of freedom and inscribes this love in its essential texts, a world in which these same professors hold this woman a slave, hold her mother a slave, her father a slave, her daughter a slave, and when this woman peers back into the generations all she sees is the enslaved. She can hope for more. She can imagine some future for her grandchildren. But when she dies the world—which is really the only world she can ever know—ends. For this woman, enslavement is not a parable. It is a damnation. It is the never-ending night. And the length of that night is most of our history. Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free. Never forget that for 250 years black people were born into chains—whole generations followed by more generations who knew nothing but chains.” – Ta-Nehisi Coates

Wow. Re-reading that now as I type it out for you still overwhelms my nervous system with awe. Because when my son was born I saw for the first time in my life how each human was a life who should be loved and cherished. And yet it’s so easy, and I have been guilty of, failing to see that humanity in each and every soul.

It doesn’t hurt that the language is flat out gorgeous.

The Pain and Poignancy of Parenthood

As you can see from the quotes above, this book is written as a letter from Coates to his son. That hits me especially hard right now as I’m trying to shape the brain, life, and values of my own young son. I worry for his future as I can see Coates worrying for the future of his son. Although my son is white. Coates writes to his son, “The price of error is higher for you than it is for your countrymen.” And I know that my son, who although he is the most important child to me in the world is not more important to the world than any other child, is far less likely to get shot for shoplifting or walking down the street.

The most impactful moment of this book, a book that is deeply impactful overall, is when Coates takes his son on an interview with a black woman whose son had been killed by a white man because he had refused to turn down his music. She wonders, “Had he not spoke back, spoke up, would he still be here?” And then she speaks to Coates’s son:

“You exist. You matter. You have value. You have every right to wear your hoodie, to play your music as loud as you want. You have every right to be you. And no one should deter you from being you. You have to be you. And you can never be afraid to be you.”

This woman who had lost her son because he stood up for himself, a loss that must feel like losing everything, still had the courage to encourage another young man to stand up for himself. Because it is the right thing to do. Although it carries a danger only she could truly understand in that moment, she knows the cost of giving in is too great. I hope I have the courage to teach my son to stand up for his convictions. I know when I tried to describe the dichotomy of trying to raise the best person and at the same time wanting him never to get hurt, I ended up crying.

What it’s Like to Feel Threatened

As a woman, I’m so used to feeling like a smaller mammal that I barely even register the ways that feeling affects my behavior on a daily basis. I’m not “playing the victim card,” it’s just my life experience. I’m careful about where I walk and when, who I sit next to on the bus, and taking the risk of challenging someone. I alter my language, the strongest tool I have, so that I do not offend, because offending someone bigger could get me hurt.

So when I read about the hundreds of sexist letters. No. They weren’t sexist, they were abusive. They might have been sexist too. The language they used was certainly ugly and usually only directed at women. When I read about the hundreds of abusive letters sent to female Seattle City Council members by sports fans angry they didn’t get their stadium, I was surprised to find myself shocked into silence. For a few minutes I could not even speak. I could barely move.

I tried to explain what I was feeling to my husband, but it was so big, so new to be talking about this feeling that I tried never to even think about. I was shocked at how ugly people can be (even though I know people can be ugly). I was angry that those men (and one woman) were being so childish. I was scared that they would feel so free to do something so public (it’s my assumption that all government emails are subject to potential disclosure) to public officials. If women of stature could be treated that way in a city I love…

When the subject was revisited in Crosscut a few days later, I finally found my voice. I knew I wanted to speak up, so I went to Twitter. I don’t have a huge following, but it’s the most public voice I have (that isn’t work-related). I tweeted this:

I was a little afraid to put myself out there, but I felt stronger for speaking. I got four retweets and five favorites – both high stats for me. And then I got this response:

Twitter___Notifications_3
I’d show you the embedded Twitter post instead of a screenshot, except he’d deleted it by the next day.

The response is banal enough. Kind of aggressive and accusative, and he puts some words in my mouth, but there’s nothing overtly threatening about it.

Except that’s not how I felt. Receiving this one response, even in a social media world I know is full of trolls looking to pick fights, I felt afraid. I dreaded the conversation spiraling. I worried what might come next and if I’d be the next recipient of some of the really ugly words being bandied about. I feared that my very dear coworkers would jump in on my side and just make the whole thing flare up even worse. I started considering how public my life is—listed phone number and address, easily accessible email, every vulnerability of my soul spelled out on this blog. I considered how secure my passwords are lest they get hacked. I worried for the safety of my son. I was inside a full-on fear response.

Maybe I was overthinking things or aggrandizing my own importance because after I summoned the courage/bluster to post this self defense designed to deflect not inflame:


The conversation died out. Sometime after that he deleted his tweet. But the feeling of fear remained. And the next day I decided I would not be silenced:

It is incumbent on me to use the power of language, the power that I have, to contradict wrongs. Those are values I hold very strongly—that I want to pass on to my son. Sometimes I need to do speak softly and sometimes I need to shout, but I need to show him that I have a voice and he has a voice and that our voices matter.

How This Changed My Feelings about #BlackLivesMatter

I’d spent a lot of time thinking that the Black Lives Matter movement was an outsized response to a real problem. I watched activists shouting down people who were on their side (like Bernie Sanders) just to be heard. And one activist reshaped history at a public event in a way I felt was downright dishonest. I started to agree with the #AllLivesMatter folks. Even though I knew that second movement was deafly trying to say “hey, your struggle isn’t all that special.” I shook my head and thought about more effective ways these activists could get their point about the continued effects of racism heard. I understood the privilege that comes with my light skin color in this society, but I did not understand what it felt like to be unprivileged. All lives matter, but not everyone has to fight for the respect we all deserve as humans.

After my tiny little Twitter battle, I realized that Black Lives Matter activists are finding their voices like I was. They’re so accustomed to living in a world where they carry the burdens of our society’s reactions to their skin color that they have every reason to believe if they engage in a civil discourse about police brutality that too often leads to deaths these activists will not be heard.

I still think the movement hasn’t found the way to communicate that will actually create institutional change, but now I wonder if that’s their goal. Perhaps they’re just saying, in a world where they’re pretty sure change is impossible, “I exist. I matter.” And they do.

“I am speaking to you as I always have—as the sober and serious man I have always wanted you to be, who does not apologize for his human feelings, who does not make excuses for his height, his long arms, his beautiful smile. You are growing into consciousness, and my wish for you is that you feel no need to constrict yourself to make other people comfortable.” – Ta-Nehisi Coates

So, Am I a Racist?

This probably isn’t even the right question, but yes, as much as I wish I just saw color as a descriptor, I am racist in some ways. I try to challenge myself when stereotypes bubble to the surface, but, no matter how much my friend group may look like a Benetton ad, I have a lot of work to do before I can even begin to consider myself post racial.

I hope that more people will read books like Between the World and Me and think deeply about how we all relate to one another. And if even one more person could write a book this excellent that taught me this much…

If you want to interrogate yourself, or even just read some really gorgeous writing, pick up a copy of Between the World and Me. Better yet, buy two copies. Give one to a friend who has a different life experience than you do. Then ask them to share their point of view with you. You’ll learn a lot by listening.

Emma Donoghue’s Room vs. Isla Morley’s Above: Two Takes on a Mother in Captivity

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above-isla-morley-room-emma-donoghueInitially, I was reluctant to read Emma Donoghue’s Room, because I’d recently read Above by Isla Morley and I was pretty sure there were only so many “kidnapped woman imprisoned for years bears the child of her kidnapper/rapist” stories this new mom could take. But I found Room in one of our neighborhood Little Free Libraries and couldn’t resist. As similar as the stories sound at first blush, the books could not be more different. Except that I loved them both.

Point of View

Above begins with teenaged Blythe’s first-person account of her kidnapper closing the door on her.

“Dobbs wins the fight easily. He shuts and locks the door. I feel a small sense of relief. With a hulking slab of metal separating us, I am finally able to breathe just a little. It is only when I hear another thump, another door closing someplace above me, that I understand: not only am I to be left alone; I am to be hidden.” – Isla Morley, Above

For the rest of the book we are immersed directly in the immediate experience of someone who has been kidnapped. At first, the world of the abandoned missile silo where Blythe is being kept is entirely new to her, and we’re with her as she discovers all the sights and sounds, writes a note to her parents telling them she’s run away, and is about to be raped by Dobbs (that particular action happens mercifully offscreen). The effect of this viewpoint is intense, intimate, and terrifying.

Whereas Room is told entirely from the point of view of Jack, a five-year-old boy who was born in captivity. While Morley is able to show us Blythe’s former life through flashback, Donoghue has created a narrator with no experience of life outside. For Jack, that one room is the entire world.

Writing from the point of view of a kid is a challenging thing to do. Creating an entire world for a reader in a compelling way using this limited voice is even more challenging, but Donoghue nails it. Not only are the cadence of Jack’s speech and his tics well-honed and interesting to read, the way he sees the world is also fascinating.

“I count one hundred cereal and waterfall the milk that’s nearly the same white as the bowls, no splashing, we thank Baby Jesus. I choose Meltedy Spoon with the white all blobby on his handle when he leaned on the pan of boiling pasta by accident. Ma doesn’t like Meltedy Spoon but he’s my favorite because he’s not the same.” – Emma Donoghue, Room

Would you believe I chose that paragraph at random? The entire book is like that with the incredible rush of child’s-view detail in a child’s grammar and mingled with reminiscences of simple moments all managing to reveal insights into the characters. We learn about the tiny room and a day-to-day schedule that feels completely composed of play until nine o’clock when Jack retires to “Wardrobe” and beep-beep Old Nick (their captor) comes to visit Ma.

Sometimes it took me awhile to catch on to what Jack meant by phrases like “I have some now, the right because the left hasn’t much in it” and the book took me much longer than usual to read, but I cherished every minute. I was astounded by how well Donoghue pulled off Jack’s point of view and if I were to re-read this book for anything, I would re-read it for this fantastic voice work.

The Kidnapper

The push-pull relationship between Blythe and Dobbs is the central conflict of life inside the silo in Above. As a result, we get to know the man and his motives relatively well. We learn that believes the world is about to come to an end and that by sequestering Blythe he’s actually saving her from imminent disaster.

For the first half of the book it’s impossible to tell if he’s mentally ill or deeply prescient, but it’s clear that he believes he’s doing the right thing. Which creates a strange but important possibility for sympathy for this character. He’s not a cardboard cutout of pure evil. He has motivations. He means well. This rounded portrait creates an antagonist who’s much more chilling because he’s much more believable and the possibility remains open that he’s saving Blythe’s life.

In Room, the kidnapper—Old Nick—is barely present. This is a really interesting choice because it makes the story almost entirely about Jack and Ma. Donoghue accomplishes this by having Ma almost entirely shield Jack from Old Nick. He knows about the child’s existence, but in their everyday life, the two are never allowed to meet. We learn things about Old Nick entirely from what Ma tells Jack which means that although we can imagine the awfulness of his deeds, our own view of him is somewhat protected. As a result, it’s harder to feel the menace of Old Nick (even though we know by the fact that he’s kept this woman caged in a garden shed that he’s a really bad guy) and the story really focuses on the relationship between Jack and Ma. And Ma is Jack’s antagonist.

The World Outside

Here’s where the spoilers start.

When Blythe finally escapes the silo, she finds the entire world changed. Dobbs may have been a lot of bad things, but it turns out he was right. And he did save Blythe’s life. As she navigates the post-apocalyptic world with Adam, the child she raised and with whom she escaped, we learn how very different the world outside is from Blythe’s childhood memories. It is still a tale of survival, but suddenly the silo seems like a haven stocked with food and free from outsiders. And a new dimension of the story emerges: fertility.

The two halves of Above really do feel like two different books, but they could not exist without each other.

While in Room, Jack the outside doesn’t even feel real. Jack relates it to television because it’s what he has to relate it to. The idea that there are buildings and other people and a whole world out there feels as real to him as his good friend Dora (the Explorer). The conflict of the story hinges on Jack’s desire to stay inside this womb with his mother and her desire to escape. Once they do escape, the conflict shifts to Jack’s desire to return to that womb while Ma wants to live in the world she once knew. One scene I related very personally to is when Jack tries to stop Ma from taking the first shower she’s taken in years.

Maternal Instinct

As a new mother, the hardest parts of Above for me to read were when Blythe’s natural born child dies and then later when Charlie, the child Dobbs brings to fulfill her maternal desires suffers. This is also when Blythe really comes alive as a mother, which was interesting for me to read as my own maternal instincts were peaking out. But what really spoke to my heartstrings was the relationship between Blythe and Adam after they escape. Watching the mutually protective relationship was extra poignant for me as I wondered what my relationship with my son would eventually be like. As I hoped he will have a life that doesn’t require protecting me.

But it was Room that really spoke to the mom in me. The womb metaphor could have been overplayed but wasn’t. I read most of the book as my son played next to me. I wanted to protect Jack like I’d protect my own son. I felt the sweetness and irksomeness of the demands of attention. I wanted Ma to be free of the room as much as I wanted to snuggle that little boy. I loved reading about the way Jack reasoned and imagining what worlds my son will invent as his brain develops. At times I felt Jack’s voice could have been coming from my son. And yes, when he nurses, I sometimes ask him if he “wants some” and wonder if the left or the right is more creamy.

As much as I resisted reading Above and Room, these are both good books. I’d recommend Above for the dystopianists and Room for the moms. But they are even more interesting in tandem.

To do your own comparison, pick up copies of Above and Room from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.