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

Rediscovering Greek Myths with Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

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fates and furies - lauren groffSick this weekend and more than a little desperate to read something that would not further irritate my fevered brain, I pulled Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff from my to-read shelf. Though I cursed Groff when I could not put down the book to fall into a much-needed nap, something I should have expected because her earlier novel Arcadia had kept me up at night, I was also grateful because it’s been too long since a full-length novel incited me to read with such hunger. I even skimmed the last sixty pages as my husband read to my son in the other room—hoping with each new section break that they’d go through one more round of exploring darkest Peru so I could live inside this book until the very end. Fates and Furies also got my brain moving on some topics I care deeply about: marriage, the myth of the lone genius, and Greek mythology.

Writing about Marriage

I had a creative writing teacher who told me once that there were no novels about happy marriages. I begged to differ but looked around and struggled to find any. His point was about how conflict makes a story, mine was that conflict is not the only thing that makes life interesting. Fates and Furies may be the final answer to our conversation—we were both right, in a way.

When we first meet Lotto and Mathilde, newly married and freshly fucking on a beach, everything is right in their pair. Throughout the first half of the book as we explore the life of this charmed boy and his quiet wife it seems as though the tempest is outside their relationship. He, an adored first son, loses his father early and his overbearing mother has trouble letting go until he does something teenagerish and she sends him away to try and charm another part of the country. Lotto suffers, yes, but he always seems followed by some glance from the gods that shields him from the very worst. Mathilde is part of that shield.

I won’t say what causes the shift in the second half of the book, but I will say that I haven’t been as rocked by a change in point of view since reading Jonathan Dee’s Palladio. To put it gently, we suddenly begin to see Mathilde’s side of the story and I’m so embarrassed to say (and yet it is so telling) that I hadn’t realized how absent she is as a character from the first half. Help meet, yes, wife too, but never a person in her own right. I don’t know which is more shocking, that she is a full, rich, fascinating character or that she was able to stay behind the scenes so long.

The Lone Genius

But we do love ourselves a lone genius, don’t we? Especially if that genius is male. Norman Rockwell toiling away in the barn making culture-shaping images while his wife tends to the kids. Hemingway working his way through all kinds of wives never failed to stop halfway through a sentence each night and get up to finish that sentence the next morning. And then there’s Salinger lingering in the woods with a nymphet acolyte. Of course they aren’t alone but their work exists on the backs of people whose contributions will never be acknowledged. It’s a trope I’ve studied carefully as I tried to model my own success, one it took me far to long to realize is bullshit. Yes, someone has to clean the toilets and pay the bills and wipe the butts, but failing to be a part of those activities is failing to understand (and participate in) essential parts of life.

Which makes me mad at Mathilde. Because as much as Lotto was a beloved, coddled boy, she continued to infantilize him through adulthood. Don’t get me wrong, Lotto should have grown up on his very own accord, but that’s on him. Mathilde wasted her life cleaning up after Lotto and I think she did it out of penance. The backstory to how Mathilde became the person she is is deeply saddening, but she could have been so much more. Maybe I’m just worried because I have my own beloved, coddled boy and I want very much for him to grow up to be a strong individual and if he finds a strong partner who’s also a strong individual, so much the better.

The Magic of Greek Myths

Something else I want for my boy is to have a strong understanding of Greek myths. I was raised on them and I have tomes to share with my son when I think he’s ready. To me, they are as important as the Bible to understanding the underlayment of our culture.

But my idea of an ideal education may have been shaped by some 19th century novel or other and making in-jokes about Sisyphus to my coworkers is often a futile effort—no matter the caliber of the private schools they’ve attended. So I loved how rife Fates and Furies is with allusions to these wonderful stories, from the obvious (a play based on Antigone) to the less so (a mother sitting forever at home as though that home were Mount Olympus). I’m going to blame my illness for the fact that it took me so long to understand the knowing asides were like the classic Greek chorus or the gods looking down from on high (or both), but I loved the effect before I got it and even more so after.

And when I realized on the last page which mythological character Mathilde was, it changed everything for me. And I wept.

To immerse yourself in Fates and Furies, pick up a copy from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

How The Immigrant’s Refrigerator by Elena Georgiou Could Save the World

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the immigrants refrigerator - elena georgiouI had the privilege on Thursday night of moderating a discussion between three authors I deeply respect: Micheline Aharonian Marcom, Rebecca Brown, and Elena Georgiou. On the stage at Elliott Bay Books in Seattle, I asked Elena about her recent collection of stories, The Immigrant’s Refrigerator, specifically about how she’d managed to fully explore the humanity of every character in the book. Turns out I lucked into something because she said that was the kernel of what made her write the book, that long ago in her London-centric life the experience she’d had of reading The Song of Solomon and getting so inside the life of an African American family in the faraway U.S. had shown her the power of words to inhabit the experience of another. We need that right now.

Here’s why you need to go read The Immigrant’s Refrigerator and then buy a copy for a friend who might not buy one for themselves.

Reading Builds Empathy

You’re a reader. You’ve probably seen the studies that say reading literary fiction builds empathy. If you’re like me, you read a summary of the study, felt good about yourself and went on your reading way. Trouble is that I didn’t really change what I read as a result of those studies. I just kept empathizing more and more with the people I’d already been reading about.

Reading=good. Now let’s take it one step further.

Exposing Ourselves to the Other

I’m proud of the fact that I usually read stories about people who live far away from me. What I’m too often missing in my reading list, though, is stories about people whose life experience is not that of a middle to upper class intellectual-type. I read about countries I’ve visited or lived in that I miss or countries that remind me of them. Occasionally I lament that I don’t read enough about Africa, but I haven’t mended my reading ways.

The Immigrant’s Refrigerator pushed me into reading about all kinds of lives I’d never considered exploring. And I loved every page of it. I picked up the book because I wanted to be prepared for the event at Elliott Bay. What I was not prepared for was entering—on the first page—the life of a man who makes soup for children who are riding atop trains to cross into the U.S. from Mexico and to those who’ve returned. “Gazpacho” is emblematic of the rest of the book in that it’s compact, revolves around food, and drops the reader deep inside the experience of another.

Georgiou does this again and again in the book. From the life of a Northern Irish rent boy in New York City to a Somali refugee who’s terrorized by an intended act of kindness by an employer, to a lonely baker who finds connection and companionship with a refugee from Niger, Georgiou fully realizes the widest range of experiences I think I’ve seen together in one book. But you almost don’t realize how disparate the events that got these characters to their moment on the page are, because rather than playing to any of the expectations we’ve already set about what the other is, the stories in The Immigrant’s Refrigerator focus so deeply on the characters’ human commonalities. This makes it easy to empathize with all of them and the result is as beautiful as the writing.

As easy and pleasurable as The Immigrant’s Refrigerator is to read, it’s not a facile book filled with happy glossy images of what people could be. Some of the stories I ended up loving most were the ones I initially resisted because the characters were too tetchy or far from my own experience (or too close to experiences I’ve tried to leave behind). One of these was “Pork is Love” where a rural Vermonter challenges his Nigerian pastor to preach a sermon about pork fat. Throw those three elements in a story and you could feel very much like you’re in a blender, but with Georgiou’s approach of reaching first for what is human, she finds unexpected light and darkness in both characters and ways of weaving them together that surprised, delighted, and challenged me.

Step Three: Changing the World

Easy peasy, right? Of course not. But if you need a refresh on looking beyond your bubble (and I think we all do right now) take a few hours to sit with The Immigrant’s Refrigerator and remember the things that could bring us together. It’s the only act that can truly put us back on the right path. The challenge I’ve set for myself right now is to look inside of people whose views I disagree vehemently with and try to understand what they most want. Usually it’s things like a better life for themselves and their family, freedom from fear, a genuine moment of feeling seen. I can relate to all of those, and we can build from that.

Acknowledging the humanity of the people around and across from us is a gift we can give them, and it’s a gift we can give to ourselves. It’s the smallest and biggest step toward rebuilding our society and it’s time we take it.

I’m going to go read The Song of Solomon now, you go pick up your copy of The Immigrant’s Refrigerator from Powell’s Books and then recommend this book at your next book club. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission. Bonus points if we change the world along the way.

Why Poetry? For Matthew Zapruder, for Me

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why poetry - zapruderI’ve been going on and on for about six years about how I don’t know anything about poetry. This repeated admission has been a laying bare of my insecurities and a spur to jump into this abyss I feared so much but could not resist. And in truth, I’ve been writing poetry now, consistently and improvedly, for over three years, but I still hunger to know more and to work through this feeling that there is something I am missing.

So when I first heard Matthew Zapruder mention his (then forthcoming) book, Why Poetry? at a lecture, I knew I had to have it. Now that I’ve consumed the book, though I’m sure I’ll return to it again and again, I have a better understanding of what I was afraid of about reading poetry, the things I’m getting wrong about writing poetry, and the reasons I can’t stay away.

A Little Machine for Producing Discovery

“[I]n the course of writing, the poet eventually makes something, a little machine, one that for the reader produces discoveries, connections, glimmers of expression.” – Matthew Zapruder, Why Poetry?

How irresistible is that quote for anyone who enjoys tinkering of any kind? Despite all my tinkering with words, I continue to wonder, “What is a poem, anyway?” I was once told (somewhat scarringly) that something I’d written wasn’t a poem but simply a list of words strung together. Reading Zapruder, I had to admit those words I’d hated to hear might have been right. Why Poetry? examines the core of what transforms words into poetry from so many angles that it’s impossible to summarize, but unlike the prescriptive poetry lessons so many of us were subjected to in high school English classes, Zapruder’s approach is so curiosity-based and full of love for the form that Why Poetry? is a delight to read.

Movement of Thought

What really flipped a switch for me in Why Poetry? was the idea that poetry is a movement of thought which allows the reader and writer to produce and explore new associations and ideas. It’s not something I’d really noticed about the poetry I’ve been reading all these years and, yet, as I’ve been reading poetry since finishing Zapruder’s book, it seems key.

Though I’ve accidentally followed a train of thought in the way Zapruder describes in a few poems, honestly the ones that have felt most successful, I’m excited to explore this concept more. I’m not wholly convinced that without this factor, a poem isn’t just words strung together, but I can’t wait to see what feels right in my writing.

Being Myriad

“A poem does not exist in order to get a single message across, or to privilege one idea above all others.” – Matthew Zapuder

Maybe one of the most freeing things about reading Why Poetry? was the idea that in a poem I could be conflicted, complicated, myriad. This is one of the things I struggle with most in everyday conversation—the inability to communicate the layers of truth in an idea and the places where I know I contradict myself and what that all means. The idea that I could inhabit and explore all of these layers at once is incredibly freeing. It’s like looking into my closet and realizing that there isn’t one character I have to be that day, that instead I can choose any combination of things that I love and just be in that outfit, that moment.

Seeing Connections Others Do Not

“The ear of the poet is not merely attuned to sonic music. It is attuned to the music of ideas in words, the latent resonances, the ones always waiting in etymology, the pasts of words, our individual pasts, and our collective memory.” – Matthew Zapruder

Though I come from a long line of successful punsters, nothing has made me more attuned to language than having a young child who’s learning to communicate with words. Just recently, he was telling my husband that his Batman-obsessed friends were all playing with the Batmowheel. A few years ago I would have simply thought that was cute, but now that I’ve been paying closer attention to words, I see the logic and beauty of the associations he’s making and I’m paying closer attention to my own. I used to be a lot better about this kind of seeing, but I steered away from it when I sensed the power it had to manipulate understanding. Which brings us to…

“Coming Back to Language, to Naming”

“The energy of poetry comes primarily from the reanimation and reactivation of the language that we recognize and know.” – Matthew Zapruder

When I first really started getting serious about poetry, I began by reading it in French and Spanish. I did it because I was scared of many of the things Zapruder identifies are wrong with the way we teach poetry (especially the insistence on symbolism). What I also achieved, though I was not aware of it at the time, was the defamiliarization of language. In Verlaine I heard mostly the sound of the words. In Lorca and Neruda I found words that I understood with my childish Spanish, which sometimes involved seeing most clearly the false cognates. I did not learn much about the strict structure of poetic forms in either language, but I was learning to look at words and to hear them.

“To live morally, to avoid self-delusion and even monstrosity, we have to think about what we are saying, and to avoid euphemism and cliché.” – Matthew Zapruder

Reading Zapruder, I was also reminded of that fear I’d encountered before of the power language has to obfuscate true meaning. I’m thinking of how difficult it becomes to fight against a wrong idea once a strong (but wrong) label like “Patriot Act” or “Pro Life” is applied. In essence, because of my own fear of the power of language, I’d stepped away and let others, who don’t have the same principles, make what they wanted of language and life. Zapruder (and poetry) are of course not arguing for the misconstruing of words, instead the idea is to bring us back to real meaning or even to understand the evolution of language. I can get behind that.

Slowing

“Reading poetry has the salutary effect on me of forcing me to read, and think, at a different pace than the rest of my life demands.” – Matthew Zapruder

I am as guilty as everyone of letting myself get wrapped up on a life full of work and social media, entertainment, and family. Unfortunately, in that order. And I’ve always been guilty of the sin of skimming, especially when reading poetry. I loved this emphasis on slowing and inhabiting, and reading Zapruder’s words here reminded me of the simple relief of focusing on the passage of a single breath. I’m looking forward to mending my ways a little and making more space in moments for words.

Shedding Airs

Something else I’m all too guilty of is applying a poetic mood to my work. A false one. Zapruder says he often sees his students “presenting their poetic qualifications” by being “deliberately obscure and esoteric, because it is a shortcut to being mysterious.” At least I’m not alone? I guess my poetry newbie insecurities show rather obviously in these moments. Which is okay. As long as I learn when this particular way of using language feels authentic to me and when to edit it the fuck out.

Dreams, Strangeness and Being Known

“[T]he true difficulty—and reward—of poetry is in reading what is actually on the page carefully, and allowing one’s imagination to adjust to the strangeness of what is there.” – Matthew Zapruder

The poetic airs, too, have been a shortcut to inhabiting my own strangeness. Not that I’m the enigma I sometimes believe myself to be, but that by frosting my ideas, I can simultaneously be “interesting” and not reveal my true self at all. One of my deepest struggles is this push/pull of being known, and although I’m aware of the hollowness of the game—as long as I don’t share the unvarnished me, I cannot be rejected, but I also cannot be loved for who I truly am—I don’t always stop myself from hiding. Despite how lonely it makes me feel.

“George Steiner defines every speech act between two people as a kind of translation, a negotiation between what he calls ‘the external vulgate and the private mass of language.'” – Matthew Zapruder

“The poem also reminds us of the dual nature of language, how each word means something particular to a person, and how we are also somehow not locked into those personal associations.” – Matthew Zapruder

Does this mean I should blarp all of me, unedited, onto a page and call it poetry? No, and there are some early submittals I’d rescind right now if I could. But it does mean that I can (and must, really) explore honestly my experience of being human. Sometimes that will be messy, sometimes clear. Sometimes it will be both. But I have to stop fighting it because it might be the best chance I have to become the fullest version of me. And I get to do it in the private dialect that until now I never had any reason to believe anyone but my husband would ever understand.

“What I thought was my principled resistance to meaninglessness was really a fear of, and attraction to, a new life.” – Matthew Zapruder

Am I a Poet?

“[T]hat choice to be ready to reject all other purposes, in favor of the possibilities of language freed from utility, is when the writer becomes a poet.” – Matthew Zapruder

Yes. I am a poet. Sometimes. Zapruder helped me see that as much as I’ve been fighting this thing, it really is something I cannot not do. I’m not sure I’d pass that final litmus test above just yet, but I’m willing to consider it as I tinker. And there was one last little tidbit in Why Poetry? that made me feel like I was on the right track:

“Poetry has always existed and always will exist, because there will always be the need to say that which cannot be said.” – Ralph Angel

“Saying that which cannot be said” are the words from an artist statement I wrote long ago that still feel truest to me. In both senses of the word.

To discover your own path with poetry, pick up a copy of Why Poetry? from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Revisiting My Roots with Energy by Elisabeth Sharp McKetta: On Finding My Center

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energy - john j mckettaNot many people have the fortune to read a biography of their grandfather. I feel especially privileged to have just finished reading Energy: The Life of John J. McKetta Jr. while my beloved grandfather, a man I call Djiedo, is still alive at 102. Written by my cousin, Elisabeth Sharp McKetta, this loving portrait not only brought me closer to my roots, but in doing so helped me find comfort in a time gone awry. It is impossible to impartially review this book, but I do want to share some of the lessons I learned while reading it, because, while some are very personal, I think they can help more than just me.

Humans Are the Best of What We Have

One of the lessons drilled into me as a child by my father who learned it from Djiedo was how a person’s worth was not tied to what they did for a living. This is something that’s been top of mind lately as the Republican Party seeks to reward donors and reinforce the growing divide between rich and poor in the US. And it wasn’t until I read “wealth can never be a measure of worth” in Dan Rather’s poignant Facebook note that I could pinpoint exactly what my discomfort with recent events was. I assumed we all thought that wealth wasn’t a measure of worth. Naive, perhaps, but also a worldview that forms who I am.

The value of humans rather than wealth seems natural for a man who rose from coal miner to university chancellor and presidential advisor, but it’s one that’s all too easily forgotten. It’s one we mask by talking about “a man being the sum of his actions and not his inheritance,” but judging by how much of Djiedo’s admittedly fantastic rise was influenced not just by his drive but by the support of others, human connections are the only real wealth in the world.

Material Wealth is Impermanent

Something I’ve feared desperately since I got laid off last year and Trump was elected is how I would take care of my family in an economic downturn, or worse, a war. Reading Energy, I realized that worry itself was a luxury. When the Great Depression hit the McKetta family, they were poor enough to not have much to lose. It was the Smith family, my grandmother and her parents, whose fortunes fell because they did. I have a home, bank accounts and a cushy corporate job, but this book reminded me that it’s my loved ones who matter. Tragedies can happen there, too, and did to my Djiedo, but I can’t live in fear of those, either, because life goes on and we carry our people with us.

Connections Can Last a Lifetime—Or More

Speaking of people I love, this book reminded me that family is what you make it. I did know that, but in the past three years of pregnancy, birth and raising an infant without any close family nearby, I’ve let myself get pretty isolated. What a wonderful feeling this week to pair the addressing of my Christmas cards with reading in Energy about how Djiedo kept in touch with so many people who touched his life for so long.

That actually brings up a funny story. Dr. Eugene P. Schoch started the Chemical Engineering department at the University of Texas that’s now named for Djiedo, and when Dr. Schoch recruited Djiedo, he, Baba and my infant father lived in a building behind Dr. Schoch’s house. On my Christmas card list is a Stephanie Schoch—the great-granddaughter of Eugene. I met Stephanie two years ago when I used AirBNB to book the building behind her house so that my husband, my infant son, and I could attend Djiedo’s 100th birthday party. Point being that the world is small and we can let it feel large and unmanageable or lonely but it doesn’t have to be. Those connections are there if we preserve them—as Djiedo has and as I’m relearning to.

Honestly Learning from Anyone You Can

Some of the people Djiedo kept in touch with were his mentors. One of the most beautiful things Elisabeth did in Energy, and I’m sure this was blessed by Djiedo’s stellar recall and generous willingness to share attribution, was to trace some of the most important and memorable parts of Djiedo’s character to his mentors.

This is an excellent reminder that not only are our lives touched every day by people we can learn from, but we touch lives too. In a time when so many “mentors” and men in power are being called out for sexual harassment, abuse, and assault, perhaps one of the most important things we can all do is to look at our own behavior and see where we have failed those who looked up to us and how we can not fail next time. There’s an anecdote in Energy about Djiedo being confronted with his own sexism. While I think he came by his beliefs honestly (from his culture, his family, his time), what is very much to his credit is how open he was to learning a new way to be. I hope I have the courage to learn as well from my own mistakes.

The Advantages of Staying Busy

Busyness is what makes Djiedo the man he is. On days when you’re not prepared for this energy, you might call it frenetic, but it’s also a key to his success and to who he is. Instead of going off to college to find himself like so many of us do, Djiedo launched a personal campaign to get himself admitted to a university and then worked three jobs to ensure he had food and shelter while he obtained that degree. As a professor he was an editor (something I did not know), a lecturer, a board member, and also a presidential advisor. This is a pace I believe he sustains even now. Though at 102 he sleeps many more hours than he used to, I know from personal experience that there is not a minute wasted in his day as he keeps up with old acquaintances and feeds his busy brain.

As an inheritor of this type of energy, it certainly feels frenetic in my chest, especially as I woke at 4am all week to read about Djiedo during hours I usually describe as “McKetta early” because so many of Djiedo’s descendants greet the dawn way before the sun is ready to get up. But I know this energy is also what allows me to find time in the week to have a corporate career while spending time with my son and also writing books.

What’s painful to admit is that I’ve let my own busy life become an excuse for avoiding visiting Djiedo. I wondered often while reading Energy how the type of career that allows one to become a presidential advisor affects the family back home. Although Djiedo lived the ideal male role of his time, I’m not sure the time away from family is something I want for myself and I see that my choices aren’t reflecting my values. I’m afraid of losing him the way we lost my grandmother, Baba, but we will lose him eventually and staying away only squanders an opportunity.

Baba, the Heart of it All

The hardest part of this book for me to read was the section about Baba’s decline and death. Not because she wasn’t ready to die, she had been for a long time, but because she was the heart of us all. I witnessed Baba’s moderating effect on Djiedo that Elisabeth describes in Energy and I know that from my love of reading to the deep patience and quiet I am capable of, a good share of who I am comes from her as well. Being in Baba’s very presence was a grounding, healing experience for us all, and while she was more than ready to go, I think we all will miss her always. I’m grateful to Elisabeth for the ways she wove Baba’s story in with Djiedo’s because I think I, and my son, have lessons to learn from incorporating both types of energy into our lives.

We Are the Legends We Leave Behind

As I was reading this book, my son slept down the hall, and I kept thinking what a privilege it is that he’ll have a book about his great-grandfather to pore over when he’s ready. He’s even in one of the pictures. Though the audience for Energy might be limited to the people whose lives John J. McKetta has touched, that touch is profound and the audience engaged.

If you are a parent or a grandparent, please write your stories down. Not in ones and zeroes but on paper where a curious child or grandchild can find them later and begin to understand where they come from and how that has made them. This is not the first book I’ve read about Djiedo—two decades ago he gave our family individual copies of an autobiography entitled My First 80 Years—but Energy gave me a rounder portrait of my family in a time I most needed it and I will read it again.

Although I remember some of the legends differently, so goes family lore. I am grateful to have a canonical reference for my son that’s more trustworthy than my faulty memory. And I’ve annotated my copy with extra details where I appear so that he can come to know me better someday.

One of my favorite movies has always been Big Fish, especially the ending when all of the characters from the father’s mythic past converge to bid him farewell. It’s a gorgeous celebration of a full life well lived and also a reminder that the way we choose to remember our history makes us who we are now. I hope we have a long time before Djiedo’s final celebration (and not just because I need to book a plane ticket), but if his 95th birthday party (attended by 650 people) and his 100th (rich with family in an event kept intentionally small) are any indication, it will be sprawling people whose lives Djiedo has touched. I am lucky to be among them.

To read this portrait of a man I love very much, pick up a copy of Energy: The Life of John J. McKetta, Jr. from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Breaking Free from a Writing Rut with Daughters of the Air by Anca Szilágyi

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daughters-of-the-air-anca-szilagyiA good book opens you—to worlds you would never know, to the experience of being human, to yourself. Daughters of the Air by Anca Szilágyi did just that. This story that touches Argentina’s Dirty War, the gritty days of Brooklyn, and what it’s like to be alone in the world before your time shows, through one family’s experience, how tragedy and political upheaval can upend lives and alter forever the future we once thought we had.

Writing About Argentina’s Dirty War

Daughters of the Air is not the same kind of blow-by-blow story of Argentina’s Dirty war that Liliana Heker’s The End of the Story is. Though Szilágyi gives us glimpses inside the politics and even the arrests, the story is for the most part one or two steps removed from that main action, and I was glad for the freedom to explore that this separation allowed Szilágyi. Instead of detailed accounts of rallies and resistance, we encounter the fear that surrounds a family and how that affects them for years to come. Rather than a peek inside the torture chambers, we see the moment of flight and what comes next for the exiles. Daughters of the Air is stronger for this separation which also allows Szilágyi’s story to migrate to Brooklyn.

A Teenaged Girl Alone in 1980’s Brooklyn

Basically abandoned at a boarding school in Connecticut after her father disappears from his Argentine university and her mother shuts down emotionally, Pluta takes flight one evening by jumping into a car with a strange young man and heading off to Brooklyn. If the previous sentence reminds you enough of your hot-headed experiences as a young person to bring up some terror-related bile, you’ll know how I entered this book. I will not tell you what happens next, but I will say that Szilágyi pulls no punches with Pluta’s experience as a teen on the streets of a pre-hipster Brooklyn.

What I respect greatly about this narrative, though, is that while Pluta is victimized, it’s never quite what I feared—Pluta is no Law & Order: SVU-style victim who gets smacked down by life and exists only as the object of rescue. Instead, she makes active choices that have actual consequences. As a mother and a former wild teen, this story line was heart-rending to read but I had to admire the strength of the character inhabiting the decisions she made. No matter what happened the page before, Pluta was always trying to make the best choice she could to make a life for herself in a world where all of those who should have been protecting her were gone.

I found myself wanting to shake Pluta’s mother from her stupor. A reaction whose violence I can only credit to the tension Szilágyi builds in this book. Equally so, I wanted to wrap Pluta in blankets and save her from herself and the world, but I don’t think this steely character would have allowed it. She has her own path to walk and she will not stop until she’s reached the end on her own terms.

Enter Magical Realism

And then something completely unexpected happens. I won’t detail it here (because I think knowing in advance would spoil something for you), but I will say that the element of magical realism surprised me and I wish I understood it as more than a metaphor. Part of this is my own expectation as a North American reader because I had a similar reaction when Dylan in Jonathan Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude began flying (literally) around Gowanus.

I think Szilágyi was experimenting here and trying to stretch me as a reader, which I appreciate, but I wasn’t fully on board. Perhaps I read too quickly to fully grasp the nuance of this element, but I was left wanting the implications of this element to be explored a bit more than it was.

Stasis in Perfection Lies

I wasn’t sure after finishing Daughters of the Air that I liked the feeling of reading the book, so for my very next read I pulled Emily Ruskovich’s Idaho off the shelf. From the first sentence this story of the world after a mother has killed her daughter is textbook perfect. The structure is well-architected, the prose cleanly constructed and Ruskovich doesn’t shy away from fully imagining and confronting a difficult topic. And yet Idaho completely failed to move me as a mother and as a writer.

Putting these two books side by side made me realize I want to read a book that pushes me so far beyond my own experience as a human and a writer that I’m already off the cliff and halfway to a crushing death before I realize what’s happening. Daughters of the Air took me there. Idaho did not.

Daughters of the Air is not a perfect book, but that’s where its beauty lies. Instead of telling a pat story, Szilágyi reaches into her treasure trove of fiction-telling tools and weaves a story different than any I’d ever read before. The narrative surprised me, the gravitas shocked me, and the fantastical elements challenged me—all of which made for a worthwhile read and will make me a better writer. Daughters of the Air showed me that I’ve become much too safe with my own writing and that I must push myself into new depths and new experiences to create work that is meaningful to me. I must shove off the idea of perfection and instead begin, again, to explore.

If you want to read a book that will surprise and challenge you, pick up a copy of Daughters of the Air from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.