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

Red Horses and the Art of the Prequel

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Can you ever read a prequel for its own sake? Reading Red Horses by Donna Lynch, I knew it was a prequel for Lynch’s debut novel Isabel Burning and that it elaborates on the history of the Grace family. But having not read the other book, I was interested to see if Red Horses could be successful on its own merits.

Does the Book Stand on its Own?

The first few pages of the book are very compelling. You are introduced to Anastascia Millerovo, a “carrier of souls” days after her father’s death in Victorian London. She visits his attorney to find that she has inherited a large sum of money, her father’s journal, and a husband should she choose to accept the young Mr. Grace. I presume that’s where this book ties to Isabel Burning in that this is the origins of that family. It feels like Lynch chose for this prequel to go straight to the ancestry without mucking about interweaving this story with the last. I’m grateful for that, because it did allow me to read this book on its own, even though the fact that it is a prequel never left my mind.

Is the Writing Good?

Lynch creates some compelling characters in this tortured family saga. Much of the action of the book takes place inside Vladimir Millerovo’s journal as he meets and falls in love with Anastascia’s mother. But it’s not a simple love story and there is as much hate as there is love between the characters. It’s interesting to watch the lovers travel from hardship to hardship across Europe and eventually to the Caribbean. I did wish I got to know Anastacia more throughout the book, because the introduction to her was so compelling.

The description can be a little over the top sometimes with it’s magical moodiness, especially if you’re used to literary fiction, but it doesn’t go too far for my tastes and I enjoyed reading this type of book again for the way that magic opens up a world. Sometimes I even wanted it to be more magical and to really see what Anastascia’s powers could do.

And there were times when I wanted to slap Anastacia’s mother for not taking more control of her life, but it’s never fair to judge a Victorian woman’s circumstances by modern standards.

Will You Want to Read More?

Yes. I’m not quite sure how Isabel fits into this whole scenario. I did want to see if Anastascia’s powers develop more in Isabel Burning and now that I’ve read the backstory, I’m very curious to see where Lynch’s initial inspiration lay.

Red Horses will be released in August, so you have time to read Isabel Burning first if you want to, but it’s not necessary. The book is currently available for pre-order directly from the publisher.

Escape and Learn with Crete: A Notebook by Richard Clark

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No matter what the weather where you live is telling you, summer is almost here. That means it’s time for vacation and at the very least a less onerous reading list. Crete: A Notebook by recalls the best of Peter Mayle. If I told you the book was a memoir/guidebook infused with mythology, history, and geology, I wouldn’t be doing the book justice.

Memoir of an Expat

Richard Clark first moved to Crete to teach in the 1980s and he’s returned time and again. What this does for the book is give a loving portrait through time of the people and places of Crete. He is both part of the culture and not and what could have been a guidebook turns into a personal story. Together with Clark, you get to experience the philoxenia, the kindness of welcoming strangers. He doesn’t tell you about how locals might buy you a drink or offer you water, he shares endearing stories about the many many times it’s happened to him all over the island.

Cretan Mythology

Woven into the narrative are reminders and retellings of your favorite Greek myths and where they happened. Zeus was born on Crete and hid here from his father, Kronos, before he overthrew him. He seduced Europa nearby and fathered King Minos. Remember the minotaur? You’ll feel the story come alive as Clark visits the remains of the palace where that story originated. I even learned some things about Icarus I didn’t know.

History of Crete

From Chania, a town that’s been inhabited continuously for 5,000 years to the ruins of a palace abandoned in 1900 BC, Crete has an incredibly rich history. The island has been under Byzantine, Venetian, and Ottoman rule and parts of The Odyssey are thought to have been set here. Clark does a nice job of summarizing how these waves of influence have shaped each location and the people at large. There’s even an essay at the end on the current Greek fiscal crisis.

Geology

No less turbulent than the politics, Crete’s geologic history has included a major volcanic eruption, a part of the island that’s sinking, and an upthrust that caused one major port to rise above sea level and become uninhabitable. Reading about these violent changes somehow made the island seem even more enticing to visit.

Travelogue

At it’s heart, this book is a travelogue and you’ll learn words like “ouzerie” (place that serves ouzo) as you salivate over goat salads and Greek coffees. Clark describes the unique aspects of town after town and somehow manages to not make it all repetitive. You’ll get to know local characters like Nikos Kazantzakis and Ross Daly. Clark even touches on a few of the surrounding islands including Santorini for good measure.

If you’re looking to finally plan a trip to Greece or just need to read about someplace else, try Crete: A Notebook. You’ll learn more than you can imagine and be entertained all the way through.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of Crete: A Notebook from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

The Quiet Menace of Inner China by Eva Sjödin

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inner-china-eva-sjodin-coverFrequent readers of this blog will know how much I appreciate spare language. Inner China by Eva Sjödin and translated from the Swedish by Jennifer Hayashida shows brilliantly just how much horror can be wrought with the sparest of language. The story of two small children who hide in the woods to escape sexual abuse is remarkably restrained. And therein lies the power of this poetry.

The Sound of Poetry

The narrator, the protector whispers to her mute sister:

Dark hard. — And quiet, I say. Not a word to Mother, not to anyone.
Get it.
Otherwise you are dead dead.

Those sentences take on the feeling of a heartbeat when you are so scared and small that the biggest sound in the world is your heart is pounding in your chest and your ears. The staccato two beats of “Dark hard,” “Get it,” and “dead dead” are so simple and so strong.

Words Rushing Together

Throughout the book, Sjödin takes what would normally be a list of items and removes the punctuation as in, “Nettles brushwood thistles grow down towards the river.” The cumulative effect of these run-on lists is the feeling of rushing and running away. There’s an immediacy and she uses it judiciously.

The Power of an Image

Sjödin also uses simple yet unusual images in Inner China. The narrator describes how she and her sister are “empty inside like carbonation.” A soda is usually a happy thing for a child and many delight in the fizzing and sparkle, but here she sees the other side of that and I wondered, worried, that something as simple as a soda pop was part of their torment. Though why I should cling to the idea of a soda among all the other pleasures of life these girls have foregone…

Quiet Menace and Denial

As much as I read about suffering and sadness, sexual abuse and rape are topics I usually avoid. It’s easy for the writer to slip into what I feel is description for the sake of titillation, and I just can’t bear it. Sjödin does none of that. She provides very little description of the acts. Instead, she builds a feeling of menace. Early in the book she writes, “There is someone who eats children eats children” and combines it euphemistically with “He sticks it to me on the sly.” It’s clear what is happening to these girls, but the language is pulled back just enough that I found myself denying what was happening for much of the book. This adds another layer I felt like I could have been the mother of those girls, refusing to see what was in front of me.

Know Your Recommender

I adore recommending books, it’s like sharing an intimate part of your soul, but I’m only just now learning to reach out to friends to create reading lists for me. Inner China was recommended by Gwendolyn Jerris, a gentle and poetic soul who is likely to hide the things that really hurt but will tell you the real truth if you ask her. Invaluable qualities in an artist and a friend. I asked Gwendolyn because I knew I needed something quiet that spoke loudly and boy did she deliver. Don’t wait as long as I did to start asking for what you need. Your fellow readers are wonderful resources and sometimes what scares you most is just the right thing.

The Importance of Difficult Books

I will not deny that this is a difficult book to read. In fact I wouldn’t recommend it to most people just for the sheer emotional impact of it. I’ve kept it nearby in my office in the days since reading the book I think because I knew it wasn’t done with me. And I wasn’t going to write about it for this blog, but it is a beautifully written book. And it’s important sometimes to read outside your comfort zone in order to stretch and grow as a writer. I am grateful that Gwendolyn trusted me enough as a reader to recommend this book. Writers like Grace Paley can show you how to unpack an image in a few spare words, but even she got shelved relatively quickly. I think I’ll be living with Sjödin on my coffee table for a good long while yet.

What books linger on your coffee table or next to your computer? What are they teaching you?

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of Inner China from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Waiting for God with Simone Weil

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There is something enticing about the idea of a young girl who sees through religion and philosophy and straight to God. Perhaps I think so, anyway, because I always wanted to be such a girl—to understand this infinite universe. Enter Simone Weil. Though of Jewish heritage, she grew up in an agnostic home. Still, her writings on God in Waiting for God touched me much more deeply than those of St. Augustine.

Questioning

Weil so clearly believes in God and yet she cannot bring herself to join with the Catholic Church. She has great love and respect for the priest with whom she is corresponding in the book, but she cannot bring herself to give him what he most wants, which is to baptize her. I too grew up in an agnostic home. Answers are hard for me to trust and I don’t have a future as a philosopher, but questions help me find my own truths.

Weil was very keen on intellectual honesty and I wonder if that kept her apart from the faith she seemed to crave. At times she seems to thrive on that separation, and I wonder if her way of thinking would have changed had she not died so very young.

Inspiration is Everywhere

Waiting for God is a different sort of book than what I usually review here. Although Weil meant for the essays in the book to be published, the letters have a raw, searching emotion that feels less polished (even though the language is beautiful). I wonder if she would have edited down the letters if they had been published in her lifetime.

As much as I emphasize craft in the essays on this site, sometimes the first thing you have to do as an artist is follow your passions. There is ample time for craft, but without inspiration, you risk polishing the proverbial turd. Weil was a perfect read for me because the questions I ask myself offline are spiritual ones. There were times I agreed with her and times I didn’t, but the best moments are when she touched tangentially on something I’ve been grappling with subconsciously. Some of those are questions I haven’t even formed yet, but reading Weil and seeing how she wrestles with the same subjects opened me up to some of my own truths.

Books are amazing and I love them. But when you feel flat, sometimes you have to put down your book and either read something entirely different or do something different. You are an amazing vessel of creativity. Honor and fill that with a myriad of approaches to the subjects you love. I sat through a lecture on machine learning this week where I also saw glimmers of God.

The Language of Faith

Weil has a knack for little sentences with big meanings. In reading this book, I kept underlining and underlining her aphorisms, but even that wasn’t enough to feel like I was pulling her thoughts through my brain and soul in the way I wanted. I started writing sentences from the book and grouping like with like—repentance, distance, acceptance, center, and love—until I had a poem, what turns out is a cento. Here’s an excerpt of the rough draft:

(acceptance)
You do not refuse
to accept me
just as I am.
The capacity to give
one’s attention to a sufferer
is very rare thing, a miracle.

Never is a genuine effort
of attention
wasted.
I am tempted
to put myself entirely in your hands
and ask you
to decide for me. I was prevented
by a sort of shame.

Your charity.
You bore with me
for so long
with such gentleness.

And now that I’ve subjected you to my exercise in learning how to use line breaks, go read or do something that inspires you. I’m off to write that machine learning poem (which I will not make you read).

What are your go-to topics for inspiration? Do you prefer materials that help you question or ones that provide answers?

If you want Simone Weil to blow your mind, pick up a copy of Waiting for God from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

The Waves of Intimacy with Virginia Woolf

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The Waves Virginia WoolfMicheline Aharonian Marcom once said to me that books teach you how to read them, and though I was lost when I opened The Waves by Virginia Woolf, I fumbled onward until, as Miłosz would have said, “I surrendered and it carried me and I swam.” As the best books will do, this book challenged me as a reader and writer and made me think hard about my own life.

The Structure of Interspersion

The book is starts with a short poetic passage in italics which describes the dawning of the day at the edge of the sea.

The sun had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it.

Additional italicized sections serve as markers of the passing day (and lifetime) throughout the book. It’s perhaps an obvious analogy and one I’ve used myself, but Woolf handles it beautifully. Without the passing time denoted in these passages, I would have had a more difficult time understanding what was happening with the rest of the text.

The space between those italic sections, the bulk of the book, initially looks like a dialogue:

“I see a ring,” said Bernard, “hanging above me. It quivers and hangs in a loop of light.”

“I see a slab of pale yellow,” said Susan, “spreading away until it meets a purple stripe.”

“I hear a sound,” said Rhoda, “cheep, chirp; cheep, chirp; going up and down.”

But it quickly becomes evident this is something different than ordinary dialogue. Though there is often more than one speaker and their words build on each other, they are not interacting with each other. At first I wasn’t sure if the characters were even speaking aloud, but once I was entranced by them it ceased to matter.

This creates an effect similar to a classical Greek chorus because it conveys a unity of experience, but the characters do not speak in unison. Instead, each contributes a slightly individual perspective which allows us to see the other characters through their eyes. This variance is important because there is no other exposition. The entire story is told in these weirdly interwoven monologues.

The Closeness of Interior Monologues

Though it took me awhile to get into the spirit of this book, it knocked me on my writing ass. In my new book, I’ve challenged myself to work in third person. Reading Woolf’s dialogues (which often come off as interior monologues) I am reminded how very much exposition can come from the self-exploration of first person. Whether to include sections in first person is something I’ll be carefully considering as I revise for structure. The other thing I will be looking at, again influenced by Woolf, is the way two completely separate narratives feed off of one another to tell one story.

Creating a Sense of Belonging

Woolf has found a way of conveying the depth of friendship. As I followed Bernard, Susan, and friends through the moments from a childhood classroom to a restaurant in young adulthood and beyond as their progressing lives intersect, the enormity of their shared experience became intoxicating. The choral speaking felt as though they were only truly whole when they were together in body or spirit.

Friends like these are the people who who know and accept you for all that you are. In my life, I have been lucky enough to be part of more than one group like this. Though my introversion requires long spaces of solitude, those moments of true kinship and understanding are unequalable. I’m thinking back to a recent night with writer friends when we said what we really thought and finished each other’s sentences. I knew how important this is one-on-one (as in a marriage), but I don’t think I realized how deeply important and satisfying this kind of friend group is until I experienced it through Woolf’s strange and bewitching narrative.

What have you read lately that challenged you as a reader, writer, and person?

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of The Waves from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.