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      • Clear Out the Static in Your Attic: A Writer’s Guide for Transforming Artifacts into Art
      • Polska, 1994
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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 Geography of Greece with Fuschia Phlox’s Return to the Aegean

September 4, 2012 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

There are a myriad of things that make me fall in love with a story, but a strong setting has to be at the top of the list. A literary geography is comprised not just of the landscape where the story takes place but also of people their relationships with the location. Though Fuschia Phlox’s Return to the Aegean is well plotted, the rich characters and gorgeous setting are what captured my heart.

“There is such pleasure in taking from nature what wants to be taken.” – Fuschia Phlox

PHlox reaps the natural beauty of the Greek islands and sows it into the descriptions in this novel. From olive orchards to rocky shores, I wanted to move in with Thalia as she returns to the place she once called home. While Thalia explores the mysteries of her family’s past, the reader is treated to loving descriptions of Greek rituals of life and death.

I’m not always the most careful reader, but something about Phlox’s character descriptions makes it easy to differentiate between the large number of characters in the novel. The characters are believable and I found myself wanting to befriend Irini and Petros. I felt for Mina and I loved Sophia. Each new character seemed to have his or her place in the natural order of the island.

I appreciated that as wide as the focus of characters is, the narrative always returns to swimming and the sea. In fact, the gently insistent way Phlox consistently brings the book back to the theme reminds me of Anne Michaels.

Phlox has a knack for pacing. Each chapter leaves off with a gentle prod forward that kept me reading well past my bedtime. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything if I say the end unfolds like the denouement of a 19th century novel.

“You don’t listen until you are truly ready.” – Fuschia Phlox

This was my first experience reviewing a book from a PDF and the format affected the way I read the book. Because I am used to editing my own work onscreen, I found I had difficulty getting distance from this novel. As a result, I paid more attention to nitpicky things than I normally would when reading for pleasure. For example, the (albeit few) sentences that were overwritten really stuck with me. I also got hung up on the footnotes that defined the Greek words and kept thinking about editing context clues into the text instead. It seems I’m still a few years off from being ready to go the e-reader route.

Overall, I’d say that Return to the Aegean is the perfect mixture of a vacation book and a serious novel. You may think you are wholly engrossed with the mystery, but part of you will be checking flight times on the next plane to Greece.

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

Filed Under: Books, Western Europe Tagged With: book review, characterization, greece, setting

Creating a Dreamworld in Calvino’s Marcovaldo

August 5, 2012 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

marcovaldo italo calvinoI sought out Italo Calvino this morning because I wanted to learn how he creates fairytales that seem to exist very close to reality. In the fourth story of Marcovaldo, “Winter, The City Lost in the Snow,” I found what I was looking for.

In the Beginning

Creating a dreamlike world starts with the first sentence: “That morning the silence woke him.” Yes, it is possible to be woken by silence, but it is also a clue to the reader that something out of the ordinary is happening. Then Marcovaldo senses “something strange in the air.” Calvino describes the character’s disorientation and the reader’s awareness of the strangeness deepens.

At this point, the reader is three sentences into the story and aware that the reality of this story is not the same day to day reality of the first three stories in the collection. In the fourth sentence (still in the first paragraph) the city disappears. Then the narrator describes what Marcovaldo sees “almost-erased lines, which corresponded to those of the familiar view.” Of course he could just be describing what a snowscape looks like, but because Marcovaldo found it magical, I found it magical.

As I read this first paragraph, the fantastic elements washed over me. I felt the story building, but the first three stories in the book had been so realistic that I didn’t realize what was happening to my attention until the middle of the second paragraph when I encountered the strange phraseology of “the snow had fallen on noises.” The phenomenon Calvino is describing is common—snow has a hushing quality—but the way he described it was so unusual that I was instantly intrigued.

Treading a Thin Line Between Fantasy and Reality

Even though Calvino pulls back toward the real, concrete world as he writes the almost scientific, “sounds, in a padded space, did not vibrate” he keeps Marcovaldo and me hovering between reality and fantasy. Calvino keeps Marcovaldo’s dream world present with language like, “who could say if under those white mounds there were still gasoline pumps, news-stands, tram stops, or if there were only stack upon stack of snow.” Even when Marcovaldo is put to work shoveling snow, his mind wanders and he imagines that with the snow “he could remake the city.”

Calvino did not disappoint me. I learned from this story that to create a story that exists in the borderlands between fantasy and reality, I have to set the scene very carefully. There is as much fantasy in the first paragraph of this story as there is in the rest of the paragraphs combined. Once that scene is set firmly, I am free to play back and forth between the two lands as long as the story laps back and forth between the two worlds.

Now to put it to use. Just as soon as I finish reading this book…

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

Filed Under: Books, Western Europe Tagged With: book review, fantasy, Italian Literature

Peter Høeg Invents the Keyser Söze of Danish Dreams

July 28, 2012 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

The History of Danish Dreams - Peter HoegAs the title implies, The History of Danish Dreams is dreamlike. Even more so for readers like me who have a poor knowledge of Danish history. Peter Høeg does a masterful job of hovering in the space between fable and fact where story and truth lie and though I am curious about whether there is an underlying structure of verifiable events, I will not look them up because I don’t want the spell to be broken.

Part of the spell Høeg casts is that he is able to dance between what happened and what might have happened. This is especially evident as he deals with the young girl Maria and whether she is a model child or the leader of a gang of truants.

The Model Child

The reader already knows much about the strangeness of Maria’s parents by the time she is born. Høeg weaves information about her upbringing into her parents’ narrative and I got to know her before I realized that she too would become an important character.

Over a series of twenty pages I watched Maria grow into an unusually observant child with a stammer. I saw the conditions of her mother’s declining health and the contemporaneous decline of her neighborhood. I learned that she was close with her father. And then there is a brutality that Høeg mentions more than once without delving into. She is different, but still he calls her “the model child.”

Stepping Out of the Narrative

“From this point onward certain problems arise in writing Maria’s story: I would like to depict her as a coherent individual…but this proves to be impossible…History is always an invention; it is a fairytale built upon certain clues…These clues are pretty well established; most of them can literally be laid on the desktop…But these, unfortunately, do not constitute history. History consists of the links between them, and it is this that presents the problem…In the case of Maria Jensen…it is not possible…to cover all the gaps, not even roughly.” – Peter Høeg, The History of Danish Dreams

Høeg interrupts the fictional dream and begins telling two stories—the story of Maria as her parents know her and the story of a second child called “The Stutterer” who could well be Maria. The only link between the two stories is a series of what must be truancy letters from her school. Truly compelling are the strong yet unprovable parallels between Maria and the Stutterer.

As Høeg tells more and more stories of the gang Maria is ostensibly the head of, he continues to use phrases like “It has not been possible for me to have a word with any of the individuals who then belonged in this group” and “we have no witnesses.” Had Høeg laid out evidence that Maria was the Stutterer, the story would have been about a girl who went bad and her parents never even knew. Because Høeg focuses on the gaps, though, and allows for the ambiguity, the story becomes a legend.

By the time Høeg finishes young Maria’s tale, the seven- or nine-year-old (we don’t even know her actual age) Maria has become the Keyser Söze of Denmark. Høeg seems in awe of her. The extent of her exploits could only be understood in the kind of exaggerated rumor that conveys the fullest truth possible but could never be understood in something as rigid as a court of law.

I am interested in exploring the ambiguous experience of a character in the novel I am working on now. I have been looking for a way to convey contradictory yet complementary information. I’m not sure yet if I want to pull the metafictional card by interjecting as a narrator, but I have a lot to learn from Høeg in terms of opening up the story to create a richer experience.

As with any book I read in translation and love, I know some of the credit is due to the translator. My thanks to Barbara Haveland for allowing me access to this book.

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

Filed Under: Books, Western Europe Tagged With: ambiguity, danish literature, metafiction

AS Byatt and Femininity in the Modern Fairytale

June 16, 2012 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

the djinn in the nightingales eye - as byattLately I’ve been drawn to fairytales and myths. Perhaps I am trying to recover an ebbing capacity for storytelling in my suddenly busy life, and perhaps I’m looking to get lost in the wonder of stories the way I did when I was a kid. Perhaps I’m missing afternoons at Louisa’s with Bob and Jack and their emphasis on the mythic journey. When I stumbled on AS Byatt’s The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, I thought I wanted to read it because it spoke to the Arabian Nights, but what I fell in love with was the overall fairytale quality of the book and its five stories and what they told me about being a woman.

The Eldest Princess

In “The Story of the Eldest Princess,” the girl who goes on the quest to renew her kingdom is not the most beautiful of the sisters, she is the eldest. Sometimes it feels like our stories are only about the fairest of them all with the idea that everyone else is background. In this story, birth order is more important and princess status is not synonymous with beauty. The princess is not a victim of her fate and is rewarded for trusting her instincts. What I most liked is how the relationship between the crone and the princess spoke to a continuity of femininity and female knowledge that is too easy to ignore.

“There is always an old woman ahead of you on a journey, and there is always an old woman behind you too, and they are not always the same.” – AS Byatt, The Eldest Princess

The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye

There are many things to love about this story and how it portrays women. From the honest lustiness of Gillian (without the silly virgin tremble) to the unveiling of the desires of the Middle Eastern female. What I most loved was Gillian’s frank appreciation of her womanhood. When she is confronted with the opportunity to have anything she wants, she most wants to return to her body when she last liked it and that age is thirty-five. Perhaps this is vanity on my part as I am nearing that age and spend more time than I should worried about my “faults,” but I liked how the idea of a perfect female body is the body of a woman and not a girl. The djinn echoes this assessment. Though I do worry about the days after thirty-five and I hope I will continue to love my body as it follows the natural course.

“All love-making is shape-shifting—the male expands like a tree, like a pillar, the female has intimations of infinity in the spaces which narrow inside her” – AS Byatt, The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye

This book helped me appreciate myself as a woman. I loved that both the princess and Gillian are storytellers as I am. I hope my own stories will help future generations of women love themselves and to experience the infinite possibilities available inside the life the Fates assign.

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

Filed Under: Books, Western Europe Tagged With: AS Byatt, book review, Fairytale, Fate, The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye, Womanhood

Enduring Mundanity with William Trevor in After Rain

June 5, 2012 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

After Rain - William TrevorIn After Rain, William Trevor presents many stories that play with the reader’s plot expectations. Often he creates a compelling, even dangerous, scenario, but then the story unfolds to reveal that the reader was watching the magician’s assistant rather than his hands. Whether the crooks are the protagonists or the antagonists, the result is always the same: Trevor pulls the rabbit from the hat as we expected in the first place, presenting the triumph of conventionality.

In “Timothy’s Birthday,” Trevor writes of an old couple anxious for their son, Timothy, to come home and celebrate his birthday with them. The initial scene is warm and homey as Charlotte cooks and Odo prepares a fire. Timothy convinces a friend, Eddie, to go in his place and say he is ill. Charlotte is the picture of a concerned mother: “[Timothy’s] tummy played up a bit once.” Eddie makes himself at home, fixing the toilet and helping himself to gin and trinkets. The reader starts to worry for the old couple. Is Eddie going to hurt them?  How can he show such disrespect for people who have treated him so kindly?  But Eddie leaves and when Odo and Charlotte discover the missing decoration, “[t]heir own way of life was so much debris all around them, but since they were no longer in their prime that hardly mattered….Their love of each other had survived the vicissitudes.” They are beyond caring. They have endured and their life remains fundamentally unchanged.

“A Bit of Business” follows a similar pattern except this time we meet the crooks first as they rob the neighborhood while everyone is out waiting for the Pope. When we learn that Mr. Livingston is at home and elderly, the story seems to be set. Surely these youths will come upon Mr. Livingston and something dire will happen. The tension rises as Trevor cuts between the points of view of the thieves and of Mr. Livingston. “At once Mangan knew there was a bit of trouble.” They tie Mr. Livingston up and leave. So they haven’t hurt him, but still “[h]e’ll squawk his bloody guts out.” and they’ll get what’s coming to them. Surely they’ll go back to finish him off or at least they’ll get caught, but no, they pick up a couple of girls. In fact, it is the crooks who are changed by the encounter with Mr. Livingston: “[t]he lean features of Mr. Livingston were recalled by Mangan….they’d bollocksed the whole thing” and “there was nowhere left to hide from the error that had been made….Privately, each calculated how long it would be before the danger they’d left behind in the house caught up with them.” By having the thieves changed by their interaction with the normative Mr. Livingston, Trevor again creates an aura of the persistence of mundanity.

In “Widows,” Trevor set up a rivalry between sisters Catherine and Alicia with passages such as: “[i]n her girlhood she had been pretty – slender and dark….Alicia, taller, dark also, had been considered the beauty of the town.” But when Thomas Leary appeared and tried to bilk Catherine out of £226, my attention shifted to Thomas as Catherine’s antagonist. His deceit was compelling and I found myself wanting Catherine to stand up to him. Trevor kept Alicia present on the page through simple actions like “replacing forks and spoons in the cutlery container,” which built the expectation that the sisters have banded together in crisis. Alicia does back Catherine up against Thomas in conversation “‘[a]nything could have happened to the receipt….In the circumstances.’” However, when Catherine decided to pay Thomas, Alicia’s hopes were dashed and she turned on her sister: “[h]er expectation had been that in their shared state they would be as once they were….If Leary had not come that day there would have been something else.” The power struggle is once again between Catherine and Alicia. The story is not at all difficult to follow, but the shifting dynamics not only shows the complexity of the relationship between the sisters, it also conveys the sense that something would have come between Catherine and Alicia eventually. Thomas was merely a catalyst, interesting though he was, and the story remains as it ever was the rivalry between the sisters. In comparison to Thomas’s thievery, the sisterly feud seems quotidian and conventional, just where I have come to expect Trevor will leave me at the end of a story.

What was interesting to me about the structure of Trevor’s stories was how clearly they articulated a singular world view without seeming forced. He feeds the reader’s interest with some of the more seedy aspects of life, but his real interest seems to be conveying the fact that ordinary endures. I can learn from the complexity of the relationships he builds between characters such as Catherine and Alicia and Charlotte and Odo. Their encounters with the seamier side of life portray the characters’ normative lives much in the way that Gatsby was drawn through the negative space around him. There were other aspects of Trevor’s work that I can learn from as well, for example, the way he handles the letter in “A Day,” by never giving us the exact text of the letter but giving us enough information to infer it. I may in the long run look at his point of view shifts versus Mary Gaitskill’s.

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

Filed Under: Books, Western Europe Tagged With: After Rain, book review, British, Gatsby, Literature, Mary Gaitskill, William Trevor

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Polska, 1994

Polska 1994

Clear Out the Static in Your Attic

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Recent Posts

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What I’m Reading

Isla's bookshelf: currently-reading

Birds of America
Birds of America
by Lorrie Moore
The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc.
The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc.
by Jonathan Lethem
The Souls of Black Folk
The Souls of Black Folk
by W.E.B. Du Bois
Bomb: The Author Interviews
Bomb: The Author Interviews
by BOMB Magazine
On Writing
On Writing
by Jorge Luis Borges

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