Significant Detail Archives - A Geography of Reading

This week I am surrounded by Romania from a thought-provoking post about what people will do for a better life to a search query for my favorite tea that instead returned an album of Romanian celebration music (in French). It all started in Sun Alley, Cecilia Ştefănescu’s award-winning novel about the intoxication and torment of forbidden love.

From the moment the young Sal first sees Emi joyously cutting apart his friends’ most prized magazines, he is enthralled with her and does everything he can to overcome the friends, parents, and life that try to keep them apart.

Central Mystery

More than a retelling of Romeo and Juliet, though, Sun Alley allows the characters to grow up. In fact, what I enjoyed most about this book was the split in time. Just as we are preparing to find out what happens when Sal and Emi prepare to run away from Sun Alley together, the time period flashes suddenly forward to an adult Sal and Emi. We discover that their attempt to flee was unsuccessful (as seemed inevitable) but we don’t learn why or how until much later.

Instead, Ştefănescu keeps the unfinished quality of their love affair in sharp focus. Though they are married to other people, they again find that they cannot bear to be apart and embark on a long, adulterous affair with all of the usual stakes. I’m not trying to be flip, but it’s obvious that husband, wife, and children cannot keep Sal and Emi apart any more than friends and parents could.

Their childhood separation is alluded to over and over as the chapters flash back and forward in time which creates a delicious tension because although we know they are (somewhat) together now, we are constantly reminded how fragile that relationship is because it has been broken before. The wonderful structure conceals as much as it reveals and I started to think about how our shifting memories betray us over time.

Other Mysteries

“He cringed in terror. He knew quite well what was on that table. It was someone. A human being, a body, a creature.” – Cecilia Ştefănescu

There is a second mystery in this book, that of a dead body young Sal finds in a basement one afternoon. It’s a truly creepy scene and made me think about how children really act versus how we like to think they act. I think this book erred on the side of how they really act, though, and it was a good lesson for me about not being squeamish about letting your characters follow their paths. I’m glad Ştefănescu didn’t take a more restrained approach to Sal’s interaction with the body, but I do wish that the body subplot was a more integrated part of the story throughout. There were echoes of it and the resolution (which I will not spoil for you) is just right, but I lost the trail sometimes as I focused on Sal and Emi’s love affair.

Significant Detail

Details show a reader where to focus. When something is important, a writer will often layer in more and more detail to signal to the reader that it’s time to really examine a scene. In the case of Sun Alley I was lost in the detail for nearly all of the first chapter. There are readers who love having every sense titillated along the way as they enter a world. I usually look for a bit more guidance and this overly detailed beginning left me grasping for understanding.

“He thought a while and then lightly touched the cockroach’s hump with his nail. It stopped, curled up and slowly moved its legs, seemingly begging to be left alive. Sal lifted his finger and sat down on the kerb next to the cockroach.” – Cecilia Ştefănescu

This is a stylistic choice and some very popular books like Atonement use the same approach. On rereading this beginning, I found that Ştefănescu does as good of a job at tying these descriptions to her overall theme as McEwan does (which is to say she does it very well), but it still drives me a little nuts.

Writing True Dialogue

One of my favorite parts of the book is a fight that Sal and Emi have at the end. I won’t quote it for you here because I don’t want to reveal too much, but writing a good, tense dialogue is something I struggle with. Here Ştefănescu lays out two characters who are standing their ground firmly and we as readers can see that there are moments when they are talking about completely different things without realizing it. So there is conflict and tension and possible resolution but the scene is so well written that I can easily believe one might never see what the other is truly saying. That’s an art and a delicate balance and Ştefănescu does it very well.

Although the ethnologist in me hoped that something about this book would come off distinctly Romanian and I’d learn more about Ştefănescu’s country of origin, I was not at all disappointed to find instead a book that will appeal to anyone who has ever experienced the joy and suffering of forbidden love.

If this review made you want to explore Sun Alley, pick up a copy from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Significant Detail

Driven from her village in Mexico by a civil war that kills her family, young Gabriela faces many hardships. Remick uses details like a “cotton blouse embroidered by hand in the faint light of the evening fire” to convey tender allusions to what Gabriela’s life must have been like before the war. When La Patrona, a woman who has “rescued” Gabriela, then takes this blouse and says she will burn it, the reader has a deeper understanding of how fully the woman is stripping away the essence of Gabriela.

When Gabriela craves a pair of white Nikes, it is easy to see that what she is really craving is a life like the Norteñas who wear these shoes. Later, Gabriela will be coaxed into other shoes, but even then the Nikes serve as a grounding point to indicate how much Gabriela is changing.

Objective Correlative

Terrible things happened to Gabriela when the war came to her village. Remick could have detailed them and we’d be struck by the horror without ever really getting inside Gabriela’s experience. Instead, Remick creates a correlation in Gabriela’s mind between toads and the horrible events—events that she refuses to quite remember. The reader sees her visceral reaction over and over anytime toads cross her path and in this way learns to empathize with her.

Remick builds on Gabriela’s reaction to toads throughout the story. What makes this relationship for me is when Gabriela begins remembering times of innocence that involved toads as well. The glimpse at what life was like before is heartbreaking and the tension between the dark and light memories makes both exponentially more touching.

Myths Retold

Gabriela finds safety in the North where she takes care of an ailing widow whose memory is failing. Gabriela helps her work on a list of objects and photographs and what they meant in the woman’s life. In return, La Viuda teaches Gabriela about what it means to be a woman. Though La Viuda has a somewhat colored view of the experience of womanhood, she doesn’t let her life turn her into a Miss Havisham. Instead, La Viuda intersperses myths and stories of great women with her own stories. Through tales about everyone from Helen of Troy to Xipe Totec, she helps Gabriela create an identity based on strength and womanhood as she transfers her life force to the young girl.

There are hundreds of things I could say about the reasons I loved this book—like the way Gabriela and La Viuda seamlessly slip from English to Spanish and back in their conversations, the magical realism (especially in relation to mirrors), or how in answer to La Viuda’s aging forgetfulness, Remick creates a shifting repetition that grounds the reader and also builds the narrative. What you need to know is the elegant craft reveals just the right amount of information to engage you, the reader, in telling the story.

Jack Remick can teach and he can sure as hell write. Read Gabriela and the Widow and find the things that speak to your writing. You’ll fall in love with the story and you’ll be a better writer for it. Although my work schedule doesn’t allow for weekday afternoons at Louisa’s anymore, I am grateful I can pick up Gabriela and learn from her and from Jack any old time.

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