Tangled Rope

“Affinity” (1999) is the kind of novel that proves why I resist reading book covers or reviews, and instead rely almost solely on recommendations from friends, who are sensitive enough not to spoil the plot nor pigeon-hole the book or writer into a particular genre. Set in London in the late 1800s Sarah Waters‘s second novel follows–and indeed the style feels so voyeuristic at times that one is following–30-year-old spinster Margaret Prior as she seeks to rehabilitate her mental health after a pair of traumatic events: her father’s death, and an accident that nearly cost her life. Her therapy includes a nightly ritual of chloral to calm her “nerves”, and visits to the female inmates at Millbank prison (naturally).

It seems a slow starter for a “ghost story”, but this primary narrative, told through Margaret’s diary entries, is interspersed with the journals of spiritualist Selina Dawes, an inmate at Millbank known for her remarkable ability to communicate with the dead, and her questionable involvement in the death of her wealthy patron.

Really, that’s all I can say about the plot without spoiling it–and it deserves to be kept fresh.

Waters’s masterful writing slowly, almost imperceptibly pulls Margaret into Selina’s mystery, until a chain reaction is triggered, and the reader is confounded by bizarre possibilities and countered expectations that seem too disparate to entwine. Yet the narrative is entwined, in the end; the mystery is solved, though not packaged, and the fate of Margaret and Selina demands its emotional response. Waters makes this work in part by (1) hooking the reader into an empathetic response for both Margaret and Selina (indeed, she fairly manages to make one care about /all/ her characters, even those who antagonize our heroine), and (2) neither proving nor dismissing any possible theory prematurely, from Selina’s psychical powers to the intentions of the Millbank wardens to Margaret’s own drug-confused veracity. The narrative itself is captivating and special; Waters’s execution of the prose is enviable and unsettling.

I don’t quite have it in me this month to spend the hours necessary writing a review of one last poem from Best American Poetry 2009. I thought I would, and pushed my intention two weeks into the new year, but one has to let somethings go. There are books to read, letters to write, poems to finish, fiction to thresh, teaching to do, presentations to plan, children to play with, a house to keep up, films to watch, panic to wrestle with, sleep to catch up on, friends to visit, cards to organize, etc., etc.

But I will list a handful of notable poems from BAP 09 that I either thought about or planned to review before the year was out (from top to bottom):

1. J. D. McClatchey, “Lingering Doubts” (p 84). Incredibly dense and curious. I’m still several readings from comprehending this one, but I want to.
2. Pattiann Rogers, “A Blind Astronomer in the Age of Stars” (p 108). A moving, human poem that uses language to explore, in and out, as well as describe.
3. P. Hurshell, “In Winter” (p 60). Because it is winter, and beacuse it cuts so sharply from image to image while maintaining its theme.
4. Jeanne Murray Walker, “Holding Action” (p 137). It may be sentimental, simplistic, or just another metapoem, but I liked the collection of imagery all tied to the potential of letters (ambiguity intended, I think) to preserve that which we love.
5. Christine Marshall, “Sweat” (p 80). Because unlike the man in the introductory quote, I’m OK (and more) with a sweating girl.
6. Phillis Levin, “Open Field” (p 70). I didn’t have enough time to decipher it, but I still like it.
7. Mitch Sisskind, “Like a Monkey” (p 117). After too many mediocre Adam/Eve/Eden poems I rashly dismissed this amusing and poignant postmodern love poem on first read.
8. Sarah Lindsay, “Tell the Bees” (p 74). Leads an intimate, enigmatic path through a local environment that is both alien and familiar.
9. Albert Goldbarth, “Zones” (p 31). Bizarre and memorable imagery.
10. Denise Duhamel, “How It Will End” (p 24). I didn’t want it to, but this poem stuck with me for weeks.

There may be a couple on this list that I’d cut on another reading, but there are probably a couple from BAP 09 that I missed, either from failed memory or misunderstanding. Until BAP10 in December…

The second poem in The Best American Poetry 2009 is Caleb Barber’s “Beasts and Violins” (Caleb’s forthcoming book is titled the same, likely for the prominence of this poem in the anthology). I tried to leave this poem alone as I read through BAP09, but kept coming back for another look. Here’s the poem:

Beasts and Violins

I wandered the house looking for a blank notebook
today, until I found one of the small spiral ones
I prefer. It had tacky shots of mountain climbers
on the cover, and read "Dig In!" with bright letters.
I don't prefer the styling, but appreciate the portability.
And though it was in my house, the notebook
wasn't mine, and wasn't empty.

Inside it had lists. Lists of bands, places, problems
--with notes detailing why my ex-girlfriend was unhappy.
My name appeared on most pages. It was hers,
left on a bookshelf for over one year.
She always kept lists, as if her life could be categorized
into columns of good and bad, written repeatedly
like an incantation, banishment spell, or scale.

There was a section detailing which albums
were best of the year, another with her all-time favorite
movies. One more with the pros and cons
of her parents, and a paragraph on how
I was controlling and didn't care. There was a travelogue
of notable locations in the desert Southwest,
filled out with names of people we had known
in a little town. I even found some suggestions
that, by now, she was only with me for the dogs.

Still, it was only a quarter full of this shit,
and I wanted the notebook. So I ripped out her pages,
stuck them in the winter fire. It made me
happy. Filled me up, like I was drunk
in a train-car lounge, and every time I checked my wallet,
I would find another twenty. Maybe there
would be weeper country music playing
and I'd be hoping the fiddle would take the melody,
and in the last thirty seconds, it would.
The suspense would be all worth it. The heartache
would become transcendent. I'd jump
off my stool and dance right there on the train.
The snow would be too high for the wolves
to give chase. Their eyes would cut tree limbs
as they raised their heads to howl.

I actually disliked this poem on the first reading. But I left it confused, thanks to those wonderful closing lines, and came back to it within the hour. I’ve re-read it several times since, each time wondering if what I like about the poem is stronger than what I dislike, or if what I dislike is only what the poet intends for me to dislike in the narrator, or if perhaps what I like is only that image of the wolves.

(You may have noticed I’m often indecisive about a poem.)

The poem is written in a casual, narrative style, and without much of the musicality or rhythm that I prefer in a poem. The poetics are instead concentrated in the poet’s emphasis on lines, which serve the poem’s story. The story itself is irritating. The narrator is a writer, who, searching for a notebook, finds his ex-girlfriend’s journals composed of a series of lists. The narrator reads many of the entries, finds himself accused in them, burns the offending pages, then imagines how that feeling has set him free.

Though the reading of the journal goes on a bit long, it does provide insight into the ex-girlfriend’s world views and desires in order to contrast this perspective with the narrator’s later on. This perspective is summarized by, “She always kept lists, as if her life could be categorized”, explaining a stubbornness to cling to past events and force at least a superficial order on a resistant world. There are also complaints about the narrator, “–with notes detailing why my ex-girlfriend was unhappy. /
My name appeared on most pages.” It may be the accusatory nature of notes, but I think it is also the simple attention to the past that disgusts the narrator, and he sees the notebook as a kind of emotional baggage. Indeed, the “portability” of the notebook emphasizes that the ex carried all of these things of the past around with her.

In contrast to his ex, the narrator seems to focus on the future, not the past, and does not interested in cataloging the good and the bad of his life. Instead, he liberates himself even of the ex’s lists by burning the pages, and imagining himself somewhere else. The narrator also appreciates that aspect of portability because it allows him to be on the move. The imagined train-car near the end of the poem reinforces this desire for mobility, and is a nice contrast with the ex’s “travelogue”. For the narrator, the train is a vehicle for the realization of his immediate desires, a manifestation of escape, trundling on the scene just as he liberates himself from the lists and their exposure of the past.

Whereas the ex valued the notebook for its collection of remembrances, it appears the narrator values the notebook for it’s potential, it’s blankness. After reading the compiled complaints, he doesn’t destroy the notebook:

Still, it was only a quarter full of this shit,
and I wanted the notebook. So I ripped out her pages,
stuck them in the winter fire.

He keeps the notebook for his own writing–a canvas for his artistic powers. This desire for aesthetic potential is revisited at the end of the poem, when the narrator anticipates the climax of the “weeper country” song, a projection not unlike how the poet sometimes magically projects an aesthetic desire through a poem onto a blank page.

This inclination to project into the future describes the narrator as a character of hope. Commenting on the conclusion of the song on the train:

The suspense would be all worth it. The heartache
would become transcendent

This is interesting, because its an imagined song on an imagined train, and the narrator imagines that he predicts–rather, controls its ending.

I’d be hoping the fiddle would take the melody,
and in the last thirty seconds, it would.

And yet this projective desire echoes the ex’s complaint, “I was controlling and didn’t care.” Does he care? No. He doesn’t care to reflect, any way. He doesn’t care about his ex-girlfriend’s honest perspective, or about his own personal flaws (“this shit”, he calls the lists in the notebook), nor the notebook itself as her personal property (“I wanted the notebook. So I ripped out her pages”). The narrator’s obliviousness to these character failings contributed heavily to the voice of the poem in my reading, and it was this voice that annoyed me almost to the point of abandoning the poem.

I’m glad I did not, however, for as I finished the poem I speculated as to the fictitiousness of the poem. I couldn’t imagine that the narrator reflected the poet absolutely, for we are self-conscious, and rarely present ourselves in a bad light. This poem, in my mind, sets the narrator as a fairly unlikeable, oblivious character, and so I watched closely for some evidence that this portrait was intentional by the poet. Cut, then, to the bar on the train, where the narrator imagines himself alone, happy, anticipating nothing but good fortune, leaving behind his ex, her burned pages and the evidence they may have spoken against him. Then the ending lines:

The snow would be too high for the wolves
to give chase. Their eyes would cut tree limbs
as they raised their heads to howl.

This piercing image of the chasing wolves is almost too lovely for me to comment on. As far as the narrative goes, it does suggest one of two things: either the narrator believes he is hounded for simply being who he is (prey to hungry wolves), or he is fleeing from those who might rightly hunt and seek revenge upon him. If the latter, the narrator finally reveals what I at least insisted on throughout the poem: the narrator is imperfect, indeed, has done wrong, and there is a kind of karmic justice that he must elude. “Their eyes would cut tree limbs” I take to be an equivalent of the expression “go pound sand”, and so, with the pages burnt and the train barreling along the track to some far off land, the narrator is free–for now. That he celebrates this escape in drunkenness, transcending “heartache” to dance a jig, seems to befit his character, one who chooses ignorance for the sake of personal pleasure. The theme of personal liberation is the capstone of the poem, and it shines with a delightful image. But the tempered, or at least complicated, by what dim view of the imperfect narrator one may take from the preceding narrative.

Enjambment

I noticed that this poem’s poetics were concentrated on the line, and this is apparent especially through the poet’s use of enjambment. “My name appeared on most pages. It was hers,”. “It” refers to the notebook, but is made ambiguous because of the line break, thus pointing to “My name”. If the contents of the notebook is any indication, his name does belong to her. She has made it hers in part by writing it onto the pages, in lists, “written repeatedly / like an incantation, banishment spell, or scale.”

Enjambment also serves to emphasize how the narrator is made free: after he’s had too much of her lists, “I ripped out her pages, / stuck them in the winter fire. It made me” The end of this sentence, on the next line, is “happy.” But I think the act also defines him, so in a way it does make (or remake) him.

Speculation on the title

Anytime I encounter the phrase “___ and violins” I think of the Talking Heads song, “Sax and Violins” composed for the excellent soundtrack to Wim Wender’s film “Until the End of the World”. “Sax and Violins” is, of course, a play on the phrase “sex and violence”, a strange pairing of topics meant to suggest a certain morality. From there it’s not too far of a leap to connect “beasts” with carnality, and thus sex. This connection is made stronger by an understanding of the ex-girlfriend associated with the wolves that chase the narrator–the only literal beasts in the poem. Strangely, a conversion of “sex” to “beasts” (and their association with the guilt and displeasure from his ex) defeats much of the allure of the noun, and performs a useful reversal from the narrator’s point of view, where the ex-girlfriend is no longer an object of desire, but rather one of passive vindictiveness. In the poem the violins become the “fiddle”, the instrument that plays a triumphant, climactic, physically loosed ending to the “weeper country song”. “Violins” is thus released or ameliorated from the paired word “violence”, signaling escape and beauty. If I’m not reading too much into the title, it’s a curious reversal in a poem that is carved out of contrasts and reversals.

It’s the end of a long week, and the beginning of the end of a long semester. But I’m committed to packing in a couple reviews of poems from this year’s Best American Poetry anthology before the week is over. I’ve been finding few of the poems easy, fewer poems really difficult, which leaves most of the poems somewhere in the middle. Over half-way through the anthology (with some skipping around) I’ve found just a dozen that I’ve liked enough to read more than twice, and only a 3 or 4 that I might want to keep.

One of those is Michael Johnson’s poem “How to Be Eaten by a Lion”. Even before I read the poem I thought I knew it by title (it’s possible I’ve read it before, thought I don’t recall ever picking up a copy of The Mid-American Review). As you’ll see hereit’s difficult for me to say exactly what it means beyond the surface, but the poem stuck. I may have been entrapped solely by the clear, rich imagery; or by the interweaving of a darkly humorous didacticism of its voyeuristic narrator (“Try not to scream”, he quietly suggests, “for it devalues you.”). Or it may be the significance I sense but can not quite see, like a large object in a dark room.

The imagery really stands on its own; everything described is made sharp, not too dense, fresh, but never completely alien or overly verbose–much like the crystal clear flashbulb-type memories we might store as cortisol shocks our body into recognizing, remembering the details of a stressful event.

As delightful as the imagery and the music of Johnson’s language is, I’ve spent more time on the meaning of the poem.The poem is framed by the hypothetical, if but proceeds through the events step-by-step, by a calm, certain narrator who’s helpful instructions may mean the difference between dying ignobly at the paws of a wild beast, and … dying memorably at the paws of a wild beast. The black humor of the narration moves from precise, even wondrous description toward points ridiculous. For example,

It may seem soft, barely a blow,
more like a falling, an exquisite giving
of yourself to the ground

Yet the narrator’s sincerity gives some veracity to the meaning, and indeed I felt I remembered being thus assaulted by a lion, so my mind was willing to suspend its disbelief, and even connect real, if generalized, memories with Johnson’s strong descriptions. When was I last felled by a lion, or something lion-like? I find myself asking.

Not too long ago, if we extrapolate the lion to represent nature, or fate, or death, or even the daily challengers that sometimes lurk and sometimes pounce. So though the hypothetical nature may be the poets way of saying, of course we know this is not happening, especially to sheltered Americans like us. But it’s the narrator’s aloof, seriousness instruction that prompts me to ask, what if it were? What could we learn? To this end the poem makes two primary impressions: 1. dying in the mouth of nature is elegant, even noble; 2. death/defeat is inevitable, so pay attention to the good stuff while you can.

It could be something more, or something less. It could be a critique of objectivity, illustrated through the passionless voyeur narrator. It could be merely a concern with callousness toward violence, ignorance of real violence, and even the visual representation of violence. And there’s certainly room for a strong feminist critique of this work.

I’d like to think there is something more than this. By pushing the reader into the role of the victim, the poem lets us forget that we humans are also great hunters, devourers of flesh, and destroyers of life; that is our role in nature. It reminds us also that we have beasts within, beasts which may destroy. The lion has no choice, and is not to be questioned, let alone thwarted; the narrator makes this clear enough. But what do we do with our primal nature? How do we direct our killer instincts, our blind hungers, our conquering desires? Do we ignore them, pretend they do not exist? Are we as helpless as both the victim and the observer in this poem seem to be, do we keep counsel on how to die nobly, but not how to fight?

The first poem from The Best American Poetry 2009 that I’ve chosen to discuss this December is Bruce Bond’s “Ringtone”, a rough sonnet which presents a curious phenomenon connected with a massacre at a university, likely a Virginia Tech-style incident. The focus of the poem—the tingling of pop music ringtones emanating from dead students’ pockets as they are wheeled away—is inventive and unsettling, a new perspective on a type of tragedy that is now too familiar in the US.

Ringtone

As they loaded the dead onto the gurneys
to wheel them from the university halls,
who could have predicted the startled chirping
in those pockets, the invisible bells
and tiny metal music of the phones,
in each the cheer of a voiceless song.
Pop mostly, Timberlake, Shakira, tunes
never more various now, more young,
shibboleths of what a student hears,
what chimes in the doorway to the parent
on the line. Who could have answered there
in proxy for the dead, received the panic
with grace, however artless, a live bird
gone still at the meeting of the strangers.

More disturbing than the fact that the phones go off in the students’ pockets after they are dead, they go off in many pockets simultaneously, as if an orchestrated practical joke. Considering the tragedy, we must conclude that the calls are from worried friends or relatives, who heard about the event too late, probably from the news, and are calling to see if everything’s alright.

The reader knows everything’s not alright, and that gives tough irony and a helpless sense to the reader. “Who could have answered there / in proxy for the dead, received the panic / with grace…” The undetected fear, concern, and predictive sorrow that those calls might carry casts greater irony on the fact that the calls are signaled by “Pop mostly, Timberlake, Shakira, tunes / never more various now…” This variety is defined by the clashing of the ringtones going off simultaneously, and reminds us that though the students are identified as little more than “they” by the narrator, each was individual, took pleasure in music, and defined one part of themselves through that music by the act of choosing it as a personal ringtone.

Finally, these “invisible bells” suggest a death toll, one which the students carry with them, indeed might always have carried with them, though that the ringtones may be so portentous would never have occurred to them.

Now that’s what I’ve found to be clearly in the poem. But I thought I sensed something more, that the pop music ringtones are a more cynical indicator of the students’ transience, and perhaps their failure to distinguish themselves by anything more than the tastes they adopt. The narrator doesn’t give us much more than a general category for these students—indeed, doesn’t even define that they are students (an implication I made from “university” and “Pop mostly”). Neither does the narrator look at them beyond their ringtones—I admit this may be due to the constraints of the form, or a desire to keep a tighter focus on the items I’ve mentioned above, or even simply because the identity of the students is uninteresting or unimportant to the poet’s purpose (indeed this may say something about how we the public view victims of a tragedy: “not us, them“).

Yet there’s a pretty significant contrast in the nameless, faceless, inanimate students carrying a lively set of pop tunes by artists who, though surely doomed to be victims of changing pop tastes and, inevitably, their own dying, are named by the poet, creating at least a glimmer of their survival beyond death. The students themselves have contributed to the artists’ defiance of time and death, carried beyond the students’ lives even as they are literally carried by the students. And that’s all we know of the students; indeed, and at risk of sounding callous, that may be all they’ve left behind.

Form

I suggested that “Ringtone” is a rough sonnet, and I’m sticking to that. Composed of 14 lines that more often than not have 5 feet, though rarely iambs, the most convincing evidence that the form is sonnet is the slant, assonant, and other near rhymes. Surprisingly, it was the musicality of the slant rhymes that tipped me off (certainly not the rhythm, which I had a very hard time scanning), which means it works. It is an English sonnet, with the scheme abab cdcd efef gg. In the “a” you must find the “ur–ee” in “gurneys” and “chirping”; in “b” its slant rhyme of “halls” and “bells”; and so on. The final rhymed pair is perhaps the most disparate of the poem: the “ur” in “bird” and “strangers”. Does this signal the poet’s understanding that the poem, like the vent described, can not be neatly concluded with any of the finality and import that sonnets usually bring in that final rhyming pair?

Continuing my commentary on certain essays from Spreading the Word: Editors on Poetry I turn to the next essay in the collection, “When the Search Succeeds” by editor and poet Richard Foerster.

Foerster observes, “Literary editing … is at best a balance between disinterested judgment and an indulgence of personal tastes”, and most satisfying when it enables him to share “personal enthusiasms with others through the printed page”.

As an example, he offers Jane Flanders’s Pushcart Prize winning poem, “The House That Fear Built: Warsaw, 1943″. Foester first encountered this poem read aloud by poet herself. Foerster remarks on its sound and sound effects, and reminding us of Pope’s argument that “The sound must seem an echo to the sense”, and adding, “I wanted to see this poem after I heard it.”

The “sense” of the poem is deepened by use of “double-edged words”, chosen with care by the poet. But more remarkable is how this poem literally repeats itself (with a variation in point of view) each stanza, building meaning to a whole by adding new lines. Foerster remarks on this “unfolding of meaning”, explaining how the poem moves “from a close-up to a panorama”–this is, I think, how many good poems are effective, focusing on a specific part to relate a larger whole, perhaps directly through the poem, or by moving the reader to understand the world differently.

I recently sent a friend a birthday copy of Spreading the Word: Editors on Poetry, a collection of 16 essays by editors of literary magazines published in the late 80s and reprinted through 2001. Neither of us are literary editors; we are both fairly excited (and excitable) about poetry, and I at least fancy myself a writer of poems from time to time. This collection provides some fairly interesting insights into the business, but more importantly some clear ideas about what makes a poem “publishable”.

The essays each center on one or two poems by a single author published by the editor, with the editor’s explanation of why that poet was chosen, and what that choice reveals about their own particular process of selection and editing. I intend to summarize key points from each of these essays over the next little while, to both share the insights and maintain a record for my own benefit.

David St. John, poet and editor of The Antioch Review penned the essay “On Editing”, which features two poems by Jane Hirshfield “In that World, The Angels Wear Fins” and “In a Net of Blue and Gold”.

David includes the following reflections on the task of editing:

• read widely in literary magazines “to … have as complete a sense as possible of who is publishing what”
• publish a poet only once during editor’s tenure
• avoid falling into patterns
• “there are millions of ‘competent’ and well-written poems…the poems I wished to published were … more eccentric, demanding, difficulty…’risky’”
• good screeners are invaluable, must know what is and is not desired, what to exclude and what to let through

On the Hirshfield poems David reveals, “each time I returned…I learned something new about them, and about myself as well. … Like all the best poems, they yielded slowly, like blossoms unfolding.”

Meg Rosoff‘s How I Live Now is a keen, slightly daring, and tremendously human little novel aimed at the “young adult” crowd. I picked it up not sure what I’d find, expecting, at least, to wrestle with the ill-deserved controversy that rose up around its main character, 15-yr-old Daisy. To my surprise this unimposing-looking book slowly caught me in it several tendrils and squeezed gently, then tightly.

The novel is a story of dislocated young people surviving a war. More specifically it revolves around Daisy, an American girl with an eating disorder, sent to live with her aunt and cousins in Great Britain. The small farm home Daisy joins is a complete reverse of the loveless life she was accustomed to in New York with her father and step-mother, and the change is not unwelcome. Soon after arriving, however, war breaks out around the world, the kids are left on their own, and Daisy happens falls madly in love with cousin Edmond.

There’s a lot to talk about in this book, but most remarkable is the voice that Rosoff has transliterated for Daisy. Daiy’s narration reads like an authentic, stream of reflection, running on from sentence to sentence, needless of quotes or cautious rhetoric. Here’s a short passage describing the romance that erupts between her and Edmond, who has an uncanny ability to empathize–even answer people’s thoughts:

After some more time I tried an experiment by thinking something very very quietly to myself, and then nothing happened for ages, Edmond just lay there with his eyes closed and I felt a little disappointed and a little relieved all at the same time and then just as I was moving on to the other things in my head, he propped himself up on one elbow and looked at me with a little half-smile and then kissed me on the mouth so gently and sweetly, and then we kissed again, only not quite so sweetly.

And after a little while of this my brain and my body and every single inch of me that was alive was flooded with the feeling that I was starving, starving, starving for Edmond.

And what a coincidence, that was the feeling I loved best in the world.

This closing sentence grabbed me because it seemed so simplistic, almost naive, but I allowed for it, keeping it in mind as Daisy’s personality emerged. Later I was able to look back and be certain this was just another sign of Rosoff’s control her character.

To this end, I’m still considering how exactly Rosoff manages such a convincing, even captivating, exploration of the Daisy’s world through a sometimes cumbersome style, and halting language. Another passage, after Daisy and young cousin Piper witness the slaughter of two companions by the Enemy:

…our driver didn’t wait around to see what might happen next but just stepped on the gas and as we drove away I thought I felt tears on my face but when I put my hand up to wipe them it turned out to be blood and noboday made a single sound but just sat there shell-shocked and all I could think about was poor Major M lying there in the dust though I guess he was much too dead to notice.

There never were seven more silent human beings in the back of the truck, we were too stunned even to cry or speak. When we reached Reston Bridge our driver, who I knew was a close friend of the Major’s, got out of the truck and stood there for a minute trying to get up the courage to go inside and tell Mrs. M what happened, but first he turned to us and said in a voice that sounded broken and full of rage, In case anyone needed reminding This is a War.

And the way he said those words made me feel like I was falling.

Even the occasional figure of speech (“shell-shocked”, “full of rage”) is used with purpose, to lend authenticity to the young girl’s voice (a habit which Rosoff chooses to utilize throughout, rather bravely, I think, in the face of possible lashings from those who fear anything resembling a cliche), who is challenged with presenting an entirely new world with language she has not personally experienced before. Equally impressive are the descriptions of action and scene that happen purely and naturally through the narration. I purposely omitted the description of the murders that proceed this passage, but they are dense and surgically accurate, and I can think of few other recent first-person narratives that do this as convincingly in first-person.

The strong, natural description of a narrative both shocking and authentic is really in my eyes made perfect by Rosoff’s style and attention to her characters’ inner worlds–even those we don’t get to see but through Daisy’s eyes. Together How I Live Now is a brilliant gem that I was pleased to stumble upon, and has sent me to discover more of Rosoff’s fiction.

John Harwood‘s The Seance is the sort of novel that I love to pick up, not necessarily because of its “literary” merits (though The Seance is fairly well-endowed), but because the narrative captivates, holds me in my chair for chapter upon chapter, well past the time I should have set it down for the day.

Harwood has composed a faithful Victorian-era gothic/horror novel, one complete with an old mansion, secrete passages, thunderstorms, phantoms, delirium, diaries, mysterious old armor, and the classic tension between the supernatural and science.

Told through the records of several nested narratives, The Seance tells the story of Constance Langton’s encounter with the cursed Wraxford Hall, and the lingering mysteries of its former occupants.

When Constance Langton’s 2-year-old sister dies and sets her mother into a catatonic state of mourning, Constance seeks aid from the Other Side to comfort her mother and restore familial harmony. She discovers nothing but charlatanry and unintended consequences that leave her entirely bereft of family.

She finds some hope in a sudden inheritance passed down by an unknown and distant relative that sets her as proprietress of the cursed Wraxford hall. She receives with this several journals that document the Hall’s possession by its most recent masters, including a cold-hearted mesmerist and his wife, Eleanor, a reluctant medium trapped between the threat of psychosis and misery.

Constance allows a society of paranormal investigators access to the supposedly haunted Wraxford Hall, only to discover that several members of the group have very personal motives.

Part of the reason this novel is so attractive is that Harwood utilizes conventions of the genre without falling into ridiculousness. Indeed, he manages to renew many of these through smooth writing that focuses on legitimate description of people, place, and action.

The novel is clearly not a pure horror work intended to deliver wave upon wave of chills and frights; instead, it allows for narrative mystery but also fosters questions of psychology and philosophy that lead the reader to a more generalized consideration of mystery as a natural by-product of human-recorded history. The story is told through artifacts and heresay of the past, and it is a past that Constance trusts to hold a truth that will satisfy her own longings.

So just as there is a tension between science and the supernatural, Harwood interests us also in the tension between “History” and the subjective views of an individual. The historical narratives given to Constance in good faith eventually fray and twist against her own projections and desires, enriching the mystery of the narrative even to the final pages.

The Seance is a light mystery, not wholly unpredictable, but with sufficiently strong characterization, rich and satisfying plotting, and clear voices to make up for any of that. It failed me a bit on my expectations of horror, and even the titular seance seemed more ancillary than necessary. And though I didn’t find The Seance to be a weighty, philosophical tome, it also does accomplish some of what good works of literature should, by engaging the reader in questions that move us beyond the superficial aspects of narrative and characterization. In this case, Harwood asks us to consider individuals’ role in shaping their identity in context of the history that is constantly recorded in one way or another.