Wit's End by Karen Joy Fowler

Since reading the collection of short stories What I Didn't See, I've been going through Karen Joy Fowler's back catalog and snatching up anything that didn't have Jane Austen in the title. This book sounded great for a fun bit of a mystery reading, hopefully with Fowler's trademark emotional smarts.

And, in some ways, that is exactly what I got. Wit's End includes many of the elements that appear in Fowler's other work, such as an immortality cult with one surviving member whose founder was mysteriously exempt from the group's celibacy vow (the sweet and funny "Always"), mystery writers and their foibles ("Private Grave 9") and the strange ways that people do a number on one another (too many to mention). The plot centers around the mystery surrounding the relationship of godmother, famous mystery writer Addison Early, and her father—how exactly it began and what soured it. There are descriptions of meals that made my mouth water, images of Santa Cruz that jarred my memories of the place and lots of creepy letters. These parts kept me engaged and excited like a good genre book should.

But what I am gracelessly dancing around here?

I'm not spoiling anything by telling you that the main character, Rima, is twenty-nine and an orphan. She is grieving for both her mother and father, as a unit and separately. Their deaths color her life and make her feel set apart from other twentysomethings, apart from everyone. The thing is that not only are her parents dead, but her little brother is dead, too. He died at the same age as my little brother, from essentially the same cause. This worried me for many reasons--was this not going to be the light read I craved and what if the author got it wrong?

Fowler gets it right, that spectrum of feelings and experiences when someone (or everyone) you love dies. She shows how a person can live with those things and not be permanently broken through the voices of both Rima and Addison. The parts about grief sang with truth while being both simple and in service to the story. It felt good to read even as I shook with angry recognition:

"Rima was perpetually offended by the suggestion that luck should be graded on a curve. Of all of the false comforts she'd been recently offered, the most poisonous one was the one that told you to be grateful that you were better off somehow."

"There'd been an undertone in Scorch's* blog, maybe even in a few comments Addison had made had made, or maybe Rima had imagined it. You weren't supposed to love your brother more than anyone else in the world..."

"In telling the story to Rima and Tilda, her point was a different one. Sometimes something happens to you, she said, and there's no way to be the person you were before. You won't ever be that person again; that person's gone. There's a little freedom in every loss, no matter how unwelcome and unhappy that freedom may be."

I was also really into the idea that runs through the book that we make our own families. This was the subtle message that pulsed under all the loss--inspiring without any saccharine promises.

*Oh how I hate this character's name. Every time I would see it on the page I'd scoff a little then dive back in. I get the whole Santa Cruz, self-invented and kinda stupid young person name but it just didn't sit right.

Dear Christian,

I do not care to think about how old you would have been today. It has been too long and it is too hard. I am farther and farther away from being my favorite thing: a sister. This cannot be helped and I need all the help I can get.

Since the idea of creating a ritual around your birthday just never felt right, I'll simply tell you what I decided to do today:

1) I read selections from the collected Sugar columns by Cheryl Strayed on my subway ride home from work. These columns inspired me to write again with their "radical empathy," as Steve Almond called it, and the sheer love of life and words that jumped out at me when I clicked over every Thursday--a new ritual for a new life. I think "The Black Arc of It" helped B understand me better and I could never thank Strayed too much for that.

2) I began, and hope to finish, a review of Wit's End by Karen Joy Fowler. The book had a secret dead brother, who died at 19, just like you. The protagonist is incredibly angry, just like me. The handled this so well that it mitigated my sad shock at finding us on the page when I was just trying to read a good summer book.

3) When I finish my work I will play Skyrim and forget a bit.

4) You were so full of love that it inspires me to make more every day. So, today I will love B harder, even if he doesn't know it.

Sorry you got a list letter for your birthday, baby boy. I am all out of other ideas for today.

Miss you always,
Your sister

I'm stuck in the land of tiny bits with huge universes attached to them. Not only does this mean paper scraps, phrases pulled out of conversations, garlic, raw & cooked, it means short stories.

Start stopping through Black Glass by Karen Joy Fowler makes me go back to What I Didn't See (buy this book) and the two are making me want to try more stories. There is something invigorating about how the reader can feel the harnessed anger and sadness thrumming underneath the stories. My favorite thing about her stories are that they never go where I think that they are going. Surprise is the really the nicest treat.

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The seasons are truly screwing with me. How about you?

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This is an excellent essay about the Penn State child abuse conspiracy and the seemingly incomprehensible reaction of students to the firing of Joe Paterno by Brian Spears. My only complaint is that it is too short.

An awesome comic about depression, rendered in Paint, by the hi-lar Allie Brosh.


Fuck. The. Fucking. Beaches. A Tessa Brunton comic about chronic illness and the bullshit of being "positive" when life is awful.

And for something a bit lighter, here's a story about ghostbusting college kids in Malaysia over at PodCastle by Zen Cho, which shows how a great reading can change a story for the better. Reading by Tracey Yuen.

double good mail day

In the mail today, this time the correct size:
Photo from Tessa Brunton's site, because my pics kept coming out like I took them.

I'll need to make a few alterations to make it more boob-friendly.

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Re: yesterday's good mail day: I can't stop reading What I Didn't See by Karen Joy Fowler. The first story in the collection, "The Pelican Bar," winner of the 2010 World Fantasy Award for short story, broke my heart after pulling me in with excellent details and the truths of parents and children.