ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS
between what he had read
and what had happened in the supermarket,
or what he had heard on the radio." (149)
Sarah Blake (b. 1960)
from her novel The Guest Book
*********
"It seems to me that when you look back at a life, yours or another's, what you see is a path that weaves into and out of deep shadow. So much is lost. What we use to construct the past is what has remained in the open, a hodgepodge of fleeting glimpses. Our histories...are structures built of toothpicks. So what I recall . . . is a construct both of what stands in the light and what I imagine in the darkness where I cannot see...." (302)
from his novel Ordinary Grace
*********
So this post is about spinning a web between several contemporary novels, and weaving a path of shared connections almost too numerous to track. Like the above narrators, I want to spin a web between what I've been hearing, seeing, and reading; to weave a path from from the supermarket to the library, from netflix to amazon, from Blake to Krueger, and beyond.
Reading all of these novels within a few weeks of each other, I repeatedly encountered not only the overarching themes of hope and despair (actually, more despair than hope in every case) but also a variety of odd coincidental details that continually caught me by surprise. How life affirming to connect the dots from one recurring motif to the next, searching and waiting for a pattern to emerge.
First of all, location is practically a character in each of the following stories. Time and place dominates each narrative, beautifully expressed in this initial description of Ann Arbor's Island Park:
a street, a field, a stand of trees,
which breaks into the dreams of its citizens
years after the dreamers have left home for good." (93)
Nancy Willard (1936 - 2017)
from her novel Things Invisible to See
*********
Check out the place names and locales, each so unique:
Things Invisible To See (1985)
Nancy Willard
Ann Arbor, Michigan (1940s)
Black Girl / White Girl (2006)
Joyce Carol Oates
Schuylersville & Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania (1974 - 1975)
Olive Kitteridge (2008)
Elizabeth Strout
Crosby, Maine (1970s - present day)
Ordinary Grace (2013)
William Kent Krueger
New Bremen, Minnesota (1961)
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine (2017)
Gail Honeyman
Glasgow, Scotland (present day)
The Guest Book (2019)
by Sarah Blake
New York City & Crockett's Island, Maine (1930s - present day)
Following the path that weaves in and out of these narratives, I encountered the following series of recurring thoughts and incidents that struck me as well worth jotting down as I moved from novel to novel:
1. How about those major league baseball subplots in Ordinary Grace and Things Invisible to See?
2. The deadly fires in Eleanor Oliphant and Black Girl / White Girl[There is also a similar fire in Deadwater Fell, a series that I happened to be watching at the same time]
3. The damaged childhoods of the title characters, Eleanor Oliphant and Olive Kitteridge (as well as her husband Henry, and her former student Kevin), and Generva Mead (the white girl of Black Girl / White Girl). For example:Eleanor is puzzled when an elderly friend says, "That's all you ever want for your kids: for them to be happy." She ponders this: "Was that what people wanted for their children, for them to be happy? It certainly sounded plausible" (164). For Eleanor, however, a survivor of childhood trauma and inadequate parenting, this has never been the case.
Nor for Generva, who thinks: "This woman who was my mother and whom I was obliged to love, to feel very sorry for and to love, to be embarrassed of, ashamed of, impatient and disgusted with yet to love, this woman and I were - what were we doing?...How rapidly my hippie-mom had changed. How furious, and radiant in her fury. I realized her contempt for me, in my naivete I had imagined it was I who felt a mild daughterly contempt for her....there was nice-Mommy and bad-Mommy the one hidden inside the other like a jack-in-the-box. I had not liked surprises as a child...toys that sprang up into my face....toys that erupted in noise." (135 - 36)
Generva's older brother confides bitterly, "I'll never forgive them, Genna. Those 'adults,' our parents. Exposing us to that life. You, at that age."
"Rickie, I'm fine, I lost my capacity for surprise, that's all."
"You don't know know what you lost, Genna. It's in the nature of loss, you never know." (220)
When she is 72 years old, Olive's adult son Christopher bravely confronts his mother after years of accomodating her passive-aggressive behavior: "I was hoping that things had changed, that this wouldn't happen. But, Mom, I'm not going to take responsibility for the extreme capriciousness of your moods. If something happened to upset you, you should tell me. That way we can talk....You kind of behave like a paranoid, Mom. You always have. At least a lot, anyway. And I never see you taking any responsibility for it. One minute you're one way, the next-you're furious. It's tiring, very wearing for those around you."
His wife Ann tries to help: "No one called you any names. Chris was only trying to tell you that your moods change kind of fast sometimes, and it's been hard. For him growing up, you know. Never knowing."
This only angers Olive further, but Christopher forges ahead with more courage than many adult children can muster: "You say you want to leave, then accuse me of kicking you out. In the past, it would make me feel terrible, but I'm not going to feel terrible now. Because this is not my doing. You just don't seem to notice your actions bring reactions...if you think about it, you'll see that the story is quite different. You have a bad temper. At least I think it's a temper. I don't really know what it is. But you can make people feel terrible. You made Daddy feel terrible....I'm not going to be ruled by fear of you, Mom." (228 - 30)
[Similar themes of child abandonment -- physical and emotional arise in Deadwater Fell, and in Joker - some fairly recent catch-up Covid viewing for Gerry and me]
4. The charming back - to - school imagery:
Olive Kitteridge: " . . . smelling the schoolroom smell . . . " (72)
Eleanor Oliphant:" . . . on a 'back-to-school shopping trip.' All three of us were allowed to choose new shoes and a new school-bag, and were kitted out with a brand-new uniform . . . Best of all, the trip culminated with a visit to WHSmith, where the riches of the stationery aisle were ours to plunder. Even the most recondite items (set squares, butterfly pins, treaury tags: what were these for?) were permitted, and this booty was then zipped into a large, handsome pencil case which was mine, mine, mine. I am not generally a wearer of perfume . . . but, were it possible to purchase a bottle in which the scent of new pencil shavings and the petroleum reek of a freshly rubbed eraser were combined, I would happily douse myself with it on a daily basis." (305 - 06)
5. The not - so - charming defiling / defacing of clothing with a black magic marker:
Olive Kitteridge: "The beige sweater is thick . . . Olive unfolds it quickly and smears a blackline of Magic Marker down one arm. Then . . . refolds the sweater hurriedly . . . " (72)
Black Girl / White Girl: "On March 7, 1975, Minette Swift claimed to have returned to her locker in the physical education building after gym class, to discover that a sweater of hers had been 'defiled' with a black marker pen. Minette did not want the incident formally reported because she didn't want 'more hassle' but she'd demanded of the dean of students that she be excused from physical education for the remainder of the term, and the dean had concurred." (200)
6. The specter of CVS as a harbinger of the charmless future's displacement of the quaint old - time, old - town, good old days.
Oridnary Grace: "Halderson's Drugstore is now a video store and tanning salon. The shop where Mr. Baake once held forth with barber scissors is called The Shear Delight and caters mostly to women. The police department still borders on the square, housed inside the same stone walls that were laid when the town was first platted. The interior, I've been told has been modernized but I have no desire to see it. For me it will always exist as it did that long ago summer night I first saw it . . . " (303)
Olive Kitteridge: "He passes by where the pharmacy used to be. In its place now is a large chain drugstore with huge glass sliding doors, covering the ground where both the old pharmacy and grocery store stood, large enought so that the black parkig lot where Henry would linger with Denise by the dumpster at day's end before getting into their separate cars -- all this is now taken over by a store that sells not only drugs, but huge rolls of paper towels and boxes of all sizes of garbage bags. Even plates and mugs can be bought there, spatulas, cat food. The trees off to the side have been cut down to make a parking lots. You get used to things, he thinks, without getting used to things." (15 - 16; 143)"Or, as Eleanor Oliphant says:
"It's both good and bad, how humans
can learn to tolerate pretty much anything,
if they have to." (210)
7. A couple of references to hymn singing:
Eleanor Oliphant: "When did people become embarrassed to sing in public? Was it because of the decline in churchgoing?...Surely this was the ultimate in disrespect - to attend a man's funeral and mumble during hymns which, however dreary, had been specifically selected to commemorate his life?...The words were incredibly sad, and...entirely without hope, or comfort, but still; it was our duty to sing them to the best of our ability, and to sing proudly, in honor of Sammy." (195)
Olive Kitteridge: Henry "opens the hymnal. 'A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing.' The words, the sound of the few people singing, make him both hopeful and deeply sad." (27)
8. What I call the miracle of oxygen, described with such lyrical accuracy in Ordinary Grace and Olive Kitteridge:
The dead. No more'n a breath.
You let that last one go and you're with them again. . . .
They're in our hearts and on our minds and in the end
all that separates us from them is a single breath,
one final puff of air." (305, 307)
William Kent Krueger (b 1950)
last line of his novel Ordinary Grace
and in Olive Kitteridge
" . . . the system of respiration alone
was miraculous, a creation by a splendid power." (15)
*********
In each of the above novels,
there is the breath of life.
Breathe deep and give them a try!
Always Be Breathing
Always Be Spinning ~ Always Be Weaving!
String Art by Sam
Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, November 28th
Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ "The Quotidian Life Is Not Always Easy"
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com
Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST ~ Location, Location, Location
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com
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