![]() ![]() ![]() In August 2019, the writer rents a hotel room in Clerkenwell and plays the flaneuse around the city. It’s clear that the subject is her late mother, but less obvious that the first-person narrator must be McCracken or that the framework she has set up – an American writer wanders London, seeing the sights but mostly reminiscing about her mother – is other than fiction. Is it autofiction or a bereavement memoir? Both and neither. The hero of this book is Elizabeth McCracken’s mother, Natalie (1935–2018). The Looking-Glass Sisters by Gøhril Gabrielsen *Other Peirene Press novellas I’ve reviewed: ![]() With thanks to Peirene Press for the free copy for review. (Translated from the Bosnian by Celia Hawkesworth) I wonder if this book is just what she would want to read right now … or the last thing she would want to think about. She was diagnosed in the summer and has already had surgery and a few rounds of chemo. The themes, tone and style all came together here for me, though I can see how this book might not be for everyone. I have a college friend who’s going through breast cancer treatment right now. Whether it’s a dream or a medication-induced hallucination, it feels mystical, like she’s part of a timeless lineage of wise women. However hard you try, you can’t count the floors.” One snowy morning, she imagines she’s being visited by a host of Medusa-like women in long black dresses who minister to her. The truest story about you, which words cannot grasp.”Īs forthright as it is about the brutality of cancer treatment, the novella can also be creative, playful and even darkly comic.Īlmost unbearable nausea delivers her into a new space: “Here, the only colours are black and red. The scars scrawled on it are the map of your journey. Her body will document what she’s been through: “Perfectly sculpted through all your defeats, and your victories. Even as she loses the physical signs of femininity, she remains resilient. Her father, alcoholic and perpetually ill, made her feel like she was an annoyance to him.Ĭoming of age in a female body was traumatic in itself now that same body threatens to kill her. In 2014, just a couple of months after her husband leaves her – making her, in her early forties, a single mother to a son and a daughter – she discovers a lump in her right breast.Īs she endures five operations, chemotherapy and adjuvant therapies, as well as endless testing and hospital stays, her mind keeps going back to her girlhood and adolescence, especially the moments when she felt afraid or ashamed. ![]() You knew on that day, sixteen years ago, when your mother’s diagnosis was confirmed, that you’d get cancer?Įver since that day, sixteen years ago, when your mother’s diagnosis was confirmed, that you’d never get cancer? How does the story crumbling under your tongue and refusing to take on a firm shape begin to be told? The gash goes from the right nipple towards your back, and after five centimetres makes a gentle curve up and continues to your armpit. Its struggle to feel whole while reality shatters it into fragments. It’s an intense work of autofiction about two years of hellish treatment for breast cancer, all the more powerful due to the second-person narration that displaces the pain from the protagonist and onto the reader. This is my eleventh translated novella from Peirene Press* and, in my opinion, their best yet. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |