Jesi Bender’s Child of Light is a masterclass in narrative in-betweens. Bender writes beautiful, evocative prose and descriptions that are both startling and disturbing. The story is both narratively complex with several throughlines, and deceptively simple. The novel follows Ambrétte Memenon, a thirteen-year-old young woman moving with her family to Utica, New York in 1886. Ambrétte herself is imprisoned in a twilight land of “in-betweens.” For instance, her father only speaks French, her mother and brother are bilingual, and she only speaks in English. The book uses the main character’s feelings of being trapped between two words to launch into experimentations with structure, perspective, and language. The form of the book is both a testament to what novels can accomplish and breaks all conventions with a reckless abandon
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Human life mimics nature’s seasons and their complex tensions. Sometimes it is an easy and mild transition into a new phase. Other times, it is a violent and distinct change that leaves one feeling ill prepared and unsettled. More commonly, it is a slow transition filled with inconsistency and wavering.
Annette Sisson skillfully weaves the complexities of grief throughout her poetry collection, Winter Sharp with Apples. The book’s title is a reminder that even in bitter times, such as a sharp winter, life will present moments of hope and sweetness, as depicted through the image of the apple.
“Fugitive essays”—the subtitle of Roger Reeves’ essay collection Dark Days—exists as a diminutive outlier on the book’s abstract orange and black cover. Positioned out at the margin, its small font rises vertically as if insisting, by its obvious contrast to the bold and horizontal title that reigns next to it, to have its insinuations considered. I think about the meaning of the word fugitive and I am immediately bombarded by the typical connotations that leach from its letters, connotations that are all derivatives of criminality. But it is by design that the reader’s considerations are provoked with such patterns of common thought, for the directive of this book is to purposely present and then subsequently eschew these typical conventions so that new and enlightening definitions are granted residency.
Jeff Fleischer’s collection of short stories, Animal Husbandry and Other Fictions, experiments with adding a healthy dose of magic to create a sort of modernized mythos. While not included in every story, the majority weave mysticism, fantasy, or both into otherwise grounded stories—little girls making deals with witches, a king of the cats, and multiple varieties of the classic talking animal. This push to expand the “acceptable” boundaries of magical realism in fiction ultimately allows Fleischer to convey a wider array of narratives that, had he gone an entirely realistic route, likely would have come out rote and structurally similar to many other short fictions.
Rebecca Spiegel's debut memoir Without Her is subtitled "A Chronicle of Grief and Love," and you feel both in impressive measure. Throughout the book, Spiegel pieces together the events leading up to and following her sister Emily’s decision to take her own life. Grief and love are vulnerable fields to till when someone is disclosing to an audience. However two perhaps even more powerful and more vulnerable themes run through Spiegel's work: regret and blame. Unspoken emotions can weigh the heaviest when working through a tragedy because they aren’t the emotions that we’re supposed to feel: inconsolable sadness, heartwarming memories of the person who’s been lost, an appeal to the senselessness of it all. These are the societally prescribed ways that we should talk about our lost loved ones. What makes Spiegel's narrative unique is how she comes to terms with the emotions that have no useful manual for traversing this kind of loss: How could Emily do this to herself? What if I had done something differently? What if I’d done something differently my whole life? What if I had something to do with Emily’s death? How can I ever be at peace if I never know the answers to these questions? Spiegel's courage to open up to her readers and bring them along in her journey makes for both a compelling read and an impressive examination of the kind of difficult questions that need to be confronted to heal.
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