loneliness

The Woman with the Bouquet

brittany — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Alison Anderson

Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt was been described as one of Europe’s most beloved authors and just a few pages into the first of the five short stories that comprise The Woman with the Bouquet, I began to seriously doubt that claim. Initially, “The Dreamer from Ostend” seemed heavy-handed and awkward in its formality, so much in fact that I found it difficult to focus on the story. However, I trudged forward, and I’m happy that I did. I blame the jerky translation, but once you get past that you’ll be drawn into the secretive world of Emma Von A, an old, “invalid” inn-keeper who shares her deepest secret and most severe heartbreak with a young writer who’s staying at her inn hoping to recover from his own love-related sadness. Family members, such as her niece, tell the writer that Emma Van A has essentially led a lonely, suicide-inducing life; a life spent dreaming and staring out windows. What they don’t know is that Emma has a burning secret, so pure and true that it’s sustained her through years of sickness and sadness.

Emma’s tale sets the tone for each story featured in The Woman with the Bouquet, a book solely comprised of emotionally stunted, brokenhearted, dejected, and insecure loners who, despite their age, don’t seem capable of detaching themselves from the difficulties associated with adulthood. With unflinching honesty, Schmitt reveals just enough about each person to shed light on their inner workings and what makes them tick.

In “Perfect Crime,” we become acquainted with Gabrielle de Sarlat, a wife and mother who’s convinced herself that her husband is doing something deeply dishonest and for a lack of a better word, shady. It’s common knowledge that he has a hiding spot in his office where he keeps a number of small chests under lock and key, the contents of which he will not share with his wife. This is a source of great unease for Gabrielle and it’s only made worse by the types of everyday annoyances that grate on your nerves after years of being married to the same person. For example, Gabrielle’s husband often refers to her as “old girl;” he believes this to be a term of endearment, while hearing it makes Gabrielle’s blood boil. When it feels as if marital bliss has flown south, many women would seek refuge in their friends or in the warm embrace of a cocktail, but Gabrielle murders her husband in a particularly cruel way. Well after his death, Gabrielle finally gets to investigate the contents of the chests in her husband’s office and what she finds are poems, letters, and other tokens of his love that he hid not out of guilt for wrongdoing, but out of embarrassment for his own sentimentality.

Each character and story in The Woman with the Bouquet brought to mind a quote from Janet Fitch’s White Oleander, in which Astrid’s imprisoned mother Ingrid tells her, “Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space... If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you'll ever do is to understand yourself...”

Now, those are depressing, unsettling words (for Schmitt’s characters) to live by.

Written by: Tina Vasquez, December 13th 2010

Word Comix

caitlin — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 16:00:00 +0000

By Charlie Smith

W.W. Norton

Word Comix by Charlie Smith is a collection of poetry that often explodes with strange and unfamiliar words. Reading it, I kept getting the desire to grab a dictionary and improve my vocabulary. Oftentimes the poems, especially ones starting with ellipses, feel like jumping into someone's inner monologues, getting a peek into their secret thoughts about politics, romance, being middle-aged, waiting, living in the city, the natural world, and many times, just the intense feeling of solitude and loneliness.

Word Comix is Smith’s seventh book of poetry, and he also has six novels published, among having received a variety of awards, grants, and fellowships. It is interesting to note that he is also a fiction writer, which I think becomes apparent through both his prose poetry style and the way he seems to take on a variety of different voices and personas throughout the collection. These constantly changing voices keep the collection feeling fresh and wonderful.

The poems that resonated most for me were the shorter, structured pieces, little scenes of emotion. My favorite was "An Illustrated Guide to Familiar American Trees," in which the narrator moves through the city, speaking of the bursts of city sunlight and certain trees on a block which they "love...like [their] own brothers." A few times, I felt the more verbose pieces lost me in their "above my head" word choices. But, there is also an irony and a humor that runs throughout the whole collection, that kept me reading through even those particular pieces.

I wouldn't say Word Comix is a particularly feminist work, but there were definitely little snippets throughout the whole collection that moved me and that I felt I could relate to. Many pieces definitely deal with the desire for connection even while living among so many in such a vast city. Inhabiting a big city myself, this was a theme I definitely could understand. So, don't expect any huge revelations or radical thoughts when reading Word Comix, but also don't miss the small moments of beauty it offers up.

Written by: Lesley Kartali, October 20th 2010

Ether: Seven Stories and a Novella

admin — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Evgenia Citkowitz

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

While opening Evgenia Citkowitz’ collection of short stories, the spine creaked in an eerie way far too appropriate for the haunting words among the pages between. In Ether, a collection of seven stories and a novella, Citkowitz captures our attention with seemingly stark characters whose depth is revealed in the strange ways they relate to the world.

Tables, nannies, and even pet hamsters become the vehicles through which characters experience stark realizations about their lives and their positions within them. Citkowitz’ efforts to draw out nuances are visible, but often the nuances struggle to have impact. Entering into a short story with little ground available to paint such rich snapshots of a life often leaves the reader feeling rushed, or worse, at the end of the tale, empty.

The subjects her characters examine—an overwhelming loneliness and sense of questioning—are ones that we may easily identify with as readers, but the stories leave answers either unreachable, or sadly negative. Leaving a family, resolving to accept unwanted circumstances, or worse, having a realization that things are unhappy and unsatisfied, but having nowhere to turn is what the author makes her characters face. The circumstances are realistic—many of us, just like her characters, finally find the answer to our questions. But in this volume, often the answer is most unsatisfactory, and these outcomes leave the reader wounded.

The writing in Citkowitz’ debut book is layered and complex. Readers enter each story seemingly mid scene and are left with a feeling of catching up. Multiple characters and voices layer into the work immediately and though the action may not be fast paced, the reader must stutter step to get on board with the character and identify the lead immediately. This unique exercise does draw a reader in quickly and makes our feelings for them more elaborate; you read shoulder-to-shoulder with the character’s past and present and with their quests for identity or direction; this is a powerful strategy on the author’s part.

Ether isn’t light reading, but is an exercise in elaborate storytelling over a theme. At times, it works too hard and it can often be uninspiring, but the stories’ unique haunting qualities do set them apart.

Written by: Dr. Julie E. Ferris, August 1st 2010

The Solitude of Prime Numbers

admin — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 08:02:00 +0000

By Paolo Giordano

Penguin

My best friend often teasingly tells me that the books I recommend to her are all too depressing and sad. I always counter that I recommend books that make me laugh. Now, that either means that I have a sick sense of humor, or it simply illustrates that the stories I most enjoy reading combine painful topics and awkward characters with humor, sarcasm, and witty writing.

Paolo Giordano’s The Solitude of Prime Numbers is exactly such a book. Giordano’s debut novel is the story of Alice and Mattia, two awkward and painfully lonely teenagers. Alice is marked by a childhood skiing accident that leaves her limping and deeply insecure about her body. In those cruel teenage years, she develops an eating disorder in an attempt to regain some control over her body. Mattia is haunted by suffocating guilt after the disappearance of his twin sister when he was nine years old. Alice and Mattia connect over their pain, their awkwardness, and their acute sense that they don’t fit in. But their bond is fragile, subtle, and built on a silent agreement that neither reveal the source of their pain to the other. Even in their connection, they remain isolated and lonely, never fully able to overcome what keeps them emotionally locked into their own worlds.

Eventually, their lives go in different directions and they separate, without ever openly communicating what they feel for each other. But despite being thousands of miles apart, neither Alice nor Mattia is willing or able to let go of their unusual bond. Reunited by a chance encounter, they are faced with a decision: to truly let the other in or return to a life without the other.

Giordano masterfully paints a world full of pain, loneliness, and love. While the humor in The Solitude of Prime Numbers is very subtle, it is there, in the background. It makes the tragedies bearable, the loneliness less hopeless. So yes, this novel is sad and depressing. But it is also incredibly powerful, and it will make you chuckle softly from time to time as you follow Alice and Mattia in their struggle to survive their childhood experiences.

Written by: Annette Przygoda, July 11th 2010

The Bride of E

admin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:01:00 +0000

By Mary Jo Bang

Greywolf Press

Mary Jo Bang’s amazing new collection of poetry, The Bride Of E, is vivid with haunting images. The poems in the first part of the book follow their lead from the alphabet, beginning with “ABC Plus E: Cosmic Aloneness Is The Bride Of Existence.” This disturbingly truthful poem is anything but simple. It mirrors the loneliness one can feel even in large crowds. This is just one example of the rich, thought-provoking poetry within this slim volume.

The poem “For Freud” begins with an exquisite sentence: “I didn’t mean to imply a girl is nothing more than a jewel box.” Volumes could be written on this statement alone. For a woman who grew up in a generation that expected women to be jewel boxes, “For Freud” is validation of a war fought to shed clinging expectations of society that all girls should marry a "good man" and become a mother. A new breed of independent women emerged from this battleground.

The Bride Of E is Mary Jo Bang’s examination into lived life. Some stanzas shine light into the dark shadowy corners of forgotten longings:

The bells are ringing, indicating/An original longing has been transformed/Into a pitch too high to hear.

This language encourages the reader to observe their surroundings with an artist’s eye.

Bang reveals our diverse world by splicing together images of college kids partying at a club, highbrow literary references, and even descriptions of a time to come. While there are hints of traditional romance, the poet has no problem throwing in a fragment of information technology or an impression of violence. The underlying message found in these poems is philosophy on a large plasma screen.

The second part of The Bride Of E consists of five prose poems that lend a hopeful note to the brutal honesty of part one. This is a collection I will take off my shelf to re-read and experience the life lessons waiting inside the cover.

Written by: Ann Hite, March 9th 2010