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In Bound, Antonya Nelson’s latest novel, Nelson continues her
work of discovering and distilling the common and yet profound framework of
human relationships. Through
deceptively simple writing, Nelson illuminates the stuff and clutter, ideas,
hopes, and dreams, that bind us together, one to another. Mother to daughter,
wife to husband, master to dog, killer to victim: Nelson understands them
all. Of all the relationships we
have throughout our lives, Nelson illuminates the most important one, our only
truly lifelong kinship, which is the understanding we have with ourselves. How
we see and understand our own selves, inside and out, is the tie that binds us
the most, and the one binding we rarely unwind and rewrap. We cut off relationships with others,
redefine status from married to ex, beloved to barely tolerated, but rarely do
we redefine ourselves, and restart our lives and our possibilities all over
again.
Set in Wichita during the 2004 -2005 final resurgence of the
BTK killer, Nelson uses the methods of the killer and the city’s obsession with
him as a backdrop to the changing marriage of Catherine and Oliver
Desplaines. Running parallel to
their story is the story of Cattie, a teenage girl orphaned by the accidental
death of her mother, on the run from her loss and her future, and trying to reach
back to her mother. When Catherine
is named guardian of Cattie, the stories connect and relationships collide.
Oliver’s ex-wives, his daughters, Catherine’s aging mother, an AWOL teenage soldier,
various dogs, and the BTK killer himself will all have their role to play in
the changing relationships that Catherine and Oliver have, the one they share
and the ones they hide from each other.
The biggest change will be their own internal awareness of who they are,
and what they still want out of the lives that remain to them, their own lives
and the lives they have been entrusted with.
Nelson’s writing is, as always, provocative and insightful,
genuine and beautiful. There is no
trick or style to her writing, which makes what she does look so much easier
than it is. She tells the truth,
flat-out and plain, but with reverence for who and what we are, which is
trying. We are all just trying. To connect, to fulfill, to attract, to
be understood. And to be accepted
into the fold of love and security.
Against that pull of everything we need, to change ourselves to start
over again and try all over again, is
not easy. Cattie’s mother had the courage to start over, far from Wichita. Can Catherine change? Can Oliver? It is
too late for the BTK killer: now that he is caught, he will be only one thing, for
the rest of his life. A serial
killer. For the rest of the characters in Bound, change is still and always
possible, as long as they have the will to try.
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August 21, 2010
I've been reading Antonya Nelson's stories for years. Her characters have grown over time, changing from concerned, confused, and hungry young women and men, free to pursue their desires yet restrained by lack of money or confidence, into middle-agers no longer quite so free, as they are bound now by commitments and responsibilities, yet with a bit more money and confidence. What hasn't changed is that these middle-agers are still concerned, still confused, and still very, very hungry. Hungry for what? For love, passion, meaning, connection, and escape. We've all experienced such hungers and Nelson captures and encapsulates the moments of fomenting need, flowing release, and the deflating day-after bite of reality. Her characters are unique but universal; her landscapes are specific and particular, and yet familiar. In Nothing Right, her latest collection, published in 2009, Nelson once again creates vibrant but normal worlds dominated by folks searching for just a little bit more; more meaning, more hope, and, now that middle age is upon them, more control over the quickening spiral towards old age and oblivion. They all want something they've done to mean something before it is just too late for anything to mean anything at all.
Not that all of Nelson's characters are middle-aged. She portrays all stages of growth from children through old age with familiarity, and acuity, catching just what it is that defines those stages of life: in childhood, the recognition of oneself as both an individual, holding a unique, unexplored identity, and as part of a family, ensconced within that defined identity (financial, social, political, and even defined by things like how the house is kept clean or not; how and what kind of food is prepared; and what is expected of the children), straight through to the unfortunate circumstances that unfortunately define old age: senility, widowhood, physical frailty, loss of economic status, loss of beauty.
What always leaves me breathless with admiration is how Nelson describes landscape and background and uses the ordinary and unseen elements that surround us to illustrate the entirety of our lives. In a story from Nothing Right, Nelson writes a wonderful scene in which she narrates the different stages undergone in a day by a kitchen table -- and in that progression of events across a table captures the whole world of family life. "The round wooden table in the center held the newspaper and pancakes early in the day, syrup a condition of its surface"; the surface of the table is then cleared away, and the progression made to "midmorning snacks" and then on the day goes, to "lunch detritus, everything microwaved, served on a potholder"; then the "children's projects, sparkling glitter stuck in the syrup"; then bills and mail and an atlas and "nail polish remover and cotton balls"; then "drinks and adult snacks for cocktail hour -- salmon mousse, Brie and slivered almonds, mushroom stuffed with pesto"; then the children's dinner and a following period of relative quiet when "the dishwasher reigned"; then "the green felt cloth" over the table for bridge and drinks; later "the peanuts and poker chips and whiskey"; and finally, at three in the morning when the grown-up insomniac sisters arrive at the table, they clear the wreckage of the night before and make room for "teacups, novels, hidden expensive chocolate." The whole sequence, of which I have only reproduced the most inadequate of impression, is some of the best writing I have seen; it is so evocative of the universal myths and realities of family life, and full and teeming with an individual family history that is laid out in clues both plain and hidden. The clues of life are found in what crosses across a table in the course of one day.
Nelson is also great at describing daily and ordinary moments in all the meanings, physical and mental, that such moments have for us. We may not be able to articulate what that first glass of wine does for us, but Nelson certainly can: "Hannah still drank wine, but only one glass a day. It was difficult to drink only one glass, maybe more difficult than not drinking at all. That initial infusion of alcohol prepared its drinker to let loose the reins. And though Hannah had always loved best the first drink -- the sensation of ease with which it filled her, largesse, affection, gratitude -- she had never been good at stopping while she was ahead. She likened this one drink to the hour it accompanied, when the air was oaky, just before dark, the benign warm light in which everyone looked lovely and life did not seem a useless and redundant pursuit."
I look forward to reading Bound, Nelson's upcoming novel set in her native Wichita, focusing on the marriage of a couple against the background of the BTK killer. I am sure Nelson will once again prove her prowess as probing particular and unique characters to reveal universal truths about love, desire, connection, and commitment.
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April 16, 2009
Yesterday I read Female Trouble, the wonderful collection of short stories by Antonya Nelson. Reading Nelson's short stories is like reading a journal, a really well-written one that is guaranteed private and has been opened just this one time, for the special reader. Yesterday I was the special reader of her amazingly authentic stories and boy was I grateful. I love Nelson's writing, her narrative voice, her sense of humor, her knack of timing and pace, and her ability to tell the most heartbreaking story with no over-drama, just the absolutely true level of what the story is about: life.
Not that life is the same for everyone, of course. Nelson shows through her stories that life is a varied experience, that concepts of "love", "faith", and "loyalty" mean something different for each person afflicted with -- and sometimes buoyed by -- living, and that our notions of what these concepts mean shift the longer we live, the more people we know, the better we know ourselves.
In her first story, "Incognito", the narrator, divorced and living back at home with her widowed mother, finds "Love is sadness...tragedy, just as we'd always supposed when we were in high school." And for her it is, yet it is also an anchor, a sure thing when other givens have fallen short. In "Stitches" a husband's certain love is "cloying, reassuring, inescapable, horrifying. Secure: like a safety belt or a prison sentence." And later, another epiphany about love, this time foreseen for her college-age daughter after the girl's first (and jarring) sexual experience: from this point on, "no love would be pure, no gesture uncomplicated...."
Because life is not pure or uncomplicated, lived as it is by conflicted, struggling human beings: "You wanted to be sitting in a comfortable leather recliner sipping fine wine and reading a passage of exquisite prose to your wise spouse for your mutual amusement, and you wanted to be having demeaning speed-demon sex in a seedy dorm room with a gorgeous soulless youth. You wanted a savvy, possibly unscrupulous business partner, and you wanted a devoted fool to pray at your feet. You wanted something solid; you wanted something fluid." Settling somewhere in between the two polar opposites only brings misery. Nelson's characters keep trying to find the medium that is not settling but is good enough.
Each story in this collection is told from a different viewpoint and each one is accurate and clear, like a bullet of honesty amidst the necessary mush of living. She portrays all ages and both sexes, expressing the lost and the found souls, the drunks and the druggies, but never the teetotaler (maybe that is one viewpoint she just cannot imagine -- I can't, either).
The final story, a quiet stunner entitled "Female Trouble", finds her male narrator on a porch a the end of the day, sitting amidst four women (one actually a wannabe female) and realizing he just doesn't fit in: "And he was glad, he told himself. Glad for his simple body, its fixtures out in the open, the expression on his face projecting exactly what was behind it in his head. What was it with women and all this hidden equipment? They dressed up, made up, faked orgasms, cried when happy, laughed when bitter, stirred up protoplasmic stews of life and then pulled aces from sleeves, wreaked havoc all the wide world over..."
Women and men, Nelson's characters are messed up but trying to get straightened out, looking for love in all the wrong places and lucky enough to find it, once in awhile, exactly where it belongs, between child and parent, between lovers, and between friends. They are apodictic to their place in life, thinking the thoughts we can imagine such a person having, harboring long-held dreams or getting over lost desires and hopes.
Nelson writes unflinchingly, getting it all right, the doubts, the regrets, and the joys of life. That's what she conveys so beautifully: the pleasure and the pain, and the effort to try again and maybe get it right next time: "Nothing to do but plunge on. Set the cruise control, lower the windows, raise the radio, stay between the broken yellow lines, and don't look back. No no no."
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