Ethel Rohan's Blog, page 20

What Became of What She Had Made

Within days of subscribing to The Journal, I received the Spring/Summer 2011 Issue. Last night I read Jessica Hollander's story "What Became of What She Had Made." Here's an excerpt:

"'I'm sleeping with someone at my office', the husband said. "I can't tell Olivia. I can't stop fucking the woman." He pulled to a stoplight. Lynette felt the car's vibrations in her cheeks.

"Are you going to tell her?" he asked.

Lynette didn't want to know about this, and Olivia wouldn't either. "She'd feel bad about it."

"Seems like the kind of information a mother would get across best."

She wanted her daughters to be good and proud and happy. She wanted them to love and trust that she was a good mother. "I'd rather she believe she has a happy life."

He pulled into her driveway in Appleridge. It was a community for retired people. Tired and then retired, like old food dried out and zapped in the microwave.

He leaned his head against the steering wheel. "Nobody's happy."

"Sure we are." Her girls were in pieces. They didn't belong to her anymore. "Watch us smile.'"

The story is about a mother and her two daughters. About violences large and small. About trying to recover the unrecoverable. About knowing what to hold onto and of what to let go.

Maybe it had nothing or everything to do with Jessica Hollander's "What Became of What She Had Made," but as I struggled to sleep last night I recalled and silently repeated that excerpt from Reinhold Neibuhr's "The Serenity Prayer" (1926):

God grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change;

courage to change the things I can;

and wisdom to know the difference.

Innovators in Lit # 7

"The better solution is, as a part of your daily work as a writer, support the communities you wish to be a part of, by reading books, writing reviews, promoting other writers or bookstores or whatever in your social networking. It's a small but old truth, but the more you give, the more you will receive. And this isn't any kind of slimy networking. This is every writer's responsibility, and the writers who create the most buzz for the good work of others will find that same energy waiting for them, when their own excellent book finally comes out."

You can read the rest of Laura van den Berg's excellent interview with Matt Bell as part of her "Innovators in Lit" series over at the Ploughshares Blog here.

Matt Bell is extraordinary. Thank you, Matt.

Voltage

A note from the 12th Annual Cork International Short Story Festival here.

Shiny-Toothed Jaws

My second post from the Cork International Short Story Festival is now live at Dark Sky Magazine.

Thanks for reading.

I hope all is great with you.

Torpedoes

The first in my blog posts on the Cork International Short Story Festival, September 14-18, can be read at Dark Sky Magazine's blog here.

To coincide with the Festival, Cut Through the Bone, both paperback and Kindle, will be sold at 50% off.

Thanks.

I hope you're all well.

 

 

 

I've Been Gone

Not just to Ireland. Not just because I've been busy with both daughters out of school. Not solely due to doing book reviews, readings, solicited posts, interviews and stories, and networking. Not simply down to reading. Voracious reading. No. Some spark in me was gone. Faded. Out.

Grief. Old, old griefs.

But now I'm back. A re-born Writer. I'll save you the blood and guts and gore. I'm together once more. And I'm not going to fall down again, shattered. Not ever. At least not out of any self-doubt or the internal voices that have previously held me back and beaten me up, I won't.

Have I said any of this before? Yes. Have I meant it then? Yes. Is it hard to stay confident and resilient in this world (of writing)? YES. But read my words: I will NEVER again doubt my place as a woman who writes. Never again worry I'm not good enough. NEVER.

At some point we all have to take a stand and declare ourselves to those around us and the world: I write. I live the writing life. I won't have it any other way.

My rebel's freed. All is in harmony. See me live, laugh, love and write.

Now I'll put all that wasted energy into writing the best stories I can and into a return to championing and supporting the Arts and Literature and other Writers also as best as I can.

Okay, enough gunslinging and Zen and on to some links that might interest you or that you might not care one iota about:

On September 12th, I fly to Ireland to take part in the Cork International Short Story Festival. I'll read from Cut Through the Bone on Friday, 16th along with Alison McLeod. The next morning, I will teach a beginning fiction workshop to ten participants. To get a sense of what so many of these 'firsts' mean to me you can read my post at the Festival's blog here.

To coincide with this trip to Cork, I'll blog daily to the Dark Sky site and my story collection Cut Through the Bone will go on sale throughout those five fabulous days of the Festival. More details to follow.

This past weekend I got to read at San Francisco's beautiful downtown Catherine Clark Gallery with Ireland's Kevin Barry and Julian Gough as part of Imagine Ireland's Contemporary Irish Writers Series. Kevin and Julian don't read. They perform. And they're both unique voices and brilliant writers. My deep thanks to Kevin, Julian, Catherine Clark, and Ethan Nosowsky of Graywolf Press for making me feel so welcome and at-ease.

I look forward to receiving in the mail my contributor's copy of The Chattahoochee Review. Along with stories from those AllStars mentioned below the issue will include stories from Roxane Gay and my latest literary crush, the amazing Caitlin Horrocks. The issue also includes my review of Roxane Gay's debut story collection, Ayiti.

Three Black Dresses

Less than twenty hours ago, I returned from four weeks in Ireland. I'm jetlagged and can't sleep, but that's not what has me here writing in the too bright light and with the dark outside next to my left shoulder. I'm here because of the pull to write. To dig.

Before we left for Ireland, I packed three black dresses into our suitcases for my daughters and me. I believed we would need the dresses for my mother's funeral. Yet again, my mother has defied doctors, caregivers and us her family and I've come home with the three black dresses still on their hangers inside plastic. It's almost funny.

I have to believe there's sense to be made of suffering. Otherwise life is meaningless. I've tried to make sense of my mother's impossible cling to life (even God is scratching His head) and decided she remains because she still has things to teach me, to teach others too if they care to see.

On this trip my mother drove home three important truths I will never again doubt or forget:

I've often raged against my mother for being weak. The truth she wanted me to know on this visit is that while yes she could be weak and wrong, she's also strong and fierce and powerful.

The onset of degenerative eye disease in her twenties devastated my mother and as a result she gave up her independence and spirit. On this past trip, I felt most struck by the fierce light and power in my mother's eyes. I found great hope in the idea that the one thing in life that most crushed my mother, her broken eyes, is ironically at the end the vessel of so much life and light.

During every visit, I held my mother's hand. The first time I took her hand in mine, she kissed the back of my palm. When I kissed the back of her palm in return, she kissed my hand again. This went on.

Whenever it came time for me to leave, my mother wouldn't let go of my hand. The strength of her grip both amazed and startled me. This from a woman who has been bedridden, completely helpless, and choking on gruel and thickened water for over two years. She didn't want to let me go. Only she didn't know it was me. My mother has been erased by twelve years of Alzheimer's. Cancer's going at her now too. What my mother taught me by holding on so hard to me is that she didn't want to be alone. Her kisses also taught me that at her core my mother is love.

My mother weighs seventy-six pounds. I had to pull my hand out of hers, so hard I felt afraid I'd break her.

The three black dresses hang on my white closet door, almost like shadows, except that shadows don't stand in wait or whisper.

Solace

I'm back from four weeks in Ireland. Literally, less than an hour ago, my family and I walked through our front door for the first time in exactly four weeks. I couldn't wait to get to my desk and write a blog post.

I have no idea what I need so much to write about only that I do. And that the blog post wants to be titled "Solace." That I'll write some about the novel of the same name by Belinda McKeon. That I need to dig inside.

In recent weeks, I've read Belinda McKeon's SOLACE, Jesse Ball's THE CURFEW, Lydia Millet's MY HAPPY LIFE.

I reread Lydia Yuknavitch's CHRONOLOGY OF WATER, Roxane Gay's AYITI, and Alissa Nutting's UNCLEAN JOBS FOR WOMEN AND GIRLS.

I've read other books these past several and strange weeks, their titles just aren't coming to my tired and jet-lagged mind.

There's such suffering and loss depicted in the books I've listed above. There's also so much about how we go on despite suffering. Maybe because of suffering.

So much in the books too about family and how fierce glorious insane those ties are.

So much in the books that I found fascinating and instructive and sad and hopeful.

We can learn from every work ever written. Written works allow us see ourselves and others anew slant upsidedown insideout.

I think about the truisms in the books listed above and I'm mindful that no one should judge anyone else. No point fingers sanctimonious egotistical think they're so much better than others. But we do, don't we? All the time.

Four weeks in Ireland gave me pause on many occasions for many reasons and in many ways. I thought a lot about how people need to put others down so they can feel better about themselves. As damaging to the putdowner as it is to the putdownee. Yes, I make up words.

The word solace won't let me be. Like a warm whisper in my mind. I was about to type I'm not sure why the word solace returns returns returns, but now I know: I'm looking long and hard at what gives me solace and what doesn't. At who.

I looked long and hard at Belinda McKeon's photo bio blurbs on her debut novel's jacket. I felt respect admiration jealousy.

If.

In SOLACE, Belinda McKeon took paragraphs to describe a tractor and in one sentence depicted a fatal crash. Always, I felt the power of her prose.

In CHRONOLOGY OF WATER, Lydia Yuknavitch quotes Virginia Woolf: "Arrange whatever pieces come your way."

Solace lies in arranging whatever pieces come my way. I'm done with Ifs.

Is.

I've no idea what this post is.

Yes I do.

I wanted to be back. here. home.

Giraffes In Glorious Grotesquerie

An excerpt from Carol Novak's unique and fantastical collection, Giraffes In Hiding – The Mythical Memoirs of Carol Novak:

"He frightened me when he clasped me to him in the night, when he lowered the volume of his voice to speak of the mirage of walls and roofs. Not so long ago, he seemed to be my des- tination. He was mine and I was his or so it seemed. After an orgy of mirrors, we sucked and picked at one another's bones. Then he strayed into that other woman's residence and stayed too long, I took the turn back to where I'd been going, but couldn't find it. Pain was my map; I could hardly see clearly.

So I found you hiding in a hedge with thorns, not crying but chanting, no, singing, singing a lament to your mother; you crooned, wanting to crawl back into her, so I came and stroked your head. I remember your hair as soft as dandelion puffs and you trembled but kept still for a spell entranced you let me be your home. And then like flotsam, you floated away, you with your eyes dense with storms. I carried on, tore off my red dress, taunted you. Who can stay still? Who can remain in homes with so many rules? you pleaded. I left that town a long time ago, I answered. At least I thought I did. You looked like a rabbit in a wolf's yellow eye. All homes have rules, you said. You said I am a nomad. I have no choice. You do, I replied, drawing you into me for the last time, feeling like the rabbit in your jaws. But was I the wolf? Now I have forgotten your name."

You can read my full review at PANK here.

 

Hard to Say

Following are recent reviews of Hard to Say:

From Yennie Cheung at The Hipster's Book Club:

"The glimpses into everyday life are quick in Ethel Rohan's Hard to Say, a collection of interrelated flash fiction portraying one girl's Irish upbringing. In 15 semi-autobiographical tales of alcoholism and rebellion, sickness and loss, Rohan paints a gorgeous but heartrending picture of one family's struggle to overcome its own destruction—and all in 55 square pages of text. Rarely, if ever, is a family saga told so concisely. Here, that just means Rohan breaks your heart faster."

You can read the full review here.

From Amanda Kimmerly at Fringe Magazine:

"However, I think in this case, because the content is so similar, it resembles a long-winded narrative, using "and then this happened, and this…and this, and this, and this," technique, with each "this" being a new story."

You can read the full review here.

From Laura Ellen Scott at PLUMB:

"Everyone knows that Ethel Rohan is one of the rescuers of domestic realism, snatching the notion of family from the gums of academy hacks to re-energize it with her own lyric volatility. Her latest collection, Hard to Say, is a vampiric stunner of a book, very dark and soulful."

You can read the full review here.

From Steve Himmer at Goodreads:

"So while the longer arc that emerges through these linked stories delivers the familiar escape to consciousness, what's more exciting is the escape to narrative consciousness and the way writer, character, and text take control of the story through what they keep to themselves. That creates a provocative tension between readerly demands for more (a perhaps prurient, voyeuristic expectation to "see" the worst as it happens) and the refusal of the narrator to be defined or limited by those unwritten worst moments."

You can read the full review here.

My deep thanks to Yennie, Amanda, Laura, and Steve for taking the time to read and review Hard to Say. I'm honored.