Lidia Yuknavitch
Memoirs. Can you ever trust them? How many of us would be true to form in a published retelling of our lives? How many have done so in the past? Who among us doesn't delude ourselves to some degree with our own little revisionist history?
When I received a copy of THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER to read/review, I had all of these questions polluting my mind before I ever opened the book. Then the first sentence did me in:
"The day my daughter was stillborn, after I held the future pink and rose-lipped in my shivering arms, lifeless tender, covering her face in tears and kisses, after they handed my dead girl to my sister who kissed her, then to my first husband who kissed her, then to my mother who could not bear to hold her, then out of the hospital room door, tiny lifeless swaddled thing, the nurse gave me tranquilizers and a soap and sponge."
After that first sentence, I was hooked. Then things got really interesting: all the admissions of her own destructive behavior, her relationship sabotage, her DUI, the conflict between loathing and loving her mother, and living with the legacy her father had thrown upon her.
Granted most memoirs are thick with examples of abuse, look-what-happened-to-me narration, and such – but here in TCOW we get the other half – we get what she had done to others, and how, despite herself and her family, she survived both.
Not only was this a memoir I could relate to on several levels, but it was beautifully written – and why shouldn't it be? Lidia's literary life has been fortunate enough to have crossed paths with the like of Ken Kesey, our own Chuck Palahniuk, and she's now part of the infamous writing group that meets once a week.
Did I mention it was beautifully written? Most memoirs are little more than organized memory dumps, broken down for us into childhood, adolescence, adulthood, etc... But the passages within, while essentially (loosely) chronological in order, will force more than a few smiles to seep across your face as you read them.
So like any book that sparks my curiosity about the writer, I wanted more. After some emails were exchanged, Lidia allowed me to retrace the lines of the naked body she had prepared for us all in THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER. read more »
