raluca comanelea's Reviews > Straw Gods

Straw Gods. A novella-in flash that takes an elegant seat, waiting for grief to accomplish its purpose. A grief measured in Rosa’s breaths and intentions. With the ocean waves reclaiming the body of her beloved Matteo, life hisses at Rosa and makes her wonder if death is not real. The ocean is deceptive, learns Rosa. It has teeth. Straw Gods. A novella-in-flash that penetrates deeply into a woman’s ritual of keeping death alive, a death which sips elegantly from a cup of tea. Rosa quenches her drought when the pangs of thirst try her. Beach rocks have carved her story, her tragedy, and her submission.

Rosa has lived a dead life for a decade now, yet with a breath still vibrant, electric, and alive. She thinks it her misfortune to live, weighed in rocks and grey stones, sometimes dry sometimes burning, boiling, hurting, cutting her skin open. And she conjures. Humanely, plainly. Ginger lemon scent fills up a room to call life back. Records, pearls, an empty chest, paper bearing the mark of his fingers, a straw man hung by the door, all to call a ghost back home.

But storm, fire, and smoke rebuild Rosa. From the ground up. Her son, Sol, fights the ocean and comes out alive from its blue depths. In a burning house, all her memories go up in smoke, but precious Ceecee, her niece, is saved. Rosa’s plea, “Bury me in the ashes of what I built,” is ignored by death as life battles to show her the depths and discoveries granted by her grief. Rosa’s faith unveils all the secrets of the pearls, in the end, showing her that self-knowledge is the truest kept secret of all that is.