Bonnie Meekums's Blog - Posts Tagged "book-review"
Straw dogs by Tom O'Brien pub Reflex Press - book review
I was delighted to be asked to provide my honest review of this work, not least because it is a novella-in-flash, a relatively new form of writing that, as a writer of both novels and flash fiction, I want to know more about. This, as it happens, was an excellent place to start. Straw Gods was longlisted for the Bath Novella-in-Flash award, and shortlisted by Ellipsis Zine, so I knew before I began reading this was going to be good. I was not disappointed.
The skill of writing a novella-in-flash is that each ‘chapter’ is a flash fiction, able to stand alone, and yet each one also builds in some way on the one before. The linking story for this novella is the widow Rosa’s transformation in grief. Those sections that follow her perspective are written in the first person, whereas when other points of view are foregrounded, the writing is in the third person. Rosa opens by saying ‘I know that you’re dead’. Still, she persists with her ever more elaborate rituals, trying to bring her husband back. Her denial persists right up to very near the end of the book. Finally, she repeats those words, now fully meaning them. I won’t spoil the tension by revealing what enables that transition, except to say that it is a hazardous and painful journey.
We are not told where the novel is set, other than it is a fishing village. The names – Matteo, Rosa, Illy, Sol - sound Italian, but the reader is left to fill in the gaps. Not knowing, not being told, adds to the mystery that is woven into each flash, and within the novella as a whole. The author uses several powerful metaphors, including the strength of sea and storm, and conversely the insubstantial protection of straw against the elements. Water cools the pain of burning, but is used up so that more must be poured daily, onto hot stones taken from the beach from which Rosa’s husband set off, before drowning. The relentlessness of grief is shown to us through the widow’s rituals, even as we glimpse the couple’s passion in life: ‘I cleaned the old wood with a scarf he slipped over my eyes one night, so I could feel but not see him.’
The language Tom O’Brien employs is achingly beautiful, the more so because it is pared down: ‘I washed ginger and desolation from my teacups’; ‘I hid a scream in the thunder, unheard by sea or sky or dead husband’; ‘There would be no swimming in my heavy skirts, and I would fall fall fall for him again.’ I could go on. I wanted to package these phrases up, like Rosa’s pearl, so that I could bring them out when I need them.
I inhabit several identities, including writer and dance movement psychotherapist. I would urge not only the general reading public, but also my psychotherapy colleagues to read this novella. The professional, dry tomes outlining the tasks of grief never quite convey its pain as creative writers do, and in particular as Tom O’Brien does here. I remember, when I was first bereaved, realising I had known the theory, but I had not fully understood the human experience, until I knew that physical and mental anguish first hand. I would urge anyone who doesn’t fully understand bereavement to read this. And for those who do, we will empathise with Rosa, and perhaps feel a little less alone when we encounter our own grief.
The skill of writing a novella-in-flash is that each ‘chapter’ is a flash fiction, able to stand alone, and yet each one also builds in some way on the one before. The linking story for this novella is the widow Rosa’s transformation in grief. Those sections that follow her perspective are written in the first person, whereas when other points of view are foregrounded, the writing is in the third person. Rosa opens by saying ‘I know that you’re dead’. Still, she persists with her ever more elaborate rituals, trying to bring her husband back. Her denial persists right up to very near the end of the book. Finally, she repeats those words, now fully meaning them. I won’t spoil the tension by revealing what enables that transition, except to say that it is a hazardous and painful journey.
We are not told where the novel is set, other than it is a fishing village. The names – Matteo, Rosa, Illy, Sol - sound Italian, but the reader is left to fill in the gaps. Not knowing, not being told, adds to the mystery that is woven into each flash, and within the novella as a whole. The author uses several powerful metaphors, including the strength of sea and storm, and conversely the insubstantial protection of straw against the elements. Water cools the pain of burning, but is used up so that more must be poured daily, onto hot stones taken from the beach from which Rosa’s husband set off, before drowning. The relentlessness of grief is shown to us through the widow’s rituals, even as we glimpse the couple’s passion in life: ‘I cleaned the old wood with a scarf he slipped over my eyes one night, so I could feel but not see him.’
The language Tom O’Brien employs is achingly beautiful, the more so because it is pared down: ‘I washed ginger and desolation from my teacups’; ‘I hid a scream in the thunder, unheard by sea or sky or dead husband’; ‘There would be no swimming in my heavy skirts, and I would fall fall fall for him again.’ I could go on. I wanted to package these phrases up, like Rosa’s pearl, so that I could bring them out when I need them.
I inhabit several identities, including writer and dance movement psychotherapist. I would urge not only the general reading public, but also my psychotherapy colleagues to read this novella. The professional, dry tomes outlining the tasks of grief never quite convey its pain as creative writers do, and in particular as Tom O’Brien does here. I remember, when I was first bereaved, realising I had known the theory, but I had not fully understood the human experience, until I knew that physical and mental anguish first hand. I would urge anyone who doesn’t fully understand bereavement to read this. And for those who do, we will empathise with Rosa, and perhaps feel a little less alone when we encounter our own grief.
