Another Governess / The Least Blacksmith: A Diptych

by Joanna Ruocco, Ben Marcus (Foreword)

Stark and vibrant, the two halves of this sutured book expose the Frankenstein-like scars of the assemblage we call “human”
 
In “Another Governess” a woman in a decaying manor tries to piece together her own story. In “The Least Blacksmith” a man cannot help but fail his older brother as they struggle to run their father’s forge.
 
Each of the stories stands alone, sharing neither characters nor settings. But together, they ask the same What are the wages of being? The relentless darkness of these tales is punctured by hope—the violent hope of the speaking subject.
 

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

152 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Joanna Ruocco is a prize-winning American author and co-editor of the fiction journal Birkensnake. In 2013, she received the Pushcart Prize for her story "If the Man Took” and is also winner of the Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize. Ruocco received her MFA at Brown, and a Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Denver. Her most recent novel is Dan, published by Dorothy, A Publishing Project. She also serves as Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at Wake Forest University.

Ruocco has also published romance novels under the pseudonyms Toni Jones and Alessandra Shahbaz.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

At times there were shades of John the Posthumous, Lispector, The Notebook (Agota's one, of course) but this was still very much a unique voice and a unique work. Deeply unsettling and disturbing, precise and crystalline prose - short simple sentences which build and build....

[Fred Pelzer]

This is a mood piece, designed to be ephemeral and parting. It is meant to be dense in how laid bare it is, and challenging. I'm still making up my mind about it. Definitely put me in mind of Threats and The Flame Alphabet in the way that language is used in a twisting way, a purposefully obtuse way to make you work for it, to describe a feeling or a sensation rather than a plot. Things happen here, but events are not as important as the looming sense of dread and unease, of a world askew, of a place that you would not want to visit in real life, only on the page.

[Katy Gunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I only want to read this book. I can't stop reading this book over and over and talking about it to anyone who will listen.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phewwwwwwwwwwwww .... *inhales* .... phewwwwwwwwww

[derek allard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily the best book I’ve read this year and among the best books I’ve ever read. Beautiful, sparse language that evokes strong images and emotion. That’s not easy to do yet it’s done effortlessly as the reader is absorbed into these two dark worlds. How Joanna Ruocco has never become a monster of the literary world is beyond me.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Uniquely done. Not for me.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ruocco creates an oppressive atmosphere in two disturbing novellas. Both are told from the first-person perspective, each narrator using an extraordinarily limited vocabulary to describe their harsh environments. In "Another Governess", the governess, now a rotting corpse, attempts to reconstruct the events that lead up to her death--as well as understand her own decaying existence. Although challenging to follow, the narrative loops around three main events. The first is the governess's haunting of the manor in which she died, the second is the murder of the mistress, and the third is the assaults of peasant women who live in nearby farms and villages. Ruocco upends the bucolic peacefulness that we often assume of pre-twentieth century rural life, and depicts it as filthy and brutal.

"The Least Blacksmith" is linear, following the failure of a younger brother to help in the blacksmith forge, not because he doesn't want to, but because he's too small and has no real aptitude for the craft. After their father dies, the boy and his brother live a miserable life on the edge of a rustic fishing village that is attracting more and more tourists. To get the customers they so desperately need, the boys end up working on a project that will earn them money while also ensuring their permanent status as outcasts from their own community. The boy, who is intelligent if not strong, traces complex and often violent cause-effect chains that explain why he and his brother are struggling so much, but his solutions are achingly simple and naive. Aware that he can't properly forge an axe, for example, he longs to paint the handles like the axes in the hardware store.

Ruocco gives us access to voices we don't often hear, and they are difficult, challenging voices. Although both more gothic and more tonal, the working class background of these characters as well as the mantra-like prose, reminds me of Gertrude Stein's "The Good Anna" or "Melanctha". But while Stein used the rhythmic prose to create a score for domestic drudgery, the effect of Ruocco's prose is both chilling and opaque. Even if they're already dead, her characters seem to be in constant danger from the cruelty of the world that surrounds them.

[Daniella Castillo · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not for me i fear…not for me at all lol

[Sarah Schantz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't think I've ever read anything like this before. In the introduction, Ruocco's writing style is like the style in which the Dick and Jane books were written. Of course the tales are much, much darker. But the text is so clean it hurts. And the short sentences, and the sense of repetition builds on itself like blocks. The two stories are haunting not only because she has tapped into a Gothic landscape, but because of the emotion lacking from the prose. It becomes the reader's task to provide the fear, the uncertainty, the disgust, the despair. Ironically, it was neither the governess or the black smith who resonated with me the most--but the various daughters of the townspeople; Ruocco reminds me of Poe. When she asks what the wages of being are, there is an answer just as there is a tell-tale heart. The answer is underground in the orchard. And the answer is in the hearts of the drowned monks.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this somewhat less than I wanted to like it. The first story, a strange and claustrophobic nanny's tale takes elements of _Turn of the Screw_ (the isolation; the distance between kids and anyone who is a little older) and Jane Eyre's kind of unworldly naviete and brews up something strange. It maybe took too long to get going for me, and in the end might not have been clear eyed enough about what it was showing us. "The Least Blacksmith" worked better for me-- the titular narrator seemed more aware of his world, so it felt more fully realized? I know I'm expressing a kind of gendered bias against the gothic, and implication, but there it is.

I did like both, and I thought it was an interesting book-- this attempt to tell some really weird stories from these unprivileged places, and it was always interesting, even though it didn't totally connect enough to haunt me like I felt it wanted to.

[Jamie Grefe · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is Ruocco's hypnotizing use of the English language that you will feel from the first page. Trapped, the prose is controlled, repetitious, menacing. In the repetition of words, a haunting confusion begins to happen. Darkness spreads. She creeps under, within. Eyes blur. A plate of meat. I am caught in a child's world warped by brutality and beauty. There is a blacksmith. There is blood and how the foreigners are moving into the city. We are at the forge. Vomit. Maggots. I don't remember Ruocco being this graphic, but she is and I feel like I've only tapped the surface. Surely, there is more, too much more, but I must rest.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm reading both halves concurrently, and so far the first half gave me nightmares (interesting ones) and the second half makes me really miss mumblety-peg (which up to now I believed to be a Camp Treetops invention.)

[Brooks Sterritt · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Put fat on the opening. Rub the fat with your hand. Rub the fat hard with your hand, with the palm of your hand. Slip inside. Slip the boot hook inside. Pull from inside the opening. That is how things are born, even in a grand house."