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Brightfellow
Praise for Rikki
"Linguistically explosive . . . one of the most interesting American writers around." "The Nation"
"Ducornet surrealist, absurdist, pure anarchist at times is one of our most accomplished writers, adept at seizing on the perfect details and writing with emotion and cool detachment simultaneously. I love her style because it is penetrating and precise but also sensual without being overwrought. You experience a Ducornet novel with all of your senses." Jeff VanderMeer
A feral boy comes of age on a campus decadent with starched sheets, sweating cocktails, and homemade jams. Stub is the cause of that missing sweater, the pie that disappeared off the cooling rack. Then Stub meets Billy, who takes him in, and Asthma, who enchants him, and all is found, then lost. A fragrant, voluptuous novel of imposture, misplaced affection, and emotional deformity.
An artist and writer, Rikki Ducornet has illustrated books by Robert Coover, Jorge Luis Borges, Forrest Gander, and Joanna Howard. Her paintings have been exhibited widely, including, most recently, at the Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Salvador Allende Museum in Santiago, Chile."
"Linguistically explosive . . . one of the most interesting American writers around." "The Nation"
"Ducornet surrealist, absurdist, pure anarchist at times is one of our most accomplished writers, adept at seizing on the perfect details and writing with emotion and cool detachment simultaneously. I love her style because it is penetrating and precise but also sensual without being overwrought. You experience a Ducornet novel with all of your senses." Jeff VanderMeer
A feral boy comes of age on a campus decadent with starched sheets, sweating cocktails, and homemade jams. Stub is the cause of that missing sweater, the pie that disappeared off the cooling rack. Then Stub meets Billy, who takes him in, and Asthma, who enchants him, and all is found, then lost. A fragrant, voluptuous novel of imposture, misplaced affection, and emotional deformity.
An artist and writer, Rikki Ducornet has illustrated books by Robert Coover, Jorge Luis Borges, Forrest Gander, and Joanna Howard. Her paintings have been exhibited widely, including, most recently, at the Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Salvador Allende Museum in Santiago, Chile."
160 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 12, 2016
9 people are currently reading
495 people want to read
About the author
Rikki Ducornet
63 books240 followersRikki Ducornet (born Erika DeGre, April 19, 1943 in Canton, New York) is an American postmodernist, writer, poet, and artist.
Ducornet's father was a professor of sociology, and her mother hosted community-interest programs on radio and television. Ducornet grew up on the campus of Bard College in New York, earning a B.A. in Fine Arts from the same institution in 1964. While at Bard she met Robert Coover and Robert Kelly, two authors who shared Ducornet's fascination with metamorphosis and provided early models of how fiction might express this interest. In 1972 she moved to the Loire Valley in France with her then husband, Guy Ducornet. In 1988 she won a Bunting Institute fellowship at Radcliffe. In 1989 she moved back to North America after accepting a teaching position in the English Department at The University of Denver. In 2007, she replaced retired Dr. Ernest Gaines as Writer in Residence at the The University of Louisiana. In 2008, The American Academy of Arts and Letters conferred upon her one of the eight annual Academy Awards presented to writers.
Ducornet's father was a professor of sociology, and her mother hosted community-interest programs on radio and television. Ducornet grew up on the campus of Bard College in New York, earning a B.A. in Fine Arts from the same institution in 1964. While at Bard she met Robert Coover and Robert Kelly, two authors who shared Ducornet's fascination with metamorphosis and provided early models of how fiction might express this interest. In 1972 she moved to the Loire Valley in France with her then husband, Guy Ducornet. In 1988 she won a Bunting Institute fellowship at Radcliffe. In 1989 she moved back to North America after accepting a teaching position in the English Department at The University of Denver. In 2007, she replaced retired Dr. Ernest Gaines as Writer in Residence at the The University of Louisiana. In 2008, The American Academy of Arts and Letters conferred upon her one of the eight annual Academy Awards presented to writers.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
July 24, 2017
Rating: 4.5* of five
Brightfellow and Asthma sittin' in a tree...this is deep and deeply unsettling novel that unpacks more layers of meaning than longer, less well-made novels can hope to. Kudos to both Rikki Ducornet and Coffeehouse Press! (And thanks to the latter for my review copy.)
Read my entire review at Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud, or as I call it "my blog." Comme d'habitude, I shall post the entire review here in a few weeks' time for the click-a-phobic amongst us.
Brightfellow and Asthma sittin' in a tree...this is deep and deeply unsettling novel that unpacks more layers of meaning than longer, less well-made novels can hope to. Kudos to both Rikki Ducornet and Coffeehouse Press! (And thanks to the latter for my review copy.)
Read my entire review at Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud, or as I call it "my blog." Comme d'habitude, I shall post the entire review here in a few weeks' time for the click-a-phobic amongst us.
June 2, 2016
In no way resembling the last great album opener by David Bowie, "Blackstar" (besides being a compound word beginning with the second letter of the alphabet), Rikki's most recent novel is a slightly tamer experience than what may be expected by lovers of her effervescent fantasia, The Jade Cabinet; or of the grungy and erotic excesses of her fairy tale, The Stain; or of the sublime minimalism of her psychological Pandora's box, Netsuke; or the verbose splendor of her championing of the unshackled imagination, The Fan-Maker's Inquisition: A Novel of the Marquis de Sade. But Brightfellow is still such a pleasure of words, even if it feels like a minor curiosity in Rikki's oeuvre of fantastical fictions. There are many delights to be had in this breezy sequence of snapshots concerning a young misfit's clandestine education among the dusty stacks of a campus library and the domestic dust-ups of the boozy faculty's backyard bbqs. Mild child stalking and an unsettling, tragic denouement keeps this fleeting little novel from settling too comfortably into the realm of whimsy. And, Rikki, I'm sorry that someone slapped this awful coverart on your lively book.
October 30, 2019
As with her two preceding novels, Netsuke and Gazelle, the most recent Rikki production is a more melancholic and personal affair. In Brightfellow, the bookish Stub loses his parents and holes himself up in a campus library, sleeping and self-educating among the stacks until late teenagehood, swotting up on the works of obscure philosopher Vanderloon, when widowed Professor Billy takes the orphan into his home as a lodger. From the window, the dreaming Stub (renamed Charter) becomes fixated on Asthma, the young daughter of Dr. Ash next door, and through her recreates his lost childhood with Jenny, a precocious girl who moved away. Brightfellow is a charming and moving novel with familiar Ducornet echoes: Lewis Carroll (whose spirit inhabits the protagonist) and Gaston Bachelard (whose spirit inhabits Vanderloon’s writings), with a splash of Kaspar Hauser and Great Expectations. There is a return to the impish humour and playfulness of earlier Rikki novels, recalling at times The Jade Cabinet, although the prose is sparser and more deliberately lyrical. Another marvellous addition to a truly enchanting oeuvre.
January 13, 2021
The first thing that strikes me when opening a Rikki Ducornet novel is the language. Though she wields the very same language I know, English, she shapes it, molds it, compels it by way of a form of linguistic alchemy into something rare, exotic and beautiful. An enchantment to my mind's eye and ear. The opening paragraph to BRIGHTFELLOW, simple, embracing a promise of dark mystery – the ingredients of her magic, word choice, sentence structure, and prosody – is just such an example:
THE LINOLEUM SWELLS WITH STORIES. As he plays, darkness rises from the floor and slowly claims the room. Outside, a heavy rain falls and then it ends. Outside, the world spins, and he is the only one alone. [3]
And later...
If America has gods, this is where they dwell – under rocks, in the branches of trees, in ivy, skunkweed, the hearts of fish, the flight of geese. But – everyone says it – things no longer shine as they once did. Ever since the war, everything is dimmer. [23]
Through Ducornet's magical veil of prose we apprehend the tales she tells. BRIGHTFELLOW is about a neglected child, Stub, coming of age alone, and a sort of Garden of Eden won, lost. It's about dissembling and a search for belonging in a dark realm.
The world is a riddle, quarreled and tormented. It is threaded through with darkness, or, worse, its fabric is dark through and through. Rarely does a bright thread work its way into the weave. [126]
Ducornet's short novels are like precious gifts to be unwrapped by the reader. I will not spoil the surprises to be found within.
THE LINOLEUM SWELLS WITH STORIES. As he plays, darkness rises from the floor and slowly claims the room. Outside, a heavy rain falls and then it ends. Outside, the world spins, and he is the only one alone. [3]
And later...
If America has gods, this is where they dwell – under rocks, in the branches of trees, in ivy, skunkweed, the hearts of fish, the flight of geese. But – everyone says it – things no longer shine as they once did. Ever since the war, everything is dimmer. [23]
Through Ducornet's magical veil of prose we apprehend the tales she tells. BRIGHTFELLOW is about a neglected child, Stub, coming of age alone, and a sort of Garden of Eden won, lost. It's about dissembling and a search for belonging in a dark realm.
The world is a riddle, quarreled and tormented. It is threaded through with darkness, or, worse, its fabric is dark through and through. Rarely does a bright thread work its way into the weave. [126]
Ducornet's short novels are like precious gifts to be unwrapped by the reader. I will not spoil the surprises to be found within.
Read
May 18, 2017Contrary to the effulgent review here, less a brightfellow than something of a banalfrère.
The language is almost entirely devoid of Ducornet's usual vivaciousness. She continues the arc of themes present in much of her earlier work, in particular parallelling The Fountains of Neptune, and includes the by-now ubiquitous figure of duty-derelict damaged mother and remote father as the protagonist's raison de faire, along with a supporting cast offering something of redemption. Ducornet's preoccupation with these archetypes suggests a Fraudian interpretation.
Worthy of reading, but not the crowning achievement of Ducornet's brilliant career.
The language is almost entirely devoid of Ducornet's usual vivaciousness. She continues the arc of themes present in much of her earlier work, in particular parallelling The Fountains of Neptune, and includes the by-now ubiquitous figure of duty-derelict damaged mother and remote father as the protagonist's raison de faire, along with a supporting cast offering something of redemption. Ducornet's preoccupation with these archetypes suggests a Fraudian interpretation.
Worthy of reading, but not the crowning achievement of Ducornet's brilliant career.
Read
July 21, 2016At any rate, here's Rikki on the Radio ::
http://www.davidnaimon.com/2016/07/20...
______________
"Like an unbounded baron in the trees, like a goat boy on the loose in the groves of academe..." --Michael Martone
Now that's a lesson in blurb writing.
http://www.davidnaimon.com/2016/07/20...
______________
"Like an unbounded baron in the trees, like a goat boy on the loose in the groves of academe..." --Michael Martone
Now that's a lesson in blurb writing.
February 17, 2016
I read Brightfellow without really meaning to. I was reading The Deep Zoo, a short collection of Ducornet's nonfiction that feels like the skeleton key to her imagination, and wasn't ready to let her voice go. (If you know her work you know what I mean.) Brightfellow is a fever dream of a novel that reads like a fairy tale: feral children, evil stepmothers, goodly benefactors, false identities, reclusive writers, and a college campus that feels like a cabinet of curiosities erected out of the fantasy of the author's youth. One doesn't read Ducornet: one inhabits her imagination. Tonight I combed through my bookshelves looking for another one of her books to read and I opened her first novel, Catching Fire, which she'd signed for me at a conference in 2002 and decorated with a sketch of a piece of fruit, sliced open, fertile with seeds.
July 26, 2016
Sad to say, this largely didn’t work for me (I know this is world-ending, but something tells me that you will find a way to continue on). There’s nothing bad about it by any means, it is just the first book I have read by Ducornet that seems insubstantial. Perhaps undercooked would be a better, if far more pretentious, way to put it. In Brightfellow, we meet not characters but sketches thereof; barrenscapes that RD would’ve normally smeared with some voodoo goo to wonderous, animating effect. As it stands, it reads like a fairy tale that can’t decide which way it wants to go and as a result ends up going pretty much nowhere.
And another thing: it is too cute by half. The fucking names made me want to roll my eyes back in my head (and, indeed, sometimes did—one more Verner Vanderloon and I would’ve had to finish reading the fucking thing held above mid-skull). Between Verner, Asthma, and Pea Pod alone, you have a rogue’s gallery of phoned-in names. But then, oh yes, who arrives but fucking Santa! (Not of Clan Clause, but still.) Meh, I’m a grumpy bastard who enjoys watching videos of kids’ Jenga towers falling over so grain/salt.
Verdict: Ducornet commuted for life for the books of hers I read on either side of this small misstep, masterpieces both. Sentence: shoot the cover artist at Coffee House Press in the face with small arms at close quarters.
*One more goddamn thing: whoever wrote the synopsis on the back really needs to look up the definition of the word ‘feral,’ because Stub/Charter ain’t it.
And another thing: it is too cute by half. The fucking names made me want to roll my eyes back in my head (and, indeed, sometimes did—one more Verner Vanderloon and I would’ve had to finish reading the fucking thing held above mid-skull). Between Verner, Asthma, and Pea Pod alone, you have a rogue’s gallery of phoned-in names. But then, oh yes, who arrives but fucking Santa! (Not of Clan Clause, but still.) Meh, I’m a grumpy bastard who enjoys watching videos of kids’ Jenga towers falling over so grain/salt.
Verdict: Ducornet commuted for life for the books of hers I read on either side of this small misstep, masterpieces both. Sentence: shoot the cover artist at Coffee House Press in the face with small arms at close quarters.
*One more goddamn thing: whoever wrote the synopsis on the back really needs to look up the definition of the word ‘feral,’ because Stub/Charter ain’t it.
June 16, 2016
This little story has an almost old-fashioned feel to it, as it explores themes of belonging, home, and acceptance, but also mental illness, family dysfunction, abandonment and obsession. Alone, Stub manages to infiltrate a nearby college campus, and begins to live as a student, but is constantly aware of his "other" status. When presented with the reality of a surrogate home, he struggles to accept it. Amid his confusion, he mistakes dark clouds of obsession for comfort. Beautifully done, Brightfellow is a tiny, but surprisingly complex, gem.
August 2, 2016
Rikki, you're a creepy mofo. There was this underlying creepiness throughout the book and I felt dirty for liking it. Thanks a lot.
October 5, 2016
A slim little book that somehow beguiled me into taking it home. And once I opened the cover, I was enchanted; how many stories begin with "The linoleum swells with stories."? And then we meet Stub, a small child, all alone with his thoughts, with his incredible capacity for creating worlds where the rest of us only see the pedantic properties of everyday life. He lives a solitary existence in a tiny rural cabin with his mother and dad. Neither seems to pay him much mind, and so his unschooling continues, rising within his wildfire imaginative mind and sent soaring through a combination of curiosity and little understood desperation.
Time passes; circumstances change and for a short time Stub finds camaraderie with his caretaker, Jenny, but it doesn't last (although her personal obsession with the literary work of reclusive genius Verner Vanderloon will take root in Stub's own mind), and he soon strikes out in his own, embracing the campus of a small nearby college as his own. Stub's adventures there I'll leave for you to discover, but know that Ducornet imbues the world of this lonely Peter Pan man-child with an evanescent and lyrical beauty. As Stub cautiously flits in and out of the school faculty's social circle, he finds wonder, love, confusion and disenchantment from unexpected corners.
Although this little volume fills only 143 small pages, it exemplifies Salman Rushdie's adage: "To understand one person, you must swallow the world." The bright innocence of Stub's persona lands in your lap without warning time and again, and his ruminations on an number of topics, from the soul: "They say...they say we each have a bird within us. A bird of breath, a bird of fire. Longing for...release..." to loss of innocence: "It's as if he has seen angels tearing off one another's wings..." will leave you satisfied that art and creativity continue to pilot our peculiar human existence.
Ducornet's biggest achievement, though, is that she manages to deliver this work without succumbing to pretension or preciousness. Truly a must read for anyone interested in ripe characters, a bit of introspection, or struggling with the privilege and pain of writing. It's a little Holy wafer on the tongue of your overwhelming everyday life.
Time passes; circumstances change and for a short time Stub finds camaraderie with his caretaker, Jenny, but it doesn't last (although her personal obsession with the literary work of reclusive genius Verner Vanderloon will take root in Stub's own mind), and he soon strikes out in his own, embracing the campus of a small nearby college as his own. Stub's adventures there I'll leave for you to discover, but know that Ducornet imbues the world of this lonely Peter Pan man-child with an evanescent and lyrical beauty. As Stub cautiously flits in and out of the school faculty's social circle, he finds wonder, love, confusion and disenchantment from unexpected corners.
Although this little volume fills only 143 small pages, it exemplifies Salman Rushdie's adage: "To understand one person, you must swallow the world." The bright innocence of Stub's persona lands in your lap without warning time and again, and his ruminations on an number of topics, from the soul: "They say...they say we each have a bird within us. A bird of breath, a bird of fire. Longing for...release..." to loss of innocence: "It's as if he has seen angels tearing off one another's wings..." will leave you satisfied that art and creativity continue to pilot our peculiar human existence.
Ducornet's biggest achievement, though, is that she manages to deliver this work without succumbing to pretension or preciousness. Truly a must read for anyone interested in ripe characters, a bit of introspection, or struggling with the privilege and pain of writing. It's a little Holy wafer on the tongue of your overwhelming everyday life.
August 26, 2016
As an incredulous reader of prose-poetry, Ducornet's popping, fluid style delighted me. This was an absolute privilege to read. Incendiary. A paean to the anarchy of youth.
January 7, 2023
Это очень странный и очень маленький роман, который мне давно хотелось прочитать - не только в том смысле, что он давно был в ту-рид, но и в том, что я все ищу книгу, чтобы "душа развернулась и свернулась", как в 14 лет, когда читаешь Кафку в первый раз. Ну вот это оно.
January 14, 2019
It took me a while to finish this book, but I kept coming back to it because I was so interested in the main character. The book is at once full of levity and heartbreak, and the characters I grew to care about hurtled toward a shocking, distorted conclusion. The author captures the essence of loneliness and delusion with devastating precision. Sentences like "He recalls now the pain of that moment, a feeling of such isolation it had been almost untenable" and "He stares at the table and cannot fathom the bottomless secret of his own existence" are punctuations on seemingly mundane scenes that give insight into the character's insecurities, a strain of the human condition. Excellent book!
September 27, 2016
I don't even know what just happened but I couldn't rake through it anymore. I'm sure it's great, I'm very trustful of Milkweed Press, but there wasn't enough mass in this tiny paperback for me to gravitate towards it. Also, no feral characters at all. Anywhere. Just none, whatsoever.
July 12, 2016
It was beautifully written and the words were amazingly poetic; but I hated it. It just made me feel lost and sad.
Read
February 27, 2020Ducornet's Netsuke was an absolute tour-de-force, a well-placed middle finger. Brightfellow... well, not so much. There's this wee vagabond on the loose on a college campus in upstate New York and there's... some dude he gets obsessed with.. and the whole thing was regrettably kinda boring. Her use of language was on point, as always, but the individual sentences didn't add up to a narrative worth reading. I hear such great things about Ducornet's other work though, so onto that.
February 11, 2025
A couple quick notes until I can post more:
*the cover photo/art doesn't at all evoke the vibe of this book or contents or time period/setting other than to indicate (a) child/ren are feature characters. Maybe more like ... life of childlike minds? I even wonder if the photo is actually of Rikki's son of the dedication. Anyway, I was anticipating a story about a little savante in a 70s college town, like a 6 feet under Brenda/Charlotte Light & Dark case study, which made me anticipate something gross and gloomy and sad that I wasn't sure I wanted to read. SO GLAD it wasn't like that / wound up being something I wasn't expecting at all, but LOVED. And I think because we fear it will be really gross and sad, it's such an incredible relief when it doesn't wind up terrible in that way, and mitigates the other sad stuff.
What you'd get if you crossed Nabokov's Pnin with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf with, well, a Faulkner-infused version of Rikki Ducornet? I *LOVE* THIS BOOK, and it made me feel relieved like when the bad thing didn't happen to Pnin's beautiful bowl after all ... even if maybe some other really bad things *did* happen. Or did they?
Beautiful, and more familiar-feeling / less exotic than her other stuff while still being infused with elements she lavishes us with in her other works (studies of / fascination with the natural world, microcosms, and the kinds of characters who try to capture those things in detail). A good bedtime book for introverts who might fantasize about living The Stub Life, without romanticizing it into fake cheese.
I'm glad this wasn't my first Ducornet (for Reasons I haven't logged or raved here about all of the ones I've read), but I almost enjoyed it like it was.
*the cover photo/art doesn't at all evoke the vibe of this book or contents or time period/setting other than to indicate (a) child/ren are feature characters. Maybe more like ... life of childlike minds? I even wonder if the photo is actually of Rikki's son of the dedication. Anyway, I was anticipating a story about a little savante in a 70s college town, like a 6 feet under Brenda/Charlotte Light & Dark case study, which made me anticipate something gross and gloomy and sad that I wasn't sure I wanted to read. SO GLAD it wasn't like that / wound up being something I wasn't expecting at all, but LOVED. And I think because we fear it will be really gross and sad, it's such an incredible relief when it doesn't wind up terrible in that way, and mitigates the other sad stuff.
What you'd get if you crossed Nabokov's Pnin with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf with, well, a Faulkner-infused version of Rikki Ducornet? I *LOVE* THIS BOOK, and it made me feel relieved like when the bad thing didn't happen to Pnin's beautiful bowl after all ... even if maybe some other really bad things *did* happen. Or did they?
Beautiful, and more familiar-feeling / less exotic than her other stuff while still being infused with elements she lavishes us with in her other works (studies of / fascination with the natural world, microcosms, and the kinds of characters who try to capture those things in detail). A good bedtime book for introverts who might fantasize about living The Stub Life, without romanticizing it into fake cheese.
I'm glad this wasn't my first Ducornet (for Reasons I haven't logged or raved here about all of the ones I've read), but I almost enjoyed it like it was.
December 4, 2025
Trying too hard to be Quirky and Buoyant, I fear. DNF.
June 12, 2020
I've made no secret of my admiration for Ducornet's writing. Of her novels, no two lend themselves to close stylistic- or even thematic- comparisons outside of the fact that each is brilliant and unique. For readers who prize formulaic story constructs, Ducornet will not appeal. And the same goes for those readers who enjoy retreaded stories that are "gussied up" (my grandmother's term) for a modern retelling.
This particular novel is quite subtle in it's achievement. Sublime is an apt description, and not one that I would normally apply to any writing. Here, the aptly named Stub reinvents himself in a most unconventional manner following a largely neglected childhood. Once on his feet, his platonic fixation with a neighborhood child dissolves his hold on reality as the relationship sours.
This story is tragic, poetic, unsettling, and artistically satisfying all at once.
===================================
Update. I never re-read a book. Friends tell me they re-read books to luxuriate once again in the experience of the story (or the story-telling). On a cognitive level, I understand the sentiment. For me though, part of the appeal of reading is discovering new experiences. Having no idea what is around the next bend. Re-reading, then, holds no appeal for me. I already know what's around the next bend.
And so, I was quite surprised to find myself re-reading this one. I was even more surprised to find myself truly enjoying this read at an almost visceral level. The writing is that good, and I would say this is not her best novel. Speaks volumes about her talent. Buy all of her books. Binge read them.
This particular novel is quite subtle in it's achievement. Sublime is an apt description, and not one that I would normally apply to any writing. Here, the aptly named Stub reinvents himself in a most unconventional manner following a largely neglected childhood. Once on his feet, his platonic fixation with a neighborhood child dissolves his hold on reality as the relationship sours.
This story is tragic, poetic, unsettling, and artistically satisfying all at once.
===================================
Update. I never re-read a book. Friends tell me they re-read books to luxuriate once again in the experience of the story (or the story-telling). On a cognitive level, I understand the sentiment. For me though, part of the appeal of reading is discovering new experiences. Having no idea what is around the next bend. Re-reading, then, holds no appeal for me. I already know what's around the next bend.
And so, I was quite surprised to find myself re-reading this one. I was even more surprised to find myself truly enjoying this read at an almost visceral level. The writing is that good, and I would say this is not her best novel. Speaks volumes about her talent. Buy all of her books. Binge read them.
May 9, 2021
At around page 65, this book really picked up for me - and it’s very unusual for me to keep going this far in if a book doesn’t pull to me right away so I wanted to mention in case anyone else isn’t immediately pulled in - it was very worthwhile to keep going, and I ended up really enjoying the read.
It read to me as a really interesting story about being an outsider and living inside that constant nagging fear of being found out. She captures that imposter feeling - well I suppose the main character is an actual imposter - just perfectly. This somehow also touches on everyone’s essential loneliness by describing, in a sense, how we all create our own identities to fit in or not, as well as how complex and sometimes misguided our desires are, how perhaps no one actually has what we think they do.
It’s a pretty surreal book with the main character continuously changing names, and there seems to be plenty hidden in the text - I honestly think I may have missed a lot my first time through. She’s clearly such an amazing writer, and I dog-eared many pages, which now skimming back through, I think was only due to the beautiful arrangement of language used, I guess I’m going to start a folder of “want to re-read” as this is one of them.
I’m very eager to read more of her work also!
It read to me as a really interesting story about being an outsider and living inside that constant nagging fear of being found out. She captures that imposter feeling - well I suppose the main character is an actual imposter - just perfectly. This somehow also touches on everyone’s essential loneliness by describing, in a sense, how we all create our own identities to fit in or not, as well as how complex and sometimes misguided our desires are, how perhaps no one actually has what we think they do.
It’s a pretty surreal book with the main character continuously changing names, and there seems to be plenty hidden in the text - I honestly think I may have missed a lot my first time through. She’s clearly such an amazing writer, and I dog-eared many pages, which now skimming back through, I think was only due to the beautiful arrangement of language used, I guess I’m going to start a folder of “want to re-read” as this is one of them.
I’m very eager to read more of her work also!
October 27, 2016
Brightfellow is a solitary young boy’s unconventional coming of age story. Abandoned by his parents as a child, Stub moves onto the local college campus where he takes refuge in utilities closets and abandoned library storage rooms. Among the stacks of forgotten books, Stub educates himself on the writings of obscure philosopher Verner Vanderloon, who is also a recluse. A widowed professor eventually takes Stub in, while Stub, who has renamed himself Charter, poses as an exchange student from Australia. From the window of his new lodgings, Charter becomes fascinated by Asthma, a young girl who lives next door, and he attempts to remake his lost childhood through her. Brimming with lyrical descriptions of the campus and with ornamental characters representing various academic “types,” Brightfellow is both a portrait of small town campus life and of the peculiarities of childhood. Ducornet’s vision of childhood, despite being idiosyncratic, is quite appealing: a world free of restrictive adults where self-learning is the prerogative. As a first time Ducornet reader, this short, brisk novel was a welcome introduction to her writing.
This review first appeared on my blog: http://buriedwomenwriters.com/2016/10...
This review first appeared on my blog: http://buriedwomenwriters.com/2016/10...
October 8, 2016
Isolation, loneliness, and obsession control this short novel by Ducornet. Who are we if we have no strong identity? Can we be whomever we want to be, create a subterfuge that every one believes, even yourself? When do we cross the line from curious about a life we want to have to a creepy young man with mental issues? These questions all come to mind when reading, but have no clear answers for us as readers.
July 14, 2016
Another dark and glittering gem from the surrealist Rikki Ducornet. One of the most unsettling novels I've read in recent years.
October 16, 2016
Bizarre little book about a feral boy making a life on a college campus and his fascination with a young girl. Tough to categorize but somehow captivating.
June 25, 2019
i thought that Rikki could write the most aimless thing ever and still make it lyrically compelling but this one just seemed so bland
Read
April 8, 2023Video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfKRT....
December 25, 2023
The ending of this book is like the end of the world, with the promise of a new world beginning tomorrow. Altho' it's not really foreshadowing, within the narrative is placed the image of Quetzalcoatl looking east, at the dawn sun rising over Marduk standing there on the World-Mountain with lighting shooting from his flesh, which brings to mind that card from the Tarot, The Tower, and somehow calls for the end scene, with the burning painting studio. Oh, this is a book for painters and poets and people who lit fires when small.
I found this book misfiled, tucked away with several other titles by Ducornet in the science fiction/fantasy stacks of my local library. There is absolutely nothing "scifi/fantasy" about "Brightfellow," regardless of incredibly fluid and magical descriptions of subjective reality in the novel. Everything which occurs within the fictive reality of "Brightfellow" is quite realistic.
The action happens on a small-town (college town) liberal arts campus modeled on Bard College but similar enough to most of them to be recognizable. I went to Antioch IRL and felt immediately at home in this one.
Something about this novel is VERY real to me. I was a peculiar, solitary child with deeply troubled parents, very much like the main character, Stub. And although the course of events in my life is utterly different, there are enough deep similarities that it seems the author must know families like my family of origin richly and deeply. I'm only grateful I never burned a building, but I was one of those kids who simply HAD to start fires. Somehow Ducornet captures this. I felt compelled to exclaim about it on my Facebook timeline:
Ever been startled by a novel?!?!?!
How have I never read anything by Rikki Ducornet before this? Randomly picked up "Brightfellow" and the first chapter was like reading my own biography. If only I'd stayed as absolutely awesome as the main character, Stub, beyond age 6. What a goddamn startling book!
I finished reading Brightfellow. It became, once again, something like my biography, but the biography of a slightly alternate timeline version of myself. Is there something which all little boys who had troubled mothers and strange wandering fathers wind up having in common? How does the author know of these things? The fires! Oh, the things a harpy's voice can turn you into, make you wish to do; what the rattling of one's teeth in one's head does to small people! The places a mind full of fantasy and life of lies can take one! What a disturbing book!
What a strange and beautiful book, as well. Highly recommended! Like a Greek Tragedy, but somehow inverted. Mother divorces, leaves family, son abandons father as father first abandoned him. Two pyres, one for the dead, one(accidentally) for the living. A madwoman uttering something like prophecy, something like truth. Third person, unconfident-but-omniscient narrator, and transcendent understanding. The perpetually mourning character, the professor of mathematics Ms. Ash, is like a Greek chorus somehow; and she's lots like Hecuba, if Hecuba was still youngish and beautiful. The entire novel is raked by grief, like a zen garden is shaped and made beautiful by a small iron rake.
If you've never, as a child, felt you simply HAD to light a fire, this might help you understand those of us who did have to light them.
And the ending of Brightfellow is like the end of the world, with the promise of a new world beginning tomorrow. The image of Quetzalcoatl looking east, at the dawn sun rising over Marduk standing there on the World-Mountain with lighting shooting from his flesh. Oh, this is a book for painters and poets and people who lit fires when small.
There's absolutely no reason to put Brightfellow in the science fiction stacks. It's purely fiction. All the magic(and there is a lot of it) occurs within the minds of the characters, not in the fictive reality of the novel. It's just a novel, written with startling fluidity of description. I can think on zero "sci-fi/fantasy" elements. What a wonderful misfiling-I'd never have read this author otherwise. Somehow she minds me of Italo Calvino, despite every event in the narrative being absolutely realistic.
I found this book misfiled, tucked away with several other titles by Ducornet in the science fiction/fantasy stacks of my local library. There is absolutely nothing "scifi/fantasy" about "Brightfellow," regardless of incredibly fluid and magical descriptions of subjective reality in the novel. Everything which occurs within the fictive reality of "Brightfellow" is quite realistic.
The action happens on a small-town (college town) liberal arts campus modeled on Bard College but similar enough to most of them to be recognizable. I went to Antioch IRL and felt immediately at home in this one.
Something about this novel is VERY real to me. I was a peculiar, solitary child with deeply troubled parents, very much like the main character, Stub. And although the course of events in my life is utterly different, there are enough deep similarities that it seems the author must know families like my family of origin richly and deeply. I'm only grateful I never burned a building, but I was one of those kids who simply HAD to start fires. Somehow Ducornet captures this. I felt compelled to exclaim about it on my Facebook timeline:
Ever been startled by a novel?!?!?!
How have I never read anything by Rikki Ducornet before this? Randomly picked up "Brightfellow" and the first chapter was like reading my own biography. If only I'd stayed as absolutely awesome as the main character, Stub, beyond age 6. What a goddamn startling book!
I finished reading Brightfellow. It became, once again, something like my biography, but the biography of a slightly alternate timeline version of myself. Is there something which all little boys who had troubled mothers and strange wandering fathers wind up having in common? How does the author know of these things? The fires! Oh, the things a harpy's voice can turn you into, make you wish to do; what the rattling of one's teeth in one's head does to small people! The places a mind full of fantasy and life of lies can take one! What a disturbing book!
What a strange and beautiful book, as well. Highly recommended! Like a Greek Tragedy, but somehow inverted. Mother divorces, leaves family, son abandons father as father first abandoned him. Two pyres, one for the dead, one(accidentally) for the living. A madwoman uttering something like prophecy, something like truth. Third person, unconfident-but-omniscient narrator, and transcendent understanding. The perpetually mourning character, the professor of mathematics Ms. Ash, is like a Greek chorus somehow; and she's lots like Hecuba, if Hecuba was still youngish and beautiful. The entire novel is raked by grief, like a zen garden is shaped and made beautiful by a small iron rake.
If you've never, as a child, felt you simply HAD to light a fire, this might help you understand those of us who did have to light them.
And the ending of Brightfellow is like the end of the world, with the promise of a new world beginning tomorrow. The image of Quetzalcoatl looking east, at the dawn sun rising over Marduk standing there on the World-Mountain with lighting shooting from his flesh. Oh, this is a book for painters and poets and people who lit fires when small.
There's absolutely no reason to put Brightfellow in the science fiction stacks. It's purely fiction. All the magic(and there is a lot of it) occurs within the minds of the characters, not in the fictive reality of the novel. It's just a novel, written with startling fluidity of description. I can think on zero "sci-fi/fantasy" elements. What a wonderful misfiling-I'd never have read this author otherwise. Somehow she minds me of Italo Calvino, despite every event in the narrative being absolutely realistic.
October 30, 2018
Over halfway through the novel, I read this: "Charter likes to think this world of his is just one in an infinite set of worlds, each unique, some darker than others, some brimming with light. (He wants access to such a world!) Because these worlds are material, and because matter is driven to transform itself--just as a fox is driven to bite, just as a dreamy boy is driven to dream high dreams...Once a world begins anything can happen."
--And I am stunned. Ducornet's novel becomes a world of invention, bitter almonds, greenery, isolation, play, escape, cafe au lait, loons, and danger. I am stunned because my imagination has been airlifted into a wispy labyrinth. I am stunned because I never thought the book would end as it did and yet the ending makes perfect sense. I am stunned because motive (longing, need, craving, desire, curiosity, lust for action) drives the characters (Charter nee Stub, Jenny, Asthma, Blackie, Blackie's Rod, Pea Pod, Dr. Ash, Billy, Dr. Santa Fotuna, Axel) to actions consistent to their yearning.
Reading Ducornet's sentences and paragraphs become its own journey. Forget the destination. She writes and her words become a leaf caught in the wind. Her artistry is profound, baroque, precise, and dank with metaphor.
Finally, Brightfellow is a novel rich for study. At once, it is a bildungsroman, a psychological novel that edges toward Lolita, toward hermitages, toward extreme sensual delights. Ducornet writes as if her hair is on fire. Novels of high art still being written.
I hope you can tell I loved this. I did. I will read more of her books too. That is my new motive in life.
--And I am stunned. Ducornet's novel becomes a world of invention, bitter almonds, greenery, isolation, play, escape, cafe au lait, loons, and danger. I am stunned because my imagination has been airlifted into a wispy labyrinth. I am stunned because I never thought the book would end as it did and yet the ending makes perfect sense. I am stunned because motive (longing, need, craving, desire, curiosity, lust for action) drives the characters (Charter nee Stub, Jenny, Asthma, Blackie, Blackie's Rod, Pea Pod, Dr. Ash, Billy, Dr. Santa Fotuna, Axel) to actions consistent to their yearning.
Reading Ducornet's sentences and paragraphs become its own journey. Forget the destination. She writes and her words become a leaf caught in the wind. Her artistry is profound, baroque, precise, and dank with metaphor.
Finally, Brightfellow is a novel rich for study. At once, it is a bildungsroman, a psychological novel that edges toward Lolita, toward hermitages, toward extreme sensual delights. Ducornet writes as if her hair is on fire. Novels of high art still being written.
I hope you can tell I loved this. I did. I will read more of her books too. That is my new motive in life.
September 16, 2021
Island by island
he must step to the light switch
And turn it on.
“Stranded.” A lovely word.
…
It is impossible for him to imagine:
Jamaica.
It is impossible for him to imagine
what it must be to live in a house
as Dr. Ash does
full of quiet rooms / closets full / light linens / woven wool
as if each night it were basted in gravy.
…
How good it is
to smoke a cigarette
one’s back against a solid wall
the breeze playing in the breeze
and the leaves in the leaves
the Each in the Other
and the Circle silenced—
Rules of Rage—
is the mirror of all that is wrong with a species that again and again snaps up the fish rather than attempt to understand it.
Nose, the world is sacred.
he must step to the light switch
And turn it on.
“Stranded.” A lovely word.
…
It is impossible for him to imagine:
Jamaica.
It is impossible for him to imagine
what it must be to live in a house
as Dr. Ash does
full of quiet rooms / closets full / light linens / woven wool
as if each night it were basted in gravy.
…
How good it is
to smoke a cigarette
one’s back against a solid wall
the breeze playing in the breeze
and the leaves in the leaves
the Each in the Other
and the Circle silenced—
Rules of Rage—
is the mirror of all that is wrong with a species that again and again snaps up the fish rather than attempt to understand it.
Nose, the world is sacred.
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