Spells: A Novel Within Photographs

by Peter Rock

Twenty years ago, while working as a security guard in an art museum, Peter Rock staved off the job’s inherent boredom and loneliness by trying to make up a story for each photograph, painting and object in the museum. A few years ago, reminded of the pleasures and play that he felt in danger of forgetting, he began to envision a similar project.

As he explains, “First, I found photographers whose work I was drawn to, and contacted them with a very hypothetical and tentative description of what I was doing. Somewhat arbitrarily, I decided that five photographers would be a good number; I was gratified that the first five I contacted were excited to join me. Next, I let these photographers know why I was drawn to their work, noted some images I really admired, and shared some of my previous writing with them. I asked them to send me 20-30 images; of these, I chose five at a time, and proceeded incrementally, generating the specific stories as I went.

The images are not merely illustrations for a pre-existent story, then, but the conditions and possibilities and limitations of how they proceeded. The images came first. One way to think of it is that the stories herein, and the larger story they become, were already embedded in the photographs. My attention and intuition acted as a kind of excavation that brought them to the surface, into words.”

The texts range from narrative to prose poem, from folktale to rant to reverie to an essay written by a fourth grader. The overarching story follows three friends who have recently graduated from high school; it explores their relationships and how things change when they become entangled with an elderly widower who claims to have dreamt of one of them. The ensuing drama explores the relationship between dreams and waking life, between the head and the heart, between shadows and their bodies, between the living and the dead.

Genres: Photography

192 pages, Paperback

Published May 9, 2017

About the author

Peter Rock was born and raised in Salt Lake City. His most recent novel, Passersthrough, involves a murder house, a fax machine, communications between the living and the dead, and a mountain lake that moves from place to place. He is also the author of the novels The Night Swimmers, SPELLS, Klickitat, The Shelter Cycle, My Abandonment, The Bewildered, The Ambidextrist, Carnival Wolves and This Is the Place, as well as a story collection, The Unsettling. Rock attended Deep Springs College, received a BA in English from Yale University, and held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. He has taught fiction at the University of Pennsylvania, Yale, Deep Springs College, and in the MFA program at San Francisco State University. His stories and freelance writing have both appeared and been anthologized widely, and his books published in various countries and languages. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and an Alex Award, as well as a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, he currently lives in Portland, Oregon, where he is a Professor in the English Department of Reed College. Leave No Trace, the film adaptation of My Abandonment, directed by Debra Granik, premiered at Sundance and Cannes and was released to critical acclaim in 2018. His eleventh work of fiction, Passersthrough, will be published in early 2022.

Reviews

[Bill Hsu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Peter Rock fans know what to expect: the open-ended narrative, the paradoxical blend of intimacy and emotional distance, the weave of dream-like and gently unsettling events. There are also fairy tale-like segments that touch on characters and stories in the main narrative, sometimes adding perspective, sometimes not. The images are perfect with the text, evocative and ambiguous. I'm not a fan of the ending; otherwise this would get four stars.

(The spellsproject.com URL doesn't seem to work; it kept taking me to a Chinese language website that had nothing to do with this novel.)

[Lorrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rock!!!! What have you done here? I've been a faithful follower. I've read every one of your books. I read this book slowly, savoring the way the thread connected everything both in this book & yet with your other books as well. You've messed me up for eternity here! What am I to think? You haven't tied everything up with a shiny silver ribbon & bow. Now I have to figure out your ending. I think I already am but I shouldn't have to do all of this work!!!! Is this the new style? Am I your guinea pig? OMG!!!! I think I get it!! Damn you, Rock!!!! (I can already see the "family" connection here & how important it is. Am I going to be thinking about this story for a few days--like usual?)

[Madeline · Rating 5 out of 5]

thanks for that, pete

[HV_bookwyrm · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm sort of torn on how to rate this. Somewhere around a 3.5? The premise of this book is that Rock has constructed a series of short stories around photographs. I thought this idea was very intriguing. His use of language is beautiful, and the stories usually correspond to the photos in unexpected ways. There are some truly beautiful sentences in here. Each story can be read independently, however, there is a larger narrative being woven between them. The story is surreal and has a sort of "magical-realism" feel to it. If you enjoy beautiful prose and are less interested in tight plot structure then this will be for you. Overall, I would say that I enjoyed it and can see the beauty in it, but I was a bit confused by the story itself.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

A strange journey. Contrived. Some beautiful use of language. Some strange, strange visions. But perplexing.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Won this novel on a Goodreads.com giveaway. I was intrigued with the premise of how the story was built around random photographs the author used from several photographers. Truth be told, the first 20-30 pages left me wondering what the story was about, it seemed a bit disjointed with several different story lines randomly going on at once. HOWEVER, the manner in which the novel was written seem to come into a clearer focus for me around page 35 and it quickly became interesting and wanting to me continue on to find out how these stories actually intersected.

One of my favorite parts of the story was a mere 3 pages in the middle of this short novel (about 150 pages) and involved a character known as Oscar and his interactions with pigeons delivering messages from an unknown person(s).

Once involved in the characters and the strange goings on and path the author took, I quickly delved in and finished the book. I will state that it ended in a strange manner and did not really "tie" things up in the end. It's my opinion that this was meant to give the reader the opportunity to fill in the blanks with their own imaginative ending/outcome.

If you are looking for something a bit different, something to broaden your reading pallet, I highly recommend giving Spells a consideration!

[Dianah (onourpath) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peter Rock's sublime novel-inspired-by-photographs is one of the most interesting books I've ever read. A story of three friends, a grandmother, an old man, and a journey -- it is nothing I expected.

Naomi's pilgrimage -- at the request of her grandmother -- is a blind leap of faith and trust. Causing ripples of feelings in her small circle, she leaves her grandmother's home with no idea of what awaits her.

Atmospheric, quiet, heartfelt and piercingly lovely, Rock's story examines themes of friendship, coming of age, grieving, trust, and the sometimes difficult act of unreservedly helping another. Producing a brilliant braid of poetry, prose and photography, Rock will cast his spell on you. Utterly impressive!

[to'c · Rating 3 out of 5]

An eerie read influenced by a series of unrelated photographs that twine in and out of the narrative, not necessarily in the order you would expect. I was immediately captivated by this book. I grabbed it from the library mainly just to see what it was about. But after reading the first paragraph I was hooked.

[Megan Esposito · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clever. Emotional. ... but the ending made no effing sense.