Saving History

by Fanny Howe

Arft, Poetry, Literary Studies

Genres: Poetry, Fiction

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Fanny Quincy Howe was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. She was raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Howe wrote more than 20 books of poetry and prose. Her major works include poetry such as One Crossed Out, Gone, and Second Childhood; the novels Nod, The Deep North, and Indivisible; and collected essays such as The Wedding Dress: Meditations on Word and Life and The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation.
Howe received praise and official recognition: she was awarded the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize by the Poetry Foundation. She also received the Gold Medal for Poetry from the Commonwealth Club of California. In addition, her Selected Poems received the 2001 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets for the most outstanding book of poetry published in 2000. She was a finalist for the 2015 International Booker Prize. She also received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Poetry Foundation, the California Arts Council, and the Village Voice. She was professor of writing and literature at the University of California, San Diego and lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Maureen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Howe is better known for her poetry, and this novel reads like a series of prose-poems. The story is about black-market organ trading on the Cali-Mex bordered. Main characters are a native woman in dire straits and her two daughters; a zillion strange character shuffle through their lives, including former well-off white employers, gender-ambiguous hustlers, each of them on a different quest. Like all of Howe's books, the religious and political undercurrents are strong (Howe is Catholic and vocal on global justice)

For the value of the book is not so much the plot as the character sketches and wandering tangential queries. Example, character sketch:

"Her skin did not respond to touches lacking in love. THe first thing you really know is the touch of love. So why did she return again to his black bedclothes, to the pressure of his body on hers? She did not believe in choice, because she misapprehended facts. They had eluded her since childhood. Anything that had a weight, measurement and number-- a correct answer-- became blurry as the face of an enemy. She averted her gaze fro facts. She lived impressionistically. iwth the kind of awe that makes you egalitarian. She didn't love him either, not at first, not until it was clear that they were stuck together in the tragedy of consequence."

I also learned it "takes seven years to revirginate." Good to know.

[Lisa · Rating 1 out of 5]

Maybe I disliked this because I disliked the professor who made me read it. Someday I may go back and give it another chance...