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The Mayflies
Obsessed with bodies of water and haunted by a chorus of mysterious ladies, the unnamed protagonist desperately searches to find out what is real and what is a dream. A deep and vivid exploration of the passageway between life and death, The Mayflies is a lyrical and haunting look at loneliness, isolation, and what it truly means to move on.
150 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2014
2 people are currently reading
51 people want to read
About the author
Sara Veglahn
9 books19 followersSara Veglahn was born and raised in the American Midwest. Her novel, The Mayflies, was recently published by Dzanc in May 2014. An excerpt from her novel, The Ladies, was recently published as a chapbook by New Herring Press. She is also the author of three other chapbooks: Closed Histories (Noemi Press, 2008); Falling Forward (Braincase Press, 2003); and Another Random Heart, recently republished by Letter Machine Editions (2009). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Caketrain, Conjunctions, Sleepingfish, Octopus, Fence, 26, Trickhouse, Tarpaulin Sky, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in writing from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and a PhD in literature and writing from the University of Denver. She currently lives in Denver.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 24, 2018
Not a book for those who demand plotlines or clearly defined characters. Something about a river, mud, ghosts, and mysterious "ladies." Good imagery that reminds me sometimes of Anne Carson.
July 9, 2014
I knew I was going to like this book because I knew I liked Sara Veglahn's voice but I didn't expect to fall in love with The Mayflies quite the way that I did.
I literally found myself swooning from page to page, from river to house, from mud to ghost, from dream to death to birth, and then I swooned in all the places in between; at the threshold, which is where this haunting novel lives, I swooned.
I came away with a better understanding of how to die and of how to be born. That to dream is to live and to live is to dream. I was carried away by the currents of Veglahn's economic yet elegant prose but I was also pulled under by the lurking undercurrents of her river, and down there, I saw the dark shapes of things I'm not supposed to see, but somehow already know, and so I almost recognized them. I lived the multiple lives of her unnamed narrator (which means I thought her many thoughts and dreamed her many dreams) and I was tended to by her ladies. They came to me between the pages to press a cold washcloth to my fevered forehead; they came and tried to cool my burning flesh. From the corner of my eye, as I read on, I saw them sitting in the corners of my bedroom sewing sequins to their costumes, and then I saw them playing cards at a table positioned in the shallow waters of a great river. Then I felt the actual metamorphosis of the mayflies as she wrote it, and soon these insects fluttered through the storyline, living their own fleetingly fast lives, and I understood.
In a tone somewhere between the streams of Virginia Woolf's consciousness and Emily Dickinson's spirited simplicity, Veglahn has composed a true work of beauty. I read the entire book in one sitting--I could not put it down. As I read, I was haunted by my own ghosts, by my own doppelgängers, and by my own self. As I read deep into the night, her writing orchestrated a river that seeped into my house. These dark waters flooded the first floor, swallowing the stairs to the second story where I was in my bedroom reading. This river tip-toed down the hallway and pushed itself into my chambers by squeezing through the crack under my door. It then lifted my bed with me in it and carried the mattress like a boat into the land of the dreams--there we were ferried by a Lord (or maybe it was just the Ladies), crossing over the Styx into the land of the dead. And as the medium continued the trance, the book came to an end, and I had to backtrack. I had to read the book again.
I literally found myself swooning from page to page, from river to house, from mud to ghost, from dream to death to birth, and then I swooned in all the places in between; at the threshold, which is where this haunting novel lives, I swooned.
I came away with a better understanding of how to die and of how to be born. That to dream is to live and to live is to dream. I was carried away by the currents of Veglahn's economic yet elegant prose but I was also pulled under by the lurking undercurrents of her river, and down there, I saw the dark shapes of things I'm not supposed to see, but somehow already know, and so I almost recognized them. I lived the multiple lives of her unnamed narrator (which means I thought her many thoughts and dreamed her many dreams) and I was tended to by her ladies. They came to me between the pages to press a cold washcloth to my fevered forehead; they came and tried to cool my burning flesh. From the corner of my eye, as I read on, I saw them sitting in the corners of my bedroom sewing sequins to their costumes, and then I saw them playing cards at a table positioned in the shallow waters of a great river. Then I felt the actual metamorphosis of the mayflies as she wrote it, and soon these insects fluttered through the storyline, living their own fleetingly fast lives, and I understood.
In a tone somewhere between the streams of Virginia Woolf's consciousness and Emily Dickinson's spirited simplicity, Veglahn has composed a true work of beauty. I read the entire book in one sitting--I could not put it down. As I read, I was haunted by my own ghosts, by my own doppelgängers, and by my own self. As I read deep into the night, her writing orchestrated a river that seeped into my house. These dark waters flooded the first floor, swallowing the stairs to the second story where I was in my bedroom reading. This river tip-toed down the hallway and pushed itself into my chambers by squeezing through the crack under my door. It then lifted my bed with me in it and carried the mattress like a boat into the land of the dreams--there we were ferried by a Lord (or maybe it was just the Ladies), crossing over the Styx into the land of the dead. And as the medium continued the trance, the book came to an end, and I had to backtrack. I had to read the book again.
September 2, 2017
A sheer torrent.
October 1, 2023
We need more books like this!!! Innovative, lyrical, beautiful.
May 4, 2014
This is a beautiful book that I happily recommend to others.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews