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A Wildness of the Heart
To call what I am feeling a ‘crush’ feels inexact. It is not puppy love. It is not new relationship energy. It is not lust. It is an uncontrollable romantic desire.
It is not grounded in our friendship or my attraction to her. It is more of an obsession. A desperate need for her to feel the same way about me. A craving. A pang. A wildness of the heart that is as frightening as it is pleasant.
It is an unmoored, unmooring thing, drawing me ever upwards in lazy, undirected arcs almost — almost — against my will, ever closer to the sun.
Six tales of love. Six tales of need, of desire, of how to live with the ones you cannot live without. Sawtooth may be a nothing town in a flyover state, but those that live there are no less real for it. They bear all the same emotions as anyone else, have all the same needs.
It is not grounded in our friendship or my attraction to her. It is more of an obsession. A desperate need for her to feel the same way about me. A craving. A pang. A wildness of the heart that is as frightening as it is pleasant.
It is an unmoored, unmooring thing, drawing me ever upwards in lazy, undirected arcs almost — almost — against my will, ever closer to the sun.
Six tales of love. Six tales of need, of desire, of how to live with the ones you cannot live without. Sawtooth may be a nothing town in a flyover state, but those that live there are no less real for it. They bear all the same emotions as anyone else, have all the same needs.
202 pages, Paperback
Published November 1, 2021
14 people want to read
About the author
Madison Scott-Clary
17 books62 followersMadison Rye Progress, also writing under the name Madison Scott-Clary, is an author of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry living in the Pacific Northwest. Her interests lie in the realms of furry fiction and non-fiction, collaborative fiction, and hypertextual writing. She is a member of the Furry Writers' Guild, and editor for several projects, fiction and non-fiction. She holds an MFA from Cornell College where she studied the lyric essay and teaching creative writing in fandom- and subculture-specific spaces.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 18, 2021
Madison brings together a collection of stories all based in some way around love that inspired wistfulness and introspection in me as I read them. The title works with the theme of the anthology well, reminding prospective readers that the heart can be wild. Flitting from the highs and lows of that wonderful connective force.
Each of the stories in the collection deals with a different kind of love. Jump is about abusive love and the difficulty in leaving the familiar. Gigs is about a relationship undergoing stress from the lack of a steady job. Sorting Laundry deals with the absence of love from a parent. Morning Of focuses on the love of one's body and Foxes and Milkshakes is centered around young love.
I especially enjoyed the tone of the text for Jump as I think it had the best use of a narrator I've seen in a while. Foxes and Milkshakes had amazingly detailed descriptions that gave a sense of grandeur to the small diner date that the foxes were on. I feel it was a good fit with the importance dates often take on when we're young. I sympathized a great deal with Winter, from Gigs, as I think I've known or met a lot of people who are having trouble finding jobs that pay enough to keep them going. The interminable dance of working anything that'll pay so you can get to the next month is one I have seen performed by those who wish most fervently to just be able to exist halfway comfortably.
The collection takes place in Sawtooth, Idaho and while the setting is not always integral to the stories it does connect this anthology to one of Madison's previous works, Restless Town. Small references to characters, events, and places from the last collection are peppered throughout. They're not necessary to keep up with what's happening in the stories but they are cool inclusions for those that have read the other anthology.
And now we get to the biggest story, Limerant Object. It follows a deeply devout Christian coyote as he works through his newly budding love for an old college friend of his named Kay. The main character, Dee, spends the story journaling about his feelings in an attempt to find out why he is feeling this way and whether or not he should act on those feelings. I think the story does a good job of understanding the subtle implications and hang-ups that come from being Catholic. I felt very seen as I read through Dee's internal monologue. These thought patterns and doubts were familiar. For lack of a better term to call myself, I'm Catholic, and Madison nails the ways in which Catholicism can foster shame and guilt in its members. I want to frame the quote "Why must we Catholics wrap our every action up in shame?" on the wall because it's accurate as hell. That's not to say that Dee's Catholicism is portrayed as inherently negative either, just that it's a big part of his life and informs a lot of his character. I also very much appreciate how Dee and Kay's relationship is portrayed. They feel like longtime friends when they talk with each other and that kind of tone is hard to pin down. The interstitial text conversations add a lot to their respective characters and help to flesh them out. I found I was deeply affected by the story and I don't doubt this was in response to seeing a lot of the same thought patterns in Dee as I have had in the past. His process was different than my own, but I was all the more interested in seeing it resolve because of that fact. His journey of introspection was a delightful read and I would recommend it to folks who want to take a deep dive into the often uncomfortable emotions surrounding the process of admitting love to yourself.
I also really appreciated the content warnings at the beginning of the book! That helped to get me ready for the heavier topics that some of the stories tackle.
Each of the stories in the collection deals with a different kind of love. Jump is about abusive love and the difficulty in leaving the familiar. Gigs is about a relationship undergoing stress from the lack of a steady job. Sorting Laundry deals with the absence of love from a parent. Morning Of focuses on the love of one's body and Foxes and Milkshakes is centered around young love.
I especially enjoyed the tone of the text for Jump as I think it had the best use of a narrator I've seen in a while. Foxes and Milkshakes had amazingly detailed descriptions that gave a sense of grandeur to the small diner date that the foxes were on. I feel it was a good fit with the importance dates often take on when we're young. I sympathized a great deal with Winter, from Gigs, as I think I've known or met a lot of people who are having trouble finding jobs that pay enough to keep them going. The interminable dance of working anything that'll pay so you can get to the next month is one I have seen performed by those who wish most fervently to just be able to exist halfway comfortably.
The collection takes place in Sawtooth, Idaho and while the setting is not always integral to the stories it does connect this anthology to one of Madison's previous works, Restless Town. Small references to characters, events, and places from the last collection are peppered throughout. They're not necessary to keep up with what's happening in the stories but they are cool inclusions for those that have read the other anthology.
And now we get to the biggest story, Limerant Object. It follows a deeply devout Christian coyote as he works through his newly budding love for an old college friend of his named Kay. The main character, Dee, spends the story journaling about his feelings in an attempt to find out why he is feeling this way and whether or not he should act on those feelings. I think the story does a good job of understanding the subtle implications and hang-ups that come from being Catholic. I felt very seen as I read through Dee's internal monologue. These thought patterns and doubts were familiar. For lack of a better term to call myself, I'm Catholic, and Madison nails the ways in which Catholicism can foster shame and guilt in its members. I want to frame the quote "Why must we Catholics wrap our every action up in shame?" on the wall because it's accurate as hell. That's not to say that Dee's Catholicism is portrayed as inherently negative either, just that it's a big part of his life and informs a lot of his character. I also very much appreciate how Dee and Kay's relationship is portrayed. They feel like longtime friends when they talk with each other and that kind of tone is hard to pin down. The interstitial text conversations add a lot to their respective characters and help to flesh them out. I found I was deeply affected by the story and I don't doubt this was in response to seeing a lot of the same thought patterns in Dee as I have had in the past. His process was different than my own, but I was all the more interested in seeing it resolve because of that fact. His journey of introspection was a delightful read and I would recommend it to folks who want to take a deep dive into the often uncomfortable emotions surrounding the process of admitting love to yourself.
I also really appreciated the content warnings at the beginning of the book! That helped to get me ready for the heavier topics that some of the stories tackle.
October 7, 2021
In the second, and largest, of the stories in A Wildness of the Heart, a therapist in therapy muses to themselves about using writing as a tool to categorize and cartograph to facets of the self. And that's a good metaphor for what his collection feels like: different facets of an identity, cut and polished by metaphor, genre, and characterization to show at a distance what might be missed if they were looked in their original context, too close, too versimilitudinous, to see the details.
In reading Limerant Object, the aforementioned story, I'm knocked off into a tangent about how it's a shame that "ritual" isn't really thought of as an art form. It would solve a lot of problems if it was: my own immediate family might not be now so radically bigoted if they'd been able to express their problems with liberal Catholicism in terms of "I find the way they are doing the ritual art form we participate in distateful" and not "there's got be some doctrinal difference between the liturgy we like and the liturgy we don't like, so, guess there's no alternate but to pass on wildly homophobic propaganda and vote for literal fascists."
Moreover, regarding ritual as an art form would give an over-category into which to place two long-contentious smaller art forms: Video Games and Performance art. If both can be classified as ritual, then that clarifies both "the point" of performance art and also settles the "yes, this is in fact art, and it doesn't have to be fun to be worth doing or 'real'" debate.
Now, I'm under no illusions that the majority of the arguments I'm talking about, both on the religious matter and in the art matter, are fully bad faith. I don't doubt my parents would have found another justification for the homophobia they wanted to excuse. But bad faith arguments start as good faith uncertainties. Having better vocabulary of classification can head doubts off before they become prejudices.
And now because I have to bring this back to the book somehow, I'm struck by how, after finishing the collection, it feels like I've witnessed a ritual. Limerant Object talks a lot about discernment, and I can see ways in which this book, these stories, could be thought of a ritual of discernment. An identity is separated out into other identities, abstract artifacts made in the image of a small part of their creator, who have before them trials. Each a neoplatonic reflective emanation of some portion of the over-identity. The purpose is not, perhaps, to see whether the stories fail or succeed, but rather to ritualize the struggle. To make archetypes not out of the need to magnify portions of life, but to diminish them, simplify them, distill them into themselves and only themselves, where they can be confronted and defeated without crossing over with and complicating one another.
And maybe the same could be said of all fiction. I wouldn't disagree, if you were to say it.
In reading Limerant Object, the aforementioned story, I'm knocked off into a tangent about how it's a shame that "ritual" isn't really thought of as an art form. It would solve a lot of problems if it was: my own immediate family might not be now so radically bigoted if they'd been able to express their problems with liberal Catholicism in terms of "I find the way they are doing the ritual art form we participate in distateful" and not "there's got be some doctrinal difference between the liturgy we like and the liturgy we don't like, so, guess there's no alternate but to pass on wildly homophobic propaganda and vote for literal fascists."
Moreover, regarding ritual as an art form would give an over-category into which to place two long-contentious smaller art forms: Video Games and Performance art. If both can be classified as ritual, then that clarifies both "the point" of performance art and also settles the "yes, this is in fact art, and it doesn't have to be fun to be worth doing or 'real'" debate.
Now, I'm under no illusions that the majority of the arguments I'm talking about, both on the religious matter and in the art matter, are fully bad faith. I don't doubt my parents would have found another justification for the homophobia they wanted to excuse. But bad faith arguments start as good faith uncertainties. Having better vocabulary of classification can head doubts off before they become prejudices.
And now because I have to bring this back to the book somehow, I'm struck by how, after finishing the collection, it feels like I've witnessed a ritual. Limerant Object talks a lot about discernment, and I can see ways in which this book, these stories, could be thought of a ritual of discernment. An identity is separated out into other identities, abstract artifacts made in the image of a small part of their creator, who have before them trials. Each a neoplatonic reflective emanation of some portion of the over-identity. The purpose is not, perhaps, to see whether the stories fail or succeed, but rather to ritualize the struggle. To make archetypes not out of the need to magnify portions of life, but to diminish them, simplify them, distill them into themselves and only themselves, where they can be confronted and defeated without crossing over with and complicating one another.
And maybe the same could be said of all fiction. I wouldn't disagree, if you were to say it.
August 30, 2024
Limerent Object really is the star of this book, i really wish it was a stand alone novel.
The other stories were all too short as well honestly, too short to really hook me in.
The other stories were all too short as well honestly, too short to really hook me in.
November 16, 2024
Really nice writing style. Limerent Object was VERY realistic and relatable, 5/5. The other short stories were good, probably more 3/5 for me personally
December 5, 2022
Madison Scott-Clary’s A Wildness of the Heart is a collection of anthropomorphic slice-of-life short stories bookending a single novella, Limerent Object, which comprises the vast majority of the length. Like many of the other stories, the novella follows a young adult in the small city of Sawtooth, Idaho grappling with romantic feelings—the protagonist in this case being Dee Kimana, a Catholic coyote on the autism spectrum, who left the seminary several years prior to pursue a career as a therapist despite remaining devout in his faith. As he begins to ponder more deeply his decision to abandon the priesthood, and more broadly ruminate on the process of discernment in his life, Dee comes to the realization that he is falling in love with his closest friend, Kay, whom he met at university, and with whom he remains in regular contact.
Now in his early thirties, Dee has moved beyond the burning years of adolescence to settle into a mostly comfortable, mostly stable professional existence, and yet he remains plagued by a nebulous, vestigial sense of youthful anxiety about his trajectory in life—about how he was able to make such an important decision on such short notice, and why said decision received no pushback from the church itself. The story is told primarily through entries in Dee’s journal, which he begins writing at the request of his own therapist (he mentions in an early footnote that “[He] wouldn’t trust any therapist who doesn’t have one.”), rounded out with the occasional relevant email or text conversation.
I will admit that the parallels between myself and the protagonist bordered on the uncanny at times, and certainly contributed to my avid investment. Like Dee, I both possess an intimate familiarity with Catholicism and have spent a great deal of time wrestling with the place of religion in the modern world, and share his introversion, general social awkwardness, and tendency to overthink things to the point of becoming mired in seemingly endless spirals of thought. Like Dee, I am both no stranger to grappling with complicated romantic feelings, and yet not particularly experienced in the field at large—and like Dee, I too have long struggled with the subject of discernment, only realizing most of the way through my own time at university that I was on the wrong path, and there of my own accord. Strangely enough, I even have a great interest in and fondness for the real-world counterparts of his species.
However, even those who cannot connect to Scott-Clary’s characters as directly should still be able to understand them thoroughly, and empathize with their experiences. The various tales of A Wildness of the Heart, diverse as they are, contain a refreshing degree of relatability, presenting slice-of-life stories that are as easy to fall into as they are likely to remain in the reader’s mind long after the final page has been finished, stories possessed of not only appeal beyond the traditional boundaries of anthropomorphic literature but the ability to speak more directly to real-world human experiences.
From the sessions Dee runs with his clients to the now-complicated conversations he fumbles through with the subject of his newfound affections, and from the coyote’s recounting of his own therapist’s advice to recollections of his time in first the seminary and later the public university where he met Kay, Scott-Clary’s prose settles the reader into the moment with an effortless grace. The only substantive criticism I have for the collection as a whole is that I feel the limited length of the other five short stories allows them little room to truly shine as the novella does. That being said, I would be remiss to deny that even in the shortest of the stories, her writing manages to bring a laudable level of humanity to the animal characters whose lives we only so briefly get to glimpse.
A poignant reflection on the complicated feelings that nearly all people grapple with during at least some points in our lives, brimming with romantic passion and yet constructed with a mature restraint, and possessing a subtle intimacy that permeates nearly every page, A Wildness of the Heart manages something truly special with the deceptively brief glimpses it provides into the lives of its various characters—characters who will likely live on in the memory of readers long after the final page has been finished. [9/10]
Now in his early thirties, Dee has moved beyond the burning years of adolescence to settle into a mostly comfortable, mostly stable professional existence, and yet he remains plagued by a nebulous, vestigial sense of youthful anxiety about his trajectory in life—about how he was able to make such an important decision on such short notice, and why said decision received no pushback from the church itself. The story is told primarily through entries in Dee’s journal, which he begins writing at the request of his own therapist (he mentions in an early footnote that “[He] wouldn’t trust any therapist who doesn’t have one.”), rounded out with the occasional relevant email or text conversation.
I will admit that the parallels between myself and the protagonist bordered on the uncanny at times, and certainly contributed to my avid investment. Like Dee, I both possess an intimate familiarity with Catholicism and have spent a great deal of time wrestling with the place of religion in the modern world, and share his introversion, general social awkwardness, and tendency to overthink things to the point of becoming mired in seemingly endless spirals of thought. Like Dee, I am both no stranger to grappling with complicated romantic feelings, and yet not particularly experienced in the field at large—and like Dee, I too have long struggled with the subject of discernment, only realizing most of the way through my own time at university that I was on the wrong path, and there of my own accord. Strangely enough, I even have a great interest in and fondness for the real-world counterparts of his species.
However, even those who cannot connect to Scott-Clary’s characters as directly should still be able to understand them thoroughly, and empathize with their experiences. The various tales of A Wildness of the Heart, diverse as they are, contain a refreshing degree of relatability, presenting slice-of-life stories that are as easy to fall into as they are likely to remain in the reader’s mind long after the final page has been finished, stories possessed of not only appeal beyond the traditional boundaries of anthropomorphic literature but the ability to speak more directly to real-world human experiences.
From the sessions Dee runs with his clients to the now-complicated conversations he fumbles through with the subject of his newfound affections, and from the coyote’s recounting of his own therapist’s advice to recollections of his time in first the seminary and later the public university where he met Kay, Scott-Clary’s prose settles the reader into the moment with an effortless grace. The only substantive criticism I have for the collection as a whole is that I feel the limited length of the other five short stories allows them little room to truly shine as the novella does. That being said, I would be remiss to deny that even in the shortest of the stories, her writing manages to bring a laudable level of humanity to the animal characters whose lives we only so briefly get to glimpse.
A poignant reflection on the complicated feelings that nearly all people grapple with during at least some points in our lives, brimming with romantic passion and yet constructed with a mature restraint, and possessing a subtle intimacy that permeates nearly every page, A Wildness of the Heart manages something truly special with the deceptively brief glimpses it provides into the lives of its various characters—characters who will likely live on in the memory of readers long after the final page has been finished. [9/10]
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews