For an independent thinker finding a book club in suburbia can be challenging because people covet, exclude and half the time use the club as a beard to vent or gossip about life in a safe space. As a response to this I have created pop-up book clubs and have popped up in more public venues and intersected with interesting people from time to time. HOWEVER, when mobility presents a challenge one has to retreat to online spaces and that’s when truth can be stranger than fiction. This issue of Bookisshh tells not the tale of a weird online book club experience but looks at a book that Nerdette Podcast read back in the Spring that I thought I’d read along with while recovering from a hip replacement. Enjoy!
As a regular listener and sometimes featured in the listener’s thoughts sound bytes, I’ve discovered some gems in the bookish space within the Nerdette Podcast and as a result, I special ordered the book via a local indie. Initially, I was on a good course to finish the book before the discussion and perhaps the author interview, but my hip issue really slowed me down because the best position for reading at the time ‘’’was standing. It also, didn’t help that the main character suffered a bad injury to her leg that was life threatening…
Author, Idra Novey, centers the story in the life of Jean but narrates from alternating first-person points of view belonging to Jean and her estranged step-daughter, Leah. Jean lives in her childhood home in a Pennsylvania collar county deeply plagued by poverty and the opioid epidemic. The neighborhood Jean lives in has gone to pot except for a couple of houses. Jean is an elderly woman who is an artist and spends all of her time building what she refers to as “manglements” out of metal and found objects that she welds herself. Jean lives alone. Leah has recently returned to the states from Peru with her husband and son and are moving their lives back to the states for professional and economic reasons. During the story, Leah is forced back into Jean’s life because Jean bequeaths to Leah the remains of her home and all of the “manglements” that consume the space inside. Leah also has to find a venue that collects outsider art and art on a large scale rather than junk or scrap it all. She does this because love requires Leah to. Leah’s love for Jean allows her to love honestly and to give Jean an opportunity to be seen for how she managed her internal world. Love is a weird and wild ride.
A friend and savior squats in Jean’s home both while she’s alive and after she’s deceased. Elliott, a neighbor, addict, and ex-con spends his time trying to clean up his life as it falls apart before his very eyes on the regular. Jean hires Elliott to perform some heavy lifting of scrap metal and welding. Elliott becomes interested in learning welding, Jean demonstrates how to weld and in doing so nearly cuts off her leg while severing an artery. Elliott takes her to the hospital. Elliott moves in with Jean but things get confused when people differently aged both in body and spirit try to navigate a confusing relationship of interdependency. Ultimately Jean and Elliott part ways and both Jean and Elliot’s lives decline.
The narrative structure toggles back and forth between Jean and Leah both past and present though time does not move in a linear fashion and it’s confusing when Jean’s final demise occurs. Both Jean and Leah are scarred from the past that they were unable to build a future. Jean hides her pain and love within her “manglements” by adding small transparent pods through which viewers/readers observe objects denoting a personal and/or fragmented snapshots that a close reader can put together enabling an understanding of either or both of Jean and Leah’s backstories. It’s a lot of work to hold onto these flashes of which there are many.
Artists and art are frequently mentioned throughout the narrative from Jean’s perspective. Jean ardently admires Louise Bourgeois, an artist who began at mid-life, and using Jean’s perspective Novey entwines Bourgeois’ intent and philosophy enabling the artist to mother Jean through the challenges that interfere with her “manglements.” No matter what pain Jean endures, the pain of not creating is worse and her entire remaining life is dedicated to her “manglements” which eventually kill Jean.
While I was reading, I was scared to finish because I began before my hip replacement surgery and Jean’s suffering from her leg injury scared the life out of me. Being a completist, I dragged on and took breaks. I didn’t even cheat and listen to the podcast! Surgery was successful by the way! Once I was strong and walking outside I decided it was time to finish. I didn’t love the book, am mad that I didn’t research it a little more before pre-ordering it, but I did enjoy the meditations on art. It made me realize how important it is for people and myselto create and how life feels so different when I do. So there’s that right!
I’ll still listen to Nerdette podcast and you should too.. You might catch a bite of me—I usually get on when I submit something. I’ll still pop-up a book club and try a public in-person one when a book compels me to. We do need to gather people. It’s essential to democracy and we need to leave that in place for the kids—yours, mine and everyone else’s. Until then enjoy!
Bookisshh 