Don't Look Away
What if the forces behind events are not as they appear? Set in different eras that span the 20th Century, the three stories in this lyrical novel, linked by images and juxtapositions, examine the unexplainable influences that redefine and transform our lives.
MEET THE CHARACTERS:
Historical figure Vita Sackville-West in post-World War I England is torn between her identity as a female, wife and mother and her emerging identity as the trouser-clad male lover of Violet Trefusis—
I do not know how to live in this body. I do not know how to live in my clothes. I do not know how to live in a world that is made and unmade every dawn and dusk. There are no maps here. There are no maps in this wilderness. There is only one wild thing after another.
Bill, an American infantry soldier new to the European Front in World War II, is taken prisoner by the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge—
Here each minute draws itself out, long and grim. There’s an odd sense of savoring, holding. But there’s a whole other side to it, an animal side, saving up crumbled, stale bread to space through the day . . . desperate gratitude if there’s a rotting piece of meat . . . This could be the last thought I have.
And Bill’s pregnant wife, Madeline, is left behind with no information except a telegram reporting Bill missing in action—
There I am, a face made of flesh, shaped and rounded in the air. I stare into my own eyes, stare until there’s nothing else. And a fierce love descends like a dream, a fierce and nameless love . . .
Anna, a middle-aged woman who has a good-enough life in the early 1980’s, meets Thomas, a strange, much younger man—
Possibility, I thought, my heart pounding as he got into the car. I could have jumped out, run down the road and away—but there he sat, the one I’d hoped to find again . . . I didn’t know who he was or where we should go. I just felt compelled.
And Thomas remakes himself after a suicide attempt--
I didn’t die. I’m not dead. With the finality of finding myself alive—how can I look down or back? It’s not possible. I have to untrain myself. How many times have I had the idea that death is final? How absurd! It’s not death that’s final—it’s life.
MEET THE CHARACTERS:
Historical figure Vita Sackville-West in post-World War I England is torn between her identity as a female, wife and mother and her emerging identity as the trouser-clad male lover of Violet Trefusis—
I do not know how to live in this body. I do not know how to live in my clothes. I do not know how to live in a world that is made and unmade every dawn and dusk. There are no maps here. There are no maps in this wilderness. There is only one wild thing after another.
Bill, an American infantry soldier new to the European Front in World War II, is taken prisoner by the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge—
Here each minute draws itself out, long and grim. There’s an odd sense of savoring, holding. But there’s a whole other side to it, an animal side, saving up crumbled, stale bread to space through the day . . . desperate gratitude if there’s a rotting piece of meat . . . This could be the last thought I have.
And Bill’s pregnant wife, Madeline, is left behind with no information except a telegram reporting Bill missing in action—
There I am, a face made of flesh, shaped and rounded in the air. I stare into my own eyes, stare until there’s nothing else. And a fierce love descends like a dream, a fierce and nameless love . . .
Anna, a middle-aged woman who has a good-enough life in the early 1980’s, meets Thomas, a strange, much younger man—
Possibility, I thought, my heart pounding as he got into the car. I could have jumped out, run down the road and away—but there he sat, the one I’d hoped to find again . . . I didn’t know who he was or where we should go. I just felt compelled.
And Thomas remakes himself after a suicide attempt--
I didn’t die. I’m not dead. With the finality of finding myself alive—how can I look down or back? It’s not possible. I have to untrain myself. How many times have I had the idea that death is final? How absurd! It’s not death that’s final—it’s life.