Mr. Fox: A Charming, Unnerving Love Story

Some books shove the reader outside of their comfort zone, demanding that they look at not only life and ideas from a new perspective but that they approach the narrative form itself from a different angle. In Mr. Fox, Helen Oyeyemi creates a love triangle that spans numerous independent stories, all spun by St. John Fox (a writer who continually kills women in his stories and is inspired by Bluebeard), Mary Foxe (the so-called “muse” that Mr. Fox has conjured–although she plays a much larger part than inspiration by creating her own stories and blurring the line between real and imaginary), and Daphne Fox (Mr. Fox’s wife). Each of the stories focuses on relationships and how difficult it is for people to connect in a meaningful way. At first, Mary starts interfering with Mr. Fox’s stories because she is outraged by his tendency to kill his female characters, but as the novel goes on these stories become increasingly complex and emotionally charged.

Cover and Formatting: First and foremost, I have to say that this is a beautiful book in terms of the cover and formatting. This is certainly a volume that I enjoy having on my shelf. Helen Yentus and Jason Booher, the jacket designers, did a wonderful job creating an interesting cover that is both understated and engaging–much like the novel itself.

Plot: This book challenged me in terms of following the plot. Oyeyemi has created a structure that requires readers to work in order to get the most out of it. I realized, in reading this book, that I may have become a bit lazy in my reading habits and am glad to have come up against an author who doesn’t underestimate the intelligence of her readers by spelling everything out for them (not that the other authors I’ve read recently have done so). By creating multiple stories within the novel, Oyeyemi is able to shed light on different aspects of love and loss. But because she tells most of these stories using the same characters, as if she is putting Mr. Fox, Mary, and Daphne into a room of mirrors that reflect at all angles, the reader has a sense of continuity. This, I believe, is why the more experimental structure works.

Characterization: Oyeyemi has created three characters that anchor the novel, but these characters take on varying roles throughout the stories that they present. As such, there is no real character development; the book focuses, instead, on the nature of relationships. Seeing these characters in different situations, leading different lives, allows readers to focus on their relationships instead of on who they are. In this way, a lack of characterization (or, rather, the establishment of multiple characters that call upon the same fundamental qualities as their original form yet differ in each story) lends to the success of the novel as a whole.

Writing Style: Oyeyemi’s writing is vibrant and jarring, yet at the same time subtle (as is the novel itself). She has a talent for presenting complex ideas in simple ways without taking away from their weight.

Ideas: This novel left me feeling bittersweet, as many of the stories show relationships that, no matter how hard the characters try, just do not work; however, as someone who enjoys poignant stories of this nature, I found this to be incredibly insightful. Love is, itself, a simple idea; the way in which love functions in the world can become complex. But the idea that I got out of the novel is that, no matter how broken people are, or how their story ends, the relationships that they build are worthwhile.

Mr. Fox is one of those books that will elicit various responses from readers depending upon their past and the ways in which they relate to the stories and characters that it presents–which is one of the reasons why I believe it is such a good novel. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in creative writing structures and diving deeper into the ways in which people connect with one another and, ultimately, love.

I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. 

From Living, Thinking, Looking…

“No one can truly escape her or his subjectivity. There is always an I or we hiding somewhere in a text, even when it does not appear as a pronoun” (p. xi).

Point of View Waltz

The Point is a movie that holds a long list of life lessons (if you can get passed the fact that the whole things seems to be a massive acid trip). I absolutely love this movie, and think that P.O.V. Waltz is a great song and is a wonderful reminder to look at stories from different angles.

For those of you who are interested, here’s my favorite song from the movie. From the lyrics to the animation, it’s fantastic.

Object Lessons: Short Stories, Powerful Messages

One of the best ways that writers can hone their craft is through reading. Now, this doesn’t mean to simply imitate other writers; the right way to use reading as a research tool is to look at the different elements of writing that successful authors employ. To indulge in a metaphor, reading allows writers to pull off the face of a clock and see how its gears interlock, how they move in time. For this reason, you might consider reading a particular story to be a case study, which is how The Paris Review approaches the art of understanding writing in Object Lessons.

Structure: Object Lessons is a compilation of short stories that have been chosen by other authors because they illustrate some of the most important aspects of successful writing. As the title entails, the book looks at the stories one at a time, providing a brief introduction to each written by the writer who chose it. These stories have a few things in common: each has appeared in The Paris Review, each is written as a short story, and each is considered a shining example of one facet of writing or another. But here the similarities end. The 20 stories that make up this collection focus on different themes, involve different points of view, are structured using different techniques, and invoke different reactions in readers.

I like the way that the stories are structured: introduction, story, introduction, story, introduction, story, etc. This simple organization allows readers to work their way through one story at a time and really focus on the object lesson at hand, rather than approaching the book as a whole. I highly recommend savoring each story and not trying to plow through this book, and this structure makes it easy to do.

Pace: Short stories can be tricky because they can vary so much in length–and this means that they can also be misleading, as some “short” stories are much longer than readers anticipate. The pieces that are included in this volume span a wide range of pages, but none are so long that readers will become bored with the idea of the book or feel as though it is dragging.

Writing: The writing styles contained within Object Lessons are tremendously diverse, and I think this is part of what makes this a great resource for readers. Because each piece is different, readers are exposed to new structures, ideas, and techniques that they may have never before considered.

I really love short stories, and I believe that Object Lessons does a fantastic job of presenting readers with engaging, memorable pieces. But I believe the real success of the collection lies in the inclusion of the introductory essays written by the authors who chose each story. These give readers a road map that allows them to better understand the course that the writer has taken and why their technique is notable. I would recommend that any writer or lover of short stories dig into this collection.

For additional information about The Paris Review, visit:

• Website
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Tumblr

I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Waiting for the Muses to Strike

This is where I turn when inspiration decides to shine upon me. Or when I need to remember half-baked ideas while they are simmering in the brainpan.

Everyone has always told me that, to be a “real” writer, you have to write every. single. day. No matter what you have to say–or even if you have anything to say–you have to sit down before work, after work, during lunch, in line at the grocery store, whenever, to record observations, thoughts, and stories.

Now, I’m sure that this is very good advice. I mean, many successful writers have found this tactic to work for them. But I find that my ideas are more…impressive (for lack of a better descriptor) if I let them marinate for awhile. You know, settle into the brain juices and simmer until they are done.

That’s a disgusting image. I’m sorry about that. But you get the point.

Of course, I have to take my own opinion with a grain of salt. As a writer by trade, not just passion, I write a variety of things each day. Each document, of which I’m sure there have been thousands over the last almost three years, allows me to exercise my writing skills and learn new grammar rules that I never knew I was breaking. Resumes, press releases, website content, blog posts, articles, you get the picture. So yes, I AM writing every day–but creative writing is different. Creative writing is draining; it comes in waves, emerging and receding with a strong current.

Hemingway is one of my favorites, his craft so straightforward yet laden with significance. While A Moveable Feast isn’t my favorite of his work (“The End of Something” is, arguably, one of my favorite pieces he’s written), it’s chock full of his ideas about writing and, for this reason alone, is invaluable. Here are a few of my favorite quotes regarding writing from Papa from this particular volume:

“Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know” (p. 12).

“I was learning something from the painting of Cézanne that made writing simple true sentences far from enough to make the stories have the dimensions that I was trying to put in them. I was learning very much from him but I was not articulate enough to explain it to anyone. Besides it was a secret” (p. 13).

“After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day” (p. 6).

What about all of the other writers out there? Do you write religiously or do you ponder your ideas before putting them to paper?

Bonus: I will always picture the Muses like this:

Characterization Vs. Plot Development

While I was reading The Night Circus, my boss just happened to also be working her way through the same book. I was loving every minute of it, but she had an issue with the character development. After thinking about it, I realized that she was right: the development just wasn’t there (In fact, I thought that Isobel was Celia in disguise when it was commented that Isobel was not who she seemed, they were so alike in their personalities). After dwelling on this for awhile, I started to wonder if, for this story in particular, it even mattered. Despite the lack of character development I was thoroughly enjoying the book.

The realization that such a prominent issue, one that I normally take very seriously, could be so easily overlooked intrigued me. I’m normally a stickler for the building of believable, strong characters. In fact, this is what drives most stories. But The Night Circus is not about Celia or Isobel, or any of the other characters; The Night Circus is about, truth be told, the circus that comes at night. A growing, changing, arguably living entity, this is the main character of the novel and it is through the development of the circus (read: the plot) that the story drives onward.

So I have come to the conclusion that, while the very best of books have both a great plot and solid character development, good books can have one or the other and, in rare cases, make it work. The Night Circus, I believe, showcases this. The story is engaging and never got old, but the characters were secondary to the actual events taking place.

What about you? Do you think that characterization or plot development can drive a story on their own, or do you put down a book if both aren’t present and accounted for?

Living, Thinking, Looking: Examining Life

In college I took a class on art in literature and Siri Hustvedt’s What I Loved was one of my favorite books in the curriculum. Naturally, I jumped at the opportunity to read her latest collection of essays, Living, Thinking, Looking. I’m glad I did, as I found this book to be both interesting and enlightening.

Cover and Title: I like that the cover is both simple and artistic. The title, too, is appropriate for the collection; however, I have to admit that every time I think or say the title “Sitting, Waiting, Wishing” by Jack Johnson somehow ends up stuck in my head.

Structure: The collection is divided into three parts. The first part explores experiences that Hustvedt has had during her life. The second section speaks to memory, imagination, and emotion. The final segment considers the visual arts. I appreciate that the essays are organized in such a fashion, as it made digesting the content much easier; however, I will say that this is certainly not a book that readers should breeze through. Hustvedt, in all of the sections of the book, is flushing out complex ideas about a variety of topics, from neurobiology to philosophy to psychology and more. I read the book cover to cover, but I would recommend taking it one story at a time instead of trying to tackle the whole thing to really savor what she is saying.

Writing Style: Hustvedt is an incredibly intelligent woman, and I was at first a bit intimidated by some of the topics in the collection. I do have a background in both philosophy and psychology, but my last neuroscience class was six years ago. These fears were unfounded, though, because the way in which Hustvedt presents the information makes it accessible without dumbing it down. While I naturally found some of the essays more intriguing  than others, I feel as though I learned something from each, and I believe this is important when reading essays.

I think that I was able to connect with this particular collection because of the writing style that Hustvedt employs. She admits to having to read things over to process them and highlights her own insecurities when it comes to writing and interpreting art. For this reason, I no longer felt intimidated by the content. Hustvedt lets readers in by admitting that she faces the same struggles that they do, and this is what really won me over while reading. Here’s a passage that really highlights this:

The act of reading takes place in human time; in the time of the body, and it partakes of the body’s rhythms, of heartbeat and breath, of the movement of our eyes, and of our fingers that turn the pages, but we do not pay particular attention to any of this. When I read, I engage my capacity for inner speech. I assume the written words of the writer who, for the time being, becomes my own internal narrator, the voice in my head. This new voice has its own rhythms and pauses that I sense and adopt as I read. The text is both outside me and inside me. If I am reading critically, my own words will intervene. I will ask, doubt, and wonder, but I cannot occupy both positions at once. I am either reading the book or pausing to reflect on it. Reading is intersubjective–the writer is absent, but his words become part of my inner dialogue.

It happens that I find myself half-reading. My eyes follow the sentences on the page and I take in the words, but my thoughts are elsewhere, and I realize that I have read two pages but haven’t understood them. Sometimes I speed-read abstracts of science papers, zooming through the text to glean whether I want to read the whole article. I read poems slowly, allowing the music of the words to reverberate inside me. Sometimes I read a sentence by a philosopher again and again because I do not grasp its meaning. I recognize each word in the sentence, but how they all fit together requires all of my concentration and repeated reading. Various texts call for different strategies, all of which have become automatic (p. 134).

In Living, Thinking, Looking, Hustvedt examines a long list of topics through engaging prose. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys nonfiction and exploring how art, psychology, philosophy, and neurobiology play a role in today’s society.

To learn more about Hustvedt and her work, visit her website.

I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

On Landing the Job of My Dreams

This post first appeared two years ago on my employer’s blog. It was an introduction of sorts, written about my experience as a soon to be college grad who just landed a job as a writer/editor at a startup.

Graduation was approaching and, as I agonized over my future, I realized that life was no longer easy. Not that it ever had been easy, not for this girl. I made sure it wasn’t. With a double major in philosophy and English literature and a minor in psychology I was constantly reading, writing, and attempting not to fall asleep in class. In the odd off hours (about 40 of them per week) I slaved away as a waitress and bartender, praying incessantly that a rich old man, alienated from family and soon to die, would sit in my section and, after having (platonically) fallen in love with my charm, would deem me worthy of inheriting his entire estate.

Between spilling drinks, busing tables, and refilling innumerable glasses of sweet tea, I daydreamed about my fictitious benefactor. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a grim fantasy for 50% of those involved, but the restaurant was located across the street from a hospital, so I had plenty of guests with potential.

Unfortunately, after two and a half years of receiving no more than 20% in tips at best, I realized that my knight in shining hospital gown was never going to arrive. I was forced into the reality that I was soon to be a twenty-something graduate. Furthermore, I was soon to be an unemployed twenty-something graduate, as I was convinced that one more week in that restaurant would be the end of me.

My father would ask, “Ashley, what are you looking for? What is your dream job?”

To which I would reply, “I want to read and write and edit.” Secretly, it was my dream to sit at home, do my work, and not have to interact with the outside world. I didn’t want to encounter any more grumpy restaurant-goers (you know, the “I asked for extra lemon! Does this look like extra to you?!” type) and I was convinced that the world was full of them.

After several talks with my aunt (whose book was edited by my now boss) I received a phone call from Amanda. Basically, the call went as follows:

Amanda: “Ashley?”
Ashley: “This is she.”
Amanda: “Hi! I’m here to give you your dream job!”
Ashley: “Really?”
Amanda: “Yep! Just write me five SEO articles about water filtration systems and send me your resume.”
Ashley: “Ok…”

Confused, and feeling a bit in over my head, I learned what SEO articles are (great thing to know, by the way) and I got the job, despite my admittedly horrific resume.

So here I am, approximately six months later, living with my grandmother (long story involving an ex, Miami, and my grandmother’s FROG) in Columbia, South Carolina. Working with Amanda is by far one of the most monumental experiences I have had, and I hope to continue learning from the Grammar Chick herself.

Two years after writing this article, I am happy to say that I am still excited about the work that I do. And, for the record, I have moved out of my grandmother’s house and to Charlotte, which I love even more than I hated Columbia.

From On The Road…

“Hell, man, I know very well you didn’t come to me only to want to become a writer, and after all what do I really know about it except you’ve got to stick to it with the energy of a benny addict” (p. 3).

Author Interview: Edmund Jorgensen

Edmund Jorgensen, author of Speculation, was kind enough to do an interview with me about his work. If you haven’t read it yet and are interested in philosophy, I highly recommended picking up this book (you can find my review here).

1. What kindled your interest in philosophy?

Speculation is dedicated to the memory of Jim Devlin, a kind of planetary presence in my life from as far back as I can remember, first a friend of the family and then a friend of mine and a
once-in-twelve-lifetimes sort of teacher.  He is still who I think of when I hear the word “philosopher,” the Platonic Ideal that springs to mind, and he’s the one who made me understand that philosophy was something sublime and dangerous.  It was through him that I fell in love with philosophy, and through him that I realized I would never be more than a philosophical tyro.

In fact the character of Sothum is an homage to Jim, though of course a pale reflection at best–both because Jim’s essence was too difficult, too contradictory, too immense to capture in full, and also because people simply wouldn’t have believed a lot of true stories about him if I had appropriated them wholesale (he did, for example, appear to break an MRI machine with his brain, as Sothum does in the book).

2. Did you know in the beginning of the book which option Andy was going to take, the money or the envelope?

No.  The original ending of the book was quite different, and I changed my mind a number of times regarding which Andy would choose and what that would mean to his life.  I even flirted with the notion–it’s painful to admit this now–of ending the story before he’d chosen either.  But as the character of Andy developed, I ultimately felt there was only one choice that he would have made.

3. Why did you choose to write the story from Andy’s perspective?

Well, I could say I chose Andy’s perspective because his experience is closest to mine, but the actual hard truth is that his experience is probably closest to mine because I chose his perspective.

Really I chose his perspective because I was writing a book about four people who are all smarter than I am, and I figured I had the best shot of pulling off the narration if I chose to inhabit the narrator who had the fewest “smart points” on me.  I guess I might have been able to attempt Buddy as well, but his psyche doesn’t seem like such an enjoyable place to live in long enough to write a haiku, let alone a novel.  Sothum and Cheryl would simply have been beyond me.

4. Who is your favorite philosopher? (Okay, top three? Top five? This is a hard one!)

Plato set off a lot of fireworks in my adolescent brain, convincing me the world was a shadow.

Aristotle turned me into something vaguely resembling an adult as he showed me how it isn’t.

Fast forwarding a couple thousand years (no big deal among friends, right?), Heidegger and Nietzsche knocked me on my butt and then helped me up again, articulating better than I ever could some of my dim but urgent suspicions and hopes about the role of creativity in the universe.

Charles Hartshorne, on whom Speculation’s Kingsley Featherstone is loosely based, took off the top of my head and shuffled my brain around before replacing it.

5. What authors have inspired you?

A bunch of the usual suspects, of course.  Faulkner, Bellow, Mann.

Borges in binges.

Mark Helprin of the short stories and Winter’s Tale.

Speaking of winter and tales, Isak Dinesen, whose “Babette’s Feast” makes me despair of ever writing a good short story.

William Gibson, Stanislaw Lem, and Philip K. Dick.

And the criminally under-known Russell H. Greenan, especially his It Happened in Boston? and The Secret Life of Algernon Pendleton.

6. Are you anticipating the release of any more novels?

I’m pecking away at something longer that I hope to get out next year. In the meantime there are a few shorter stories that are getting antsy to leave home and seek their fortune.

Edmund Jorgensen was born in Chicago, studied Ancient Greek and Latin in Boston, fell in love in Mexico, and now resides with his wife–happy but considerably chillier–in Watertown, Massachusetts.

Speculation is his first novel.

You can contact him at ewj (at) inkwellandoften (dot) com.

To learn more about Jorgensen’s work, and see his tips for self-publishing, visit www.edmundjorgensen.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @tomheon.