Today I actually went through the doors of a library for the first time since March. Our little Sheldon branch of the Eugene Public Library is now open. I’ve been picking up and dropping off books curbside for a few weeks, but today I picked my own books off the hold shelf and renewed my library card. It looked more like a warehouse than a library inside, with seating covered and plexiglass shielding all humans, but I can live with that if the library staff can. I can find rich interiors between the pages of their books.
The book I dropped off today was The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell. Her refulgent talent almost overwhelms the story, but it’s a humdinger of a tale, with a chorus of mosquitoes and a swarm of drones, just to keep all of the human characters in a continuous state of disturbance. It’s a long read, and Serpell’s history does not bend toward justice; rather, the twist at the end is a spiral towards repetition, as the descendants of Zambians and colonial settlers find new ways to bring their country to the brink of annihilation in the name of freedom and progress. If you’ve read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Serpell’s novel is worth the ride just to hear an Italian-Indian-Zambian chararacter channel the narrative voice of Marlow.
If you are intrigued, here is a more complete review from NPR.
In a satisfying coincidence, one of the books I picked up was Meander, Spiral, Explode by Jane Alison. The subject of the book is narrative, part of my quest to improve my own fiction writing. Alison points out that we’re told to write stories in an arc, to read stories expecting an arc of the story that rises, climaxes, and falls like a wave.
But, Alison objects, “So many other patterns run through nature, tracing other deep motions in life. Why not draw on them, too?”
After finishing a novel that meanders, spirals, and explodes, not necessarily in that order, it’s a great cosmic chuckle to pick up a book on writing called Meander, Spiral, Explode. The arc of a life of dedicated reading is imperfect, but it bends towards coincidence.
