fiction – Page 2

Friday Fiction Fix: Anne of Green Gables

March 30, 2012 by Carey Jane Clark

lovereading I’ve been looking forward to this month’s Books that Made me Love Reading Challenge instalment (hosted by Emlyn Chand). I’ve written elsewhere and said in author interviews that Anne of Green Gables was my inspiration for wanting to be a writer. I think it’s probably more accurate to say that the book made me love words and what they could do to a reader. I identified so much with the character of Anne–I still do. I remembered why as I listened to some of the things she says, “When you hear a name pronounced can’t you always see it in your mind, just as if it was printed out? I can.” So can I, Anne with an “e.” I’ve been obsessed with words since I was young. I spell them constantly in my head. And when Anne says (and Marilla smirks), “This is the most tragical thing that has happened to me,” I recall with a twinge of embarrassment telling someone that I was “stophisticated.” Yup. True story. The daydreaming and misunderstood imagination were part of my life too. Fortunately, my parents were supportive. In my case, it was teachers who misunderstood. Despite her drama (of which I had my share as well), Anne maintains her optimism, and things work out well for her in the end. And I think–I hope–I’ve been that way too. I don’t know how many times I’ve read Anne. Quite a number. But reading it this time, to my children so they could enjoy it with me, I was struck by how many things Montgomery did “wrong”–at least according to publishing standards today:

long monologues by a single speaker
omniscient point of view that flips from one person’s head to another
the overuse of other words besides “said” in speech attribution

And yet it was a classic. And still is. And I’m pretty sure my children didn’t notice any of those “problems.” And really, neither did I. Anne is as entrancing today as she was when I was a child. Here are some of my favorite Anne-isms:

My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes. That’s a sentence I read once and I say it over to comfort myself in these times that try the soul.
This is the most tragical thing that has ever happened to me.
Anne Shirley: Don’t you ever imagine things differently from what they are? Marilla Cuthbert: No. Anne Shirley: Oh Marilla, how much you miss.
Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it.

The Snow Queen

February 24, 2012 by Carey Jane Clark

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It’s funny what happens when you begin to stroll down memory lane. More pathways spring up before you. Areas that seemed foggy and dim suddenly show signs of life and activity. When I sat down to consider the books that made me love reading for Emlyn Chand’s reading challenge, I realized there were many that I loved dearly and hadn’t thought of at all much since I was a child. The Snow Queen, by Hans Christian Anderson was one such story. This story is full of wonderful memories for me, since it was one I knew from a book at my grandmother’s house.

While I was growing up, my grandparents lived next door. My parents built their house on an acre of what was once my grandfather’s hundred-acre apple orchard. There’s a Walmart and subdivision going up around those houses now, but they are still there: our old house and my grandparents’. My grandmother had two spare bedrooms: the peach bedroom and the blue bedroom. When I slept over at their house, I’d stay in the peach bedroom. My Nanny had all kinds of old toys and games, but my favorite treasures were the books. And if she asked me if I’d like a bedtime story, I often requested The Snow Queen.

I thought it was high time I shared this story with my own children. We read it this week. While my Nanny read to me from a compliation of stories, I found a picture book version of the story to make sure Sprout was engaged. The pictures in this edition were stunning, so after we finished the story, my youngest sat and simply looked through the pictures once again.

Snowqueen

It has been so long since those cozy nights snuggled in the peach bedroom that I had forgotten many of the details of the story. It’s much more a struggle of good and evil than I remembered, and there is much more detail about the story of Gerda, the little girl who looks for her captured friend Kay. What I remembered was the tragedy Kay endured. (I think I may have been more wired toward tragedy in my younger years–hence the tales of kidnapped insects.)

The story of The Snow Queen concerns the evil consequences of the creation of a “wicked imp” who fashioned a magic mirror with a special power that shriveled everything good reflected in it to nothing, and everything evil and ugly reflected back larger and more hideously. When the mirror is shattered, little splinters of the magic glass lodge in people’s hearts and eyes, and some are made into windowpanes and spectacles. They all warp the lives of those who are unfortunate enough to be influenced by them.

“And, as we tell this story, little splinters of magic glass are still flying around in the air.”

The story centers around two young characters who were neighbors, but grew up like brother and sister, Gerda and Kay. They lived a quiet, simple, happy life until one day a splinter from the magic mirror enters the little boy’s eye and heart and his nature is transformed. Shortly thereafter, he is spirited away by the Snow Queen who keeps him prisoner in a castle near the Northern Lights.

Gerda misses her companion and goes out in search of him. In the end it is her goodness that heals him and restores him to the good child he was.

My children enjoyed this book, but I’m not sure if it will be as special to them as it was to me. After all, they weren’t in the peach bedroom, and two of them never even had the pleasure of meeting Nanny.

We all really enjoyed the stunning illustrations. And I enjoyed the stroll down memory lane.

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Cockroaches

June 22, 2011 by Carey Jane Clark

Welcome to Wordful Wednesday!

I am living safely far away from the cockroaches I have shared homes with, but after living almost a year in Hong Kong and six months in the south of China (and a brief stint in an infested Oklahoma apartment we won’t talk about), I am well acquainted with cockroaches.

I took my first writing course shortly after my son, now nine, was born. My first assignment was to write about a disgusting image and redeem it, “removing it from the world of ugliness and disgust.”

Here was my submission, based on a true story:

Perhaps it was sleeping. Nestled in the folds of the moist, warm towel, its amber body gleaming like gemstones unearthed from nature’s ancient vaults, polished, like shoe leather on her father’s workbench Sunday mornings.

She didn’t mean to startle, to shake the towel so violently, sending the bathroom’s tourist on a
bewildered dance–four beats left, three right, antennae caressing cold, square, once-white
tiles.

In confusion, it advanced toward her, perhaps thinking its tawny armour was enough to
protect it against the array of weapons available–hairbrush, toothpaste tube, the bumpy-
bottomed soles of the bear slippers that were a gift from her son last Christmas.

She dodged left, and the cockroach followed, as if continuing the dance, now with a partner.
One, two, three left, one two three right, like a hasty waltz.

And then, it turned, making a shy retreat, quick steps along the bathtub’s edge and disappeared
between two tiles in a hole in the grout she’d asked Frank to fix a dozen times.

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