The Meter Reader: Three Reviews by Anne Barngrover
搁别惫颈别飞别诲:听Insomnia聽by Marina Benjamin (Catapult, 2018)
In prose as opulent and glittering as the book鈥檚 nocturnal cover (which I could not stop creepily gazing at and caressing!), Benjamin takes us on a sweeping journey of insomnia鈥檚 role throughout literature, philosophy, religion, psychology, and her own personal story. I read this lyrical memoir in a single evening, entranced by its velveteen, thorough lullaby. Based on my own particular biochemistry and who I am as a person, I have struggled with sleeplessness since literally the day of my birth. But what I most appreciated about Benjamin鈥檚 work was her repositioning of insomnia 鈥渘ot just a state of sleeplessness, a matter of negatives [but as] a state of longing.鈥� Maybe, I began to think, my lifelong insomnia is not the main struggle but rather the byproduct of 鈥渁n excess of longing and an excess of thinking.鈥� Lacking of course means longing, which I had never really considered before in this context. Benjamin realigns our thinking of insomnia not as analogous with despair, but with desire. Her book spills over with it.
搁别惫颈别飞别诲:听Life Lessons Harry Potter Taught Me聽by Jill Kolongowski (Ulysses Press, 2017).
I wish I had written this book! It caught my eye at the聽YesYes聽booth last year at AWP Tampa, and so I rushed over and struck up a conversation with the author, Jill, who鈥檚聽聽YesYes鈥檚 Managing Editor. We chatted about our shared Harry Potter obsession and, obviously, our Hogwarts Houses (she鈥檚 a Hufflepuff, I鈥檓 a Ravenclaw). For a few weeks I saved the book as if it were a fancy chocolate bar. When I eventually brought it to read on a flight, I found myself engrossed by Kolongowski鈥檚 brilliant close-reading and emotional prose. What鈥檚 better than when someone handles a thing you love with the upmost precision, insight, and care? Much like how I used to read the actual Harry Potter books both as fast and slow as possible, I spent the remainder of my trip treading that fine line between savoring and devouring.聽Life Lessons Harry Potter Taught Me聽is one of those wonderful finds that expresses precisely what I鈥檝e been feeling for a long time but never had the exact words to say. For me as a writer, this work also represents a life-changing approach to blending personal memoir with literary criticism and learned wisdom. Not only did it make me look at Harry Potter differently, but also it made me look at聽飞谤颈迟颈苍驳听differently. I gifted this book to six people last year and will probably buy another copy for myself just so I can annotate it for the second time. Yes, the nerdiness runs deep鈥攂ut I know that a connection this strong in life is rare, and it鈥檚 worth it.
搁别惫颈别飞别诲:听Basements and Other Museums聽by Vedran Husi膰 (Black Lawrence Press, 2018).
These stories are sweet, tangy Jaffa cakes just as they are exploding shards of glass. A semifinalist for the 2019 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for a debut short story collection,聽Basements and Other Museums聽bridges and collapses times of war and times not of peace but of remembered war, spoken and not-spoken-of war. In the breathtaking opening story 鈥淎 Brief History of Southern Slavs鈥濃�攚hich spans centuries in less than a page鈥擧usi膰 renders a people who 鈥渉ad only one God, the winter God,鈥� who 鈥渄ied standing up,鈥� who 鈥渞ebelled against kings鈥� and 鈥渨hispered in the presence of books, became prisoners of ideas,鈥� a people whose children, generations later, would play dangerous games of snipers in alleyways, immigrate to the American Midwest, work for the census, write poems. It is tempting to quote so many of this book鈥檚 iridescent sentences just to revel in their piercing and, sometimes strange, beauty, like butterflies with two different colored wings. My favorite of the stories are the ones featuring Bosnian immigrant teenagers, specifically 鈥淎dmir and Benjamin.鈥� The narrator reflects on the nature of this friendship, how 鈥渨e never talked about the war is only significant in retrospect. [鈥 And it was only by accident鈥攐verhearing my parents鈥� conversation in their bedroom鈥攖hat I learned about the Serb who held a knife to Admir鈥檚 throat, only a bribe restraining him from murdering my best friend.鈥� The background of their shared war-torn youth鈥攁nd the particular intimacy between two quiet weirdos鈥攔eaches a haunting crossroads as the boys grow up and apart. Our pasts are never as far from us as we鈥檇 think, but who鈥檚 to say what will ultimately determine the shape of our futures?聽Basements and Other Museums聽is an impressive and important debut.
聽is the author of聽Brazen Creature聽(University of Akron Press, 2018) and is an assistant professor of English at Saint Leo University, where she is on faculty in the Low-Residency MA in Creative Writing. She lives in Tampa, FL.