It made me think of my Mum, of the hardships she went through in her childhood and how she came through them to create a good life for us and how I being where I am is all partly due to her efforts. Ellen's being able to break that cycle and make a good life for herself is good to see. The story gets especially poignant when you consider the bits Ellen consciously or unconsciously does not remember. Through any which filters you wish to see Ellen's childhood story remains a sad, poor, hungry, unloving and abusive one. Perspectives, feelings they all have their own effect and how we remember the past is through these filters. So the same dress (memory) but different for all the different sisters. It was just a torn, faded, play dress for the other sisters.
It brought pleasure to another sister until it got tight and faded. The blue dress was perfection to one sister, then represented hurt and fear. I found Grimsley description of the feelings invoked by the blue dress and the fate of the blue dress a perfect analogy of how memories are. Because can one be ever sure of a memory. Writing this a couple of days after finishing the book, the feeling of sadness has mellowed.Įllen's story is one made up of memories, which are clear, elusive, slippery, truthful, false. For twenty years he taught writing at Emory University in Atlanta. His body of work as a prose writer and playwright was awarded the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2005. He has also published a collection of plays and most recently a memoir, How I Shed My Skin. His books are available in Hebrew, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese, and Portuguese. He has published other novels, including Dream Boy, Kirith Kirin, and My Drowning. Winter Birds won the Sue Kaufman Prize for best first novel from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Jim’s first novel Winter Birds, was published in the United States by Algonquin Books in the fall of 1994. He has published short stories and essays in various quarterlies, including DoubleTake, New Orleans Review, Carolina Quarterly, New Virginia Review, the LA Times, and the New York Times Book Review. Grimsley was born in rural eastern North Carolina and was educated at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, studying writing with Doris Betts and Max Steele. The book is a look at the past when queer people lived more hidden lives than now.
Jim Grimsley published a new novel in May of 2022, The Dove in the Belly, out from Levine Querido.
0 kommentar(er)
