I'm Waiting, For My Moment To Come, I'm Waiting, For The Movie To Begin, I'm Waiting For A Revelation, I'm Waiting For Someone, To Count Me In

--"Spiralling", Keane

I start reading books for the same reason, someone whose opinion I trust or a publication who has never steered me wrong before recommends a novel for me to read. I'll often pick up a book on the merest mention from a friend or because a newspaper decided to feature it in their review section. That's just the way I am. I don't have time to do a lot of research into the latest best-sellers or what's hot right now. Pretty much if you've led me to a good book before, I'm counting on you to lead me to the promised land once again.

However, the reason I stay with a story is varied. Sometimes I'll latch onto the words themselves. The craft with which the author fashions his sentences is often enough to keep me enthralled in the work; I literally lose myself in the language. Other times I find myself immersed in the through-line of the piece. Action scene after action scene, the building of suspense, a real sense of dying to know what comes next--all of these contribute to that sensation I'm sure all of you are familiar with, where you've just got to read one more chapter to see how it all plays out. Yet the one aspect of a novel that seems to capture me the most are when I alight on a singular character, who I haven't seen before in other work, someone original who ties me into the universe and allows me a foothold into this other world. It happened with me in Catcher in the Rye and Phoebe Caulfield; it happened with me in The Story Girl and The Golden Road and Sara Stanley; and it happened with me with The Dresden Files and Harry Dresden--all of whom are some of my favorite characters.

Rarely, though, does it happen that a minor character captures my attention the way Amelia Land does in the current book I'm reading, Case Histories by Kate Atkinson. Yes, you could argue Phoebe is a minor character herself, but to me when somebody is featured in the last third of the book they cease to be a minor character. Amelia, by comparison, is featured only one out of the three main storylines, and she has to share her storyline with her sister Julia.

Taken from the back cover:

CASE ONE: A little girl goes missing in the night

CASE TWO: A beautiful young office worker fall victim to a maniac's apparently random attack.

CASE THREE: A new mother finds herself trapped in a hell of her own making--with a very needy baby and a very demanding husband--until a fit of rage creates a grisly, bloody escape.

THIRTY YEARS AFTER THE FIRST INCIDENT, as private detective Jackson Brodie begins investigating all three cases, startling connections and discoveries emerge...

Theoretically, it's a mystery novel. It's plotted like a mystery novel. It involves three mysteries. There's a detective piecing together clues to all three central mysteries that may or may not be solved by the book's end. In reality, though, the book is a slow meditation on grief and how often the real tragedy doesn't begin until after the tragedy happens. From Case Two, where the father can't seem to let go his daughter's seemingly random death to Case Three, where your mind keeps wandering to the fact that perhaps if you had been in her situation you might have taken an axe to your husband too; the way Atkinson takes extra time delineating what makes each character tick is what distinguishes this book from other whodunits. It's as if somebody decided to write a Greek Tragedy, but frame it around a mystery story.

Like I said, though, Amelia Land, the sister of the missing girl from Case One is the real heartbreaker of the novel. Olivia Land, her eight-year-old sister, decides to sleep outside in a tent with twelve-year-old Amelia's eldest sister, Sylvia. When the whole family wakes up the next morning, Olivia is missing and never heard from again. Cut to thirty years later and Amelia, approaching the wrong side of fifty is still having to deal with some pretty harsh issues involving her family. From the way her father, Victor, never hugged, much talked to, or even acknowledged the girls; to their mother's subsequent miscarriage and death a few month's after Olivia's disappearance; or even to the fact that her two remaining sisters, Sylvia and Julia seem to have moved on their lives where she hasn't (Sylvia by joining a convent as soon as she turned eighteen and Julia's seeming apathy to the whole affair), Amelia seems to be the one child in the Land Family who still carries the brunt of her sister's disappearance on her shoulders.

It isn't precisely the fact that she's gone, but what her going brought to light that still haunts Amelia. Feelings of inadequacy only grew more apparent once Olivia disappeared. Amelia knew that Olivia was the star of the family, the most darling and precious of the Land sisters. What she didn't know and, I suppose, what she didn't expect was how even in her being missing from the family she would manage to suck all the attention away from her parents. What she can't deal with is the fact that her youngest sister was still more loved for her leaving than she herself was for sticking around.

It's exactly what I've always thought true, it's almost better to be hated than not to be regarded at all. I'd rather someone take the time to acknowledge my existence being being horribly upset with me than to forget I exist at all.


I never saw the light
I waited up all night
but I never saw the light

There's a certain someone who I used to speak to regularly up until three months ago that communications simply died with. There was a disagreement, to be sure, but it wasn't of the scope that my disagreements can usually scale to. It certainly, I thought wasn't momentous enough to be a dealbreaker to the friendship. I mean--I know what a dealbreaker is. I've had dealbreaker arguments as recently as June with Ilessa. What transpired in this situation was nowhere remotely as heated or pronounced as mine and Ilessa's tiff. Even on that front we've managed to patch together a tentative opening to relations again.

That's what irks me more than anything in regards to this other person. Usually, when I end a relationship it's something I can see coming or it's something at the very least I had a large part in overseeing. This one honestly feels like things were going along swimmingly one moment and then one small chink in the armor was exposed. It's like walking on a frozen over pond when one small crack appears in the ice to undermine the whole pond. And it isn't like I hate the person and I'm fairly sure she doesn't hate me.

Things just fell apart for no reason.

As aforementioned, that's a worse fate to me than if she hated me. I know how to handle hatred. I've both dealt and been on the receiving end of hate to know how to handle myself in that forum. It's this silent apathy that throws me for a loop. Neither side wants to open the door, but neither side has fully committed to shutting it either. We both hang in this irritating limbo where it isn't clear whether it would be better to just fully let bygones be bygones, or to just step away from having any more contact whatsoever. It's almost akin to when one is in that stage of dating, but not yet being boyfriend and girlfriend, where neither side knows how to classify the relationship, but both sides are waiting for the other to bring up the subject. I don't know if I'm in or out of this friendship, and it's seriously driving me crazy not knowing.

I don't want to be Amelia, who can only distinguish what she has by what she's missing or what she's missed. I don't want to understand what little I have because I'm constantly reminded by the multitude I haven't. That's not how I want to define myself in the least.

I want some closure either way. I want to know that there will be some opportunity to mend these fences in the future or I want her to say, "Fuck you, Patrick, I never want to see you again." Either would be better for my plain tired psyche.

In the end, it isn't hate that kills you.

It's indifference, the total absence of anything resembling feelings for a person.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers