Step into the steel toe capped boots of a sculptor welding giant Manglements
My friend Tracy has been generous with book swapping and lent me 'Take What You Need' by Idra Novey.
The most engaging aspects of this novel, were the alive, descriptive dances with the sculptor at work; the two-fold tales of a single happening, through the mind-windows of two related women and finally, the story of barriers broken (and connection formed) between characters initially afraid and distrustful of one another.
The story is set in a poverty stricken street of detached houses in the Allegheny Mountains of Appalachia.
"We are passing such bleak, derelict houses on this block... I can't picture her living under a roof with so many blistered, curled-up shingles and tar patches."
Inside her house on the bleak street, Jean, the artist welds 'Manglements' - great totems of scrap metal.
"It took skill to weld the thin metal frames that held those capsules together. For the fronts, I used curved lenses extracted from old cameras I found cheap on eBay... The chamber inside each capsule couldn't fit anything larger than a plastic figurine. The spoon head served as the solid back, with the camera lens for the clear front, magnifying whatever I sealed inside, which was where the funhouse of the capsules happened. Combining a sliver of a silver gelatin photo of some man's crotch with a tiny Wade porcelain pig, seeing them get weirder, magnified inside the same little chamber, that was my idea of a good time."
She bonds with a young man - Elliot - who she initially saw as 'other'. But this bond, having bridged a gap for them, forces open a gaping emotional wound between Jean and her step-daughter from the past.
Another interesting dynamic in the novel is the reversal of the male-artist-and-his-muse trope. Jean is elderly and Elliot is her young and sexy, financially vulnerable, fantasy muse. The story exposes both their conflicting feelings around the facets of their relationship.
Post 2 of 365
I've decided to commit to 365 days of social media continuity and publish 1 blog post per day for a year.
If you enjoy, learn from, share or benefit from any of the 365 please consider a donation to Macmillan Cancer Support.
A penny per post, 10p per post or even a pound: every little helps! Thank you.
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