issue nineteen
a (commissioned!) book review: “I Want To Know That I Will Be Okay” by Deirdre Sullivan
I was recently contemplating the lost virtue of true fiction for and about teenage girls, given the painful amalgamations of YA romance and coming of age we’re faced with more often than not (cough cough my struggle through rereading Radio Silence last week). It often feels like the wrong perspectives are always being explored, or those so incredibly specific that nobody can absorb them as intended unless the reader is also a white girl from one of the Dakotas on a road trip that is definitely draining her college savings. Where is the masterful skill of capturing adolescent fumbling and the authority of self discovery? Where is the craft, even! Upon hearing of a commissioned case study into another fiction collection that claims to unravel much of the “uncomfortable trauma of women’s bodies”, my honest first reaction was to sigh. Upon reading it, here is what I found.
Deirde Sullivan’s voice is not a bland one, and readers can be sure to approach her first short story collection with assurance that years of fantasy, horror and children’s writing stand behind it. After being acknowledged for a variety of Irish awards I am sadly not very knowledgeable of, Sullivan recently diverged into short story fiction for adults in “I Want to Know That I Will Be Okay”.
Admittedly, I am not the biggest horror reader. I’ve brushed with fiction dramas that bleed the lines of horror and psychological thrillers, but I’ve also noticed the rising interest and innovation in horror right now, something that interests me greatly! This collection does walk that line, by pulling the most, well, horrific images and elements of trauma and haunting into acidic fiction; As described in the synopsis: “In this dark, glittering collection of short stories, Deirdre Sullivan explores the trauma and power that reside in women's bodies.With empathy and invention, Sullivan effortlessly blends genres in stories that are by turns strange and exquisite.” As usual, let me tell you what I thought about that.
Throughout the book, Sullivan uses a variety of typically surrealist or horror-centric tools to sharpen the overall product of the piece; see body modification, omniscient observers that lurk and a haunted home (defined in many ways). The thing that makes these tools distinct here is that they are all covered with a thin veil of femininity, whether in narrative perspective or an ethical conclusion so often found at the heart of short stories. The rituals that decorate and destroy the female body are surveyed through loads of differing angles. To put it in Sullivan’s own words: “There are a lot of those moments where I suppose you see your own body, or you see bodies through a slightly different lens or through a slightly more clinical lens and you can be dispassionate about it, and I suppose I do enjoy the horror in that.” Say that, Deirdre!
Oddly enough, that quote made a little web weaving intertextual lightbulb go off in my head, and suddenly I was like: Amanda Thoroughbreds. So there’s that.
To refocus, I am of the thought that the whole “horrific bodily suffering and transformation” thing should be the absolute last thing to unite women or girls in fiction or otherwise, and yet this tired concept is one that many women’s fiction and surrealist fiction writers tend to favor. I do think Sullivan toes that line often within this collection, but manages to keep that sort of posturing within reasonable limits for each story. The amplified treasury of an ingrown hair isn’t the crux of the weight of the whole book, but does reserve its own sensationalised quotes that are sure to be pulled from readings of the story it came from. I’m handing it over to bell hooks who so often said it best when she said, “Women do not need to eradicate difference to feel solidarity. We do not need to share common oppression to fight equally to end oppression. We do not need anti-male sentiments to bond us together, so great is the wealth of experience, culture, and ideas we have to share with one another. We can be sisters united by shared interests and beliefs, united in our appreciation for diversity, united in our struggle to end sexist oppression, united in political solidarity.”
With that said, there are also some really interesting contrasts within this collection when one takes the time to observe the age of each protagonist. A common thread that connects the women and girls of “I Want To Know That I Will Be Okay” is their pain, but the blade that severs that thread is age. Possibly drawing from Sullivan’s self professed inspiration of her mother, who grew up using mobility aids and standing firm in her own performance of womanhood, this collection emphasizes that the nervous expectations of a prospective mother are different from the sweaty-palmed confrontations a teenager faces. Sullivan said that her mother’s own “strength of will and tenacity” inspired some of the characters in the collection, a quality visible in the often overlooked persistence of older women, and the respective fatigue they endure after years of scrutiny.
One story in particular, “Black Spot”, stood out to me in this regard. The second-person narrator goes through her mundane, detailing the most uncomfortable and tedious parts of her life. She is inadequate, jealous, half-hearted, and most of all weary. The tone of the narrator is not by any means grumbly or that of a chronic complainer, but clinical, and “dispassionate” as Sullivan would describe it. Simple, broken up sentences that read like purple prose create a portrait one could consider bland, but when keeping in mind the precedent of lonely womanhood Sullivan would have you reference, it becomes a bit clearer. The bit about the function lights and beeping of a car representing the nagging alarms of discontent in women’s life as background din to the noise of what lies ahead of us wraps up this story in a neat bow, an ending I was sufficiently satisfied by.
“That was kind of an instant lesson: we can never get away from our children. This is exquisite, but it is a life sentence. This kind of very nebulous destabilizing anxiety of motherhood.”
That quote points to some of the most resonant images of the collection: those of motherhood. The idea of motherhood as a gradual process of haunting, and birth as an exorcism is certainly a memorable one, and one that appears very tied to Sullivan’s autobiographical experiences. Pregnancy is a common theme, and the opening story presents a portrait of an unconventional family through an unconventional birth (sans spoilers for the sake of The People Reading This). Some of the absurd connections between the warning lessons of the pains and gains of creating a human life are heavy handed, but fall in line with Sullivan’s fantastical rep and prowess as a fiction writer. She also acknowledges “Black Mirror” with much of the absurdist humor inspirations for these pieces, so that speaks for itself.
Other comparisons this collection has received are the works of Judy Blume and Roald Dahl, both frequently cited for their humor targeted towards children. Regardless of the lasting impact of those references and whether or not that’s a positive allusion, this stands to affirm that you can take the children’s fiction author out of the [insert any overused analogy] but the [overused analogy] will remind you that the children’s fiction author wrote the book nonetheless.
The fact that Sullivan composed this anthology over many years also feels particularly relevant; in one interview she confessed that some stories from this book were over eight years old. The fact that this process was so enduring on top of the seven years it took to produce her book’s draft speaks to Sullivan’s process and the approach she takes to stories with a heavy moral weight. For me, this further connects the complex themes of womanhood she presents here to those of her children’s fiction work, all books which center female protagonists and their own struggles on a slightly smaller scale. Sullivan also clarified in the same interview that she considers herself a YA author, and gravitates towards a more adolescent voice in her works. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, girl!
After letting this book marinate for a bit, I have few gripes with it other than its heavy handed attempts at universalising femininity through pain. Would I be likely to pick up Sullivan’s next foray into young adult fiction? Probably not. Is “Black Spot” still rolling around in my head like a tumbleweed? Absolutely.
Again, I’d like to extend my most sincere thanks to one of our own for commissioning this review. I see collaborations like these as ways to extend and strengthen the fabric of the literary community I’d like to cultivate here, as well as earn a bit of pocket change for the labor I usually do free of charge! I hope your holidays are filled with rest and light, and hope my work here has been to your satisfaction. As always, I love you, and I do hope you’ll tune in next week for a bit of an annual recap and our first community discussion thread. Merry Christmas!