As a young girl, my fictitious heroine was Anastasia Krupnik, the star of Lois Lowry’s acclaimed (and sometimes-banned) series of Anastasia books. Despite Anastasia’s comparatively more remarkable life – her father, a poet; her mother, an artist; a childhood spent in Cambridge at Harvard’s doorstep before a move to the suburbs – she and I held a desire in common: a constant wish to have something “interesting” happen in our little lives. Anastasia’s numerous notebooks held lists, wishes, dreams, as well as observations about her environment. I did the same as a young, pre-teen girl, yet a dramatic life-shaping event seemed to stay away. I was just plain old Amy, the girl with the same moniker as thousands of other girls born the same year. Like so many other children and teenagers, I sought to forge some sort of unique identity for myself via the clothes I wore, the music I listened to, and other superficial markers. Somehow, Anastasia’s ability to project herself seemed much more effortless. Over time – between navigating adulthood and all that comes with it – the longing to be “known” in some quirky, out-of-the-box fashion weakened. A simpler – not to mention humbler – comfort replaced that.
Drama and spectacle attract people. We can call it quirkiness, suspense, conundrum, but a dramatic bang makes us perk up and pay attention. Although we may not want our own lives to follow an overly dramatic arc, it’s often what propels and energizes us. From college essays to job interviews, people bring out their “hook” – their defining, but perhaps embellished, narrative – to differentiate themselves from the masses. And with the ubiquity of the internet, anyone can vie for attention via blogs, Twitter, and Facebook. Drama – hair-pin turns in a person’s narrative – is what makes the entertainment industry spin. It’s why books like Room (ripped-from-the-headlines heartbreak and despair), Little Bee (global, political, and personal tragedy), and The Time Traveler’s Wife (scientifically impossible plot) crash into our psyches. I enjoyed all of these books, but these novels grabbed me partially because of the complete unfamiliarity and distance from my own life. The plot, rather than the language, drew me in.
And then came Sebastian Barry.
I read a new-to-me book by Barry that I had never read before: Annie Dunne. Despite the fact that his novel The Secret Scripture was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction and should have been on my radar, I was unfamiliar with him. The reason I sought out one of his books was because I had just moved with my family to Dublin, and he is Irish, residing in the county south of ours. A relative had recommended I read his work. I bought Annie Dunne on a trip to the Dublin Writers Museum.
Initially, it didn’t captivate me. When we’re conditioned to be wowed at every page turn, an ordinary story feels plodding. The plot? Two small children come from the city to live with their great-aunt Annie on a farm in Wicklow, while their parents seek employment in London. A local farm hand feigns interest in her cousin, Sarah, who has passed middle age without a husband, like Annie. A few noteworthy events pass, yet Barry does not dwell on them – these events could be primed for drama, but they don’t affect the plot directly. Rather, these events inform our protagonist’s emotions. The primary plot caterwauls on, just like life at Kelsha, the Dunne family farm. The tension in Annie’s heart arises not because of what has happened to her, but rather as a result of reflecting on what has not happened: namely, she does not have her own children, and caring for her great-niece and –nephew has stirred this in her, a husband-less, hunchbacked old maid.
But I stuck with it. Annie Dunne is not necessarily a book that can’t be put down. At times, I had to force myself to read a few pages. Annie’s heartbreak starts to crescendo, yet Barry never employs tricky plot twists: his protagonist doesn’t contemplate suicide, run away, nor dramatically alter her life by joining a convent or other mode of escapism. She simply continues to grapple with her sorrow – and surprisingly, this affected me deeply. Barry’s subtle language and deft forwarding of his story caused me to put the book down, sigh, and simply sit. He writes:
“And when now and then rarely I saw another bowed-back girl, all my instinct was to jeer her too, although I had no license to. This afflicting music of my childhood was hard to hear then, but I o’ercame it. It is now, oftentimes lying these decades later on a flattening mattress with a ticking of old goose down, that I am gripped by fearsome rages, to think of it. Never kissed, never fondled, never embarrassed by a boy’s desire! It is a wretchedness.”
A few pages later, when Billy Kerr, the farm helper who pines for her cousin Sarah, lambastes Annie and verbally lashes, wounds, and damages her, the emotion welling in my heart is like nothing I’ve ever experienced while reading a novel. Just like Barry writes from Annie’s perspective, “Then an emotion larger than a horse invades me.”
The way that Barry slowly develops his characters by using words instead of action builds a different kind of book than one that seeks to thrill.
If a book, in its simplicity, engaged me so dramatically, then perhaps I could read my own life in the same fashion. Here’s what I mean: if suspended in a reality mush that whistles and whizzes and otherwise attempts to astonish the reader by teetering on that elusive line between reality and what I’ll call “reality-plus,” a book essentially relies on that aforementioned balance instead of the stringing together of specific words and phrases and precise use of punctuation. Maybe the beauty of life doesn’t lie in its uniqueness, but rather in the simple way our experiences weave together to form something subtler, something richer. What if we are “known” – not because we position ourselves so far from normalcy and convention, but because the quiet ways we live our lives reflect unexpected beauty, like Barry’s prose.
Can language – our lives – instead of an actual event, stir up as much emotion in one’s soul? Is it the plot, or is it the words? When it seems that the publishing industry is on the prowl for some “wow” oriented books that will provide an eye-catching cover or marketing materials, it’s easy to ignore the structure of thousands of words strung together to create one enormous tapestry.
So, as I notice my own daughter picking up Lois Lowry’s beloved books and diving into the world of Anastasia’s escapades, I think I’d like her to know that perhaps a book – and a life – is not simply about the story, but also about how it’s told.
