[ad_1]
We all have a story we tell about our lives. There is a certain power we harness in storytelling that lets us be whoever we want to be. But perhaps the telling becomes most powerful when we can speak truthfully, when we can come to terms with reality.
In Laura Adamczyk’s debut novel, Island City, a woman divulges pivotal moments of her life to a barful of strangers. She downs drink after drink as she weaves through her childhood spent in this very small town she has returned to after spending time working and living in a nearby big city.
The narrator remains unnamed, as does her sister, who is a few years older and is a sort of motherly best friend to the narrator, both in childhood and when they’re young adults. Early on, we learn that the narrator hasn’t spoken to her mother or sister in a while, but we don’t know why. She slowly unravels how much she has isolated herself as she continues to struggle with her mental health after the early death of her father.
Adamcyzk handles the book’s many amusing and heartbreaking moments delicately, expertly presenting an inconsistent narrator. I had the pleasure of asking the author a few questions about the writing process and this exceptionally crafted character.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Meredith Boe
This is your first novel. What made you want to tell this particular story?
Laura Adamczyk
It really just started with the voice—of a woman in the Midwest telling her life story, from the beginning. I wanted to tell a modest life in a grand manner. Over time, though, through multiple revisions, the voice became tempered. But that’s how it started.
Meredith Boe
The novel’s format is very unique. The narrator is in a bar in a small town, telling her life to strangers while they drink. Can you talk about why you framed the story this way?
Laura Adamczyk
In early drafts, the narrator was writing her story down in her childhood home, then also going out into the town, including getting drunk in this bar. My editor at the time, Deborah Ghim, suggested that the entirety of the present occur in the bar and that the narrator tell her story as a monologue. I remember that when Deborah suggested it, she kind of warned me, “If you go this route, it’s gonna take a lot of work to revise it.” But I loved it. It immediately felt right, and so formally elegant. Deborah is very smart. When I was a younger writer, I remember dreading revising. The very idea of it pained me. I could never quite imagine a story being different than it was. Now I love revising. I love getting back into a draft and messing it up and making it better.
I think setting the novel in the bar underscores just how complicit the narrator is in her own demise. It’s possible she’s inherited some awful things from her dad, but she’s not doing herself any favors. There’s a feeling of inevitability about her fate, in the way she tells her story, but the fact that she’s in this bar complicates that, I think. Were she not in this bar getting drunk, her situation would not feel so dire.
Meredith Boe
At one point, the narrator describes her mom as having “that tamped-down Midwestern elation from having suffered in the past and anticipating suffering again in the future.” What is it about the Midwest, and the small town the narrator grew up in, that brings out this suffering? Is it everyone, or is it this family in particular?
Laura Adamczyk
On the one hand, I’d never say everyone from the Midwest is a particular way, but on the other hand, I also wouldn’t say this almost desire for suffering is particular to a single family. I think among a certain generation of Midwesterners, or people in a small town, or people anywhere, you can find this belief that suffering is what “real life” is all about. They can look suspiciously at people who seem to be having too much fun: “Must be nice.” I think it’s related to them being somewhat closed up, a trait that’s maybe more often associated with the Midwest than, say, California. But again, I think you can find people like that all over. It’s Midwestern without being exclusive to Midwesterners.
Meredith Boe
An ongoing storytelling device is the narrator’s admitted uncertainty when she’s telling her story. For instance, again and again she says she doesn’t remember whether Sister was with her or not when something happened when they were children. She gives a detail, and then backtracks, says that maybe she has it wrong. But she does remember a lot, doesn’t she? Can you talk about this recurrence and how it helps us understand the narrator?
Laura Adamczyk
A lot of that simply has to do with memory and how it functions, how particular details can disappear over time. I wanted much of the narrator’s memory loss to be indistinguishable from “normal” memory loss. At the same time, I think the narrator not being able to remember whether her sister was around for particular events underscores her loneliness and isolation. Siblings, when they’re close enough in age, are partners of sorts throughout childhood. But there’s also a distance between them—no matter how close, they remain separate people—and if that distance is big enough, it can make it seem like you’re the only one going through something difficult, no matter how flawed that perception may be.
Meredith Boe
Can you discuss your process when writing tougher scenes, like the stepfather’s instances of abuse and the father dying in the hospital?
Laura Adamczyk
I didn’t set out to write these scenes in any particular way, but when I wrote the scene where the father is dying, for example, I felt the prose change, and somewhat drastically. It immediately came out very different than other passages, and I kept it that way, rather than try to make it closer in style to the rest of the book. That scene is slowed down and simply rendered, I think. I’m just describing what’s happening moment to moment. I think the writer Benjamin Percy has said something along the lines of “when the action is hot, play it cool.” Meaning, play it cool, stylistically. If something big and dramatic is happening, you don’t need a lot of flair in the prose. I don’t treat this kind of advice as an edict—there are exceptions to every rule—but it made sense in this case. And it’s what I did intuitively.
Meredith Boe
The narrator, after admitting that her stepfather had a soft side and used to brush her hair, says she was embarrassed how much her mother would swoon in these moments. “There were only so many things she was willing to remember,” she says. Is this why the narrator eventually cuts off communication with her family? Because she doesn’t understand how everyone can’t remember what she does?
Laura Adamczyk
I think it has more to do with her desire to disappear. It’s easier for her to do that if she isolates herself from the people who care about her. Despite their faults, the adults in the narrator’s life do care about her, but that gets in the way of the lie she’s telling herself—about how alone she is in the world, about what she sees as her fate and what she should do about it.
Meredith Boe
As we come to the end of the book, we realize just how bad it’s gotten for the narrator. She’s lost her purpose in life and has even considered ending it. Back at the end of the first chapter, she says to the bar patrons, “I had an idea what would be here, but didn’t know until I was all the way in. Turning that blind corner, I found myself making a wish: I want someone to tell me what’s going to happen.” And later, she says what you would call her current project is “getting rid of everything. Like an old man confessing to a priest before he dies.” Was the narrator looking for answers by telling this story? Or was she simply shedding it all, preparing for the end? Does she even know?
Laura Adamczyk
I think the narrator thinks she’s preparing to end it all. But, like anyone, she’s limited in what she can see about herself, what truly motivates her. I don’t think she actually knows why she’s there. I hope readers maintain a sense of skepticism when reading her, that they wonder if she’s protesting too much. Why is the narrator telling this story to a bunch of strangers if she wants to die? Does she really need to unburden herself to them first? I think she’s partly telling this story to buy time. She is in an incredibly dark place by the end, but I do think there’s the tiniest sliver of herself that wants to be saved.
Meredith Boe
The narrator’s father studied photography, and for a show he and his friends had, he didn’t use fixer on his really large prints, so people had to look at them by lifting a cloth. Each time they were exposed to light, they got paler and paler, until finally they were blank. This is how the narrator finds them in the shed behind his house. “Dad’s one good idea had been to erase everything.” Is this, her dad’s one good idea, where the narrator gets inspiration for what she’s doing now?
Laura Adamczyk
Not consciously. But that’s definitely a repetition I wanted in the book. It’s more of a narrative inspiration. The story understands the connection, even if she doesn’t.
FICTION
Island City
By Laura Adamczyk
FSG Originals
Published March 13, 2023
[ad_2]
Source link