I bought Griffith Review #66, The Light Ascending, because it's their annual Novella Project edition, and it's good value, with four novellas, short fiction, a memoir and poetry. It's ideal for reading during #NovNov (Novellas in November).

I read the first novella with a dawning sense of horror. Written by Julianne Van Loon, set in Perth, and titled 'Instructions for a steep decline', it's the one mentioned in the blurb as being about 'a woman experiencing a post-accident coma [who] ebbs back and forth through the currents of her life'. She's riding a bike to work when something throws her off balance and she ends up in the river. For a good deal of this novella, the reader doesn't know whether she has survived, or been permanently damaged by the collision and her long immersion in the water. As she drifts in and out of reality, she muses on her marriage and children, her discomfort with the values implicit in her job, and the awful experience of her friend Ying and how she somehow transcended it. I've read Julianne Van Loon's fiction before, and it's powerful, confronting stuff.

'The Market Seller' by Holly Ringland is confronting too, but in a different way. The young woman who sells candies at the market seems familiar to Emily:

There was something about her: the way she took her time, as if movement caused her physical pain; how she shook as she smoothed a piece of tattered velvet over her trestle table. She paused, then took a tentative step into a thin piece of sunlight, her trembling hands outstretched for warmth. When she tilted her chin upwards and her hair fell away, revealing her face, Emily froze. It was the kind of movement that made the world slow down to such a pace that tiny details — her hollow eyes, the way her shoulders curled inwards — were sharp enough to prick your skin. (p. 85)

The narrative perspective alternates between Emily and Eve, revealing sibling rivalry and a young woman's curious revenge.

I haven't read Holly Ringland's fiction before, but I know that she was nominated for the 2020 Dublin Literary Award for The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, reviewed by both Jennifer and Theresa.

'Cleave' by Keren Heenan is heartbreaking. Heenan is a prolific writer of short stories and has been published widely but I think you'd have to be a subscriber to literary journals of one sort or another to have come across her work. 'Cleave' is an impressive representation of three misfits who've been sleeping rough but think that better days are ahead when Parker inherits his father's house.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/11/14/griffith-review-66-the-light-ascending-edite... ( )