The Patron Saint of Lost Comfort Lake, by Rachel L. Coyne, Reviewed by Caitlin O’Brien
Patron Saint of Lost Comfort Lake
Rachel L. Coyne
2015
ISBN 9780898233162
168 pages
Reviewed by CAITLIN O’BRIEN
Rachel L. Coyne’s second novel, The Patron Saint of Lost Comfort Lake, centers around a woman learning to accept the things that cannot be changed. Filled with haunting images and poignant prose, this novel forces Jane Darcy to confront her abusive past head on. Once a lawyer in St. Paul, she returns home after a brutal divorce. Here, she takes care of her mother and young child; her father is dying from cancer in the Rush City Prison. After a young girl’s dead body washes up from the lake on her family’s property, Jane struggles to accept her own abusive childhood. Failing to come to terms with the atrocities she had endured, she quickly turns to alcohol for comfort—just as her father did.
Jane spirals into fits of self-destruction, completely overcome by the nightmares that she suffered through at the hands of her father. As a child, she would frequently find herself waiting for her father outside the town bar “with all the newly-killed deer suspended in the trees around the parking lot.” Young Jane was “left alone among the butchered and the dead in the dark.” Not only is this graphic image chilling to the core, but clearly shows how easily she was forgotten, as if she were one of the carcasses swaying from the branches.
Jane doesn’t understand how to handle her past, and instead she flounders in it, drowning. Just as the young girl drowned in the lake on her property, Jane, too, metaphorically drowns inside her memories. Coyne’s choice of employing images of water and drowning throughout the novel are what make Jane’s emotional unraveling so vivid and concrete. When, in a dream, her basement flooded with lake water, she noticed that the water rushed across the room, into her father’s old drinking room. “It was almost as if there was a storm drain beyond that door, just beyond my vision, pulling everything in.” No matter how she hard tries to separate herself from her memories, she always finds herself just underneath the surface of them, never able to fully catch a breath.
There is so much darkness that Jane Darcy must wade through to learn to accept the things that cannot be changed. But even through all of the darkness, Jane must remember that there is always a glimmer of hope; she just has to find the strength within herself to grasp onto it. Her past will always be a part of her, connected to her, just like the three lakes around her home “were all really connected—all one pool of black, subterranean cool.”
Meet the blogger:
CAITLIN O’BRIEN is a senior at Hamline University majoring in Creative Writing. Dabbling in all genres of writing, fiction will always remain her favorite. She is passionate about literature, writing, and drinking too many vanilla lattes.
Community Building Behind Our Screens
Why are you reading this? Why are you even on the internet?
You wanted to build a community with someone. You wanted to reach through that ethereal bond of the internet and be able to say, “Yes, you get me. Please metaphorically hold my hand through the next episode of Grey’s Anatomy because I might just explode.” We do it all the time.
You could be out in the world, enjoying our beautiful, if chilly, spring weather. You could be riding your bike. You could be drinking coffee with your friends. Maybe you are drinking coffee with your friends, but you are scrolling through your screen reading this too. No judgement, we’ve all been there.
You had an experience and it moved you. You decided that you wanted to talk to people about the incredible thing that just happened.
You read a book. You saw a movie. You read a poem. Now all you can think about is how much you love this new thing and you must share that with someone. Maybe you hated that new thing or you aren’t quite sure how you felt about it so you want to hear other people’s opinions first. You turned to the internet, where millions of people have opinions on thousands of subjects and they are just waiting to be heard.
We want to know that someone else is as deeply connected to this work as we are. Fandoms have strength to lend each other. They come together and debate, because why would they bother if they didn’t care? Why would they have a small shrine of seemingly meaningless objects on their desk, and treat them with such value?
I have T-shirts from some of my favorite series. I have stuffed animals, “adult” coloring books, and toy VW buses. I embrace my love of fandoms because fandoms are my community. I embrace my love of all of these books, movies, and TV shows because the internet gave me a community where I had only one or two people. I have found a group of people who can answer my questions and start a debate. Even pose crazy and spectacular fan theories with and then are inevitably shut down. In an interview with the Runestone Editorial Board, Esther Porter had the best description of a reader’s community, “People who find value in other people, but commune with people alone-by reading.”.
Communities are important to everyone. Whether it is a community based on a religion, a political statement, or a special interest, we all want to be a part of it. We are all just swimming around the internet, looking for the next thing that follows the tags we watch.
So go out and watch them. Find a forum that you like. Review your new favorite book on Goodreads. It’s okay to be a fan of stuff. It’s okay to write fanfiction. It’s okay to be the biggest Potterhead of all Potterheads. Find your people. Because that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You are here because you read something of ours, probably Volume One, and you stayed to check out our blog.
So ponder it some more. Find your people. It is the age of information and we are never alone.
Student Editor
Meet the blogger:
Rachel Bakke is a senior at Hamline University working to complete her BFA in creative writing, specializing in fiction. She can usually be found on a theatre set armed with a drill, writing, or playing some kind of table top game.
We Slept Here, by Sierra DeMulder, Reviewed by Blythe Baird
Reviewed by BLYTHE BAIRD
Sierra DeMulder reflects on recovering from the trauma of an abusive relationship in We Slept Here with stunning yet jarring imagery. This collection never flinches from how brutal the path to healing can be and serves as an anthem of reclamation for survivors.
The first poem in the book, titled “And if I Am to Forgive You,” opens with a question that speaks volumes to the themes the author will address: “Who am I/ if I am not/ the aftertaste/ of abuse?” (3) DeMulder integrates precise and graceful imagery into what she’s learned about herself and others into the brave recollection of her experiences. The characters in her life are multifaceted, vibrant, and authentic, and she has analyzed her surroundings to paint a viewpoint through vivid snapshots:
At first, I imagined addiction
as your finest suit, hung in
the closet, ironed in the dark.
Now I see you had
no other option, not even
your own skin, no summer
jacket or wool coat, only this
For being only forty-four pages long, We Slept Here doesn’t struggle to pack a punch. Raw, vulnerable, and reflective, We Slept Here haunts readers in a way that will make them want to carry this book around everywhere. If you are looking for a book to remind you of the brilliant resilience you are capable of, this one will not disappoint. DeMulder’s vulnerability allows others to be vulnerable, while her openness on her own healing encourages others to heal, and at the end of the book, she even includes a helpful variety of resources for assault and abuse victims.
We Slept Here is a hard hitting and crucial contribution to modern poetry. DeMulder does not make a symphony out of suffering. She explores the anatomy the recovery process, and it is hard not to root for her and marvel at her compassion and endless strength. Writing with a keen understanding of her past, DeMulder acknowledges yet transcends the effect her history of abuse has on her ability to trust a new relationship: “I am my own higher power,” she writes. “I will carry myself out.”
Meet the blogger:
BLYTHE BAIRD is an internationally known spoken word poet. Her viral work has been featured by The Huffington Post, Ashton Kutcher, Write Bloody, Button Poetry, Mic, Bustle, and more. In 2014, Baird was the youngest competitor at the National Poetry Slam. By 2016, Baird was recognized as a top finalist for the Global Young Achiever Award. Her first book GIVE ME A GOD I CAN RELATE TO is a pushcart prize nominee.
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Transcending the Syllabus, By Connor Rystedt
Why Overworked College Students Need to Remember that Reading is Actually Fun
This isn’t what it looks like. This isn’t Just Another Blog Post giving you chic little tactics for how you can overcome the inevitable storm of finals-week stress. If you’re anything like me—a senior pursuing two degrees—you may indeed feel sometimes that you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, figuratively speaking. Well, it’s happening, and we pay for it to happen. So get used to it. What I’m interested in is what comes after all stress subsides, and we’re left lying in our beds with implicit vows to never read another book. Because even while our academic hailstorms may leave us feeling exasperated with and estranged from literature, I believe that there are at least five good reasons to keep reading:
Entertainment at Its Best
Is there anything better than reading a book that really blows your hair back? A story that makes you forget you’re even turning pages? These are the kind of books that somehow end up taking priority over that essay you have to write for your 3000-level course in literary criticism. Personally, my ultimate literary vice is George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. The intricacies of his world and the depth of his characters are second to none. Every time I allow myself some time inside Martin’s Westeros, I leave our Earthly reality for a little while. Some people in our age of Netflix may argue that the HBO-adaptation of Martin’s fantasy, “Game of Thrones,” is more satisfying. But I say nay; where else is the mind allowed to wander like it will within the complexities and fascinations of a good book?
Smart’s Attractive
I once heard it said—to use the normative vernacular—that a girl shouldn’t kiss a boy if she goes to his house and discovers that there aren’t any books in his room. Why else do you all think I have a shelf full of them back at my parents’ house? But with all kidding aside, people see value in an individual that reads for recreation. Voracious readers tend to be kind and empathetic people. And seeing how this takes the multiform of a television stereotype, you know it’s true. (For any One Tree Hill fans out there, I’m thinking about Lucas; dude’s reading Atlas Shrugged and quoting Henry David Thoreau in season one while dating cheerleaders and making the high school basketball team.) More importantly though, this phenomenon exists outside of pop culture. I often go to the Caribou Coffee in my hometown to read, and I’ve been approached on two separate occasions by an Amway representative asking me if I’d like to make a little extra money. When you’re seen reading any work of literature, there is a certain no-nonsense go-getter image that you will project. (It’s beside the point that Amway is not my cup of tea.) But who doesn’t want to put the best image of themselves out in the world for people to see? Just don’t be cocky, as I was above… People might not like that.
Stories Bring Us Together
Literature can build communities. We exemplify that statement here in the Twin Cities, which is the biggest literary community between the coasts—perhaps with exception to Chicago. The Twin Cities maintains three of the nation’s most successful independent publishing houses: Graywolf Press, Coffeehouse Press, and Milkweed Editions. These publishers have been invaluable toward the production of Minnesota’s cultural gestalt. The Twin Cities Book Festival brings these three houses together, along with other independent presses and self-published authors. In a very real way, this is a community that would not exist without books.
But also, literature works at bringing us together in much more interpersonal ways. Reading the work of any given author is the closest one can get to seeing the world through another person’s eyes. This is one huge reason why we share books with the people we love, so that we may align our perspectives. I had some very intriguing conversations with my girlfriend after we both had read Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom. That Great American Novel helped us to better understand each other, and provided us with a constructive frame of reference for our own relationship. This is just one way that made-up stories and fictional characters can strengthen our bonds with others.
Becoming a Scholar of Life
When the writer Rick Moody visited our campus last fall, he told Brian Malloy’s fiction class (and I’m paraphrasing here) that he advises anyone who’s received a BFA in Creative Writing to take some time and discover what life is all about before moving on to an MFA. What Moody didn’t say is that a person who believes they’re done learning once they’ve graduated is doomed to fail. The world is always changing. In twenty years, the things we’ve learned in school may easily become outdated. Though the lessons that can be learned from the best works of literature transcend the mundane world of academia; these books expound the meaning of our human identities and help us get closer to realizing what it is to really be alive. For me, this book is David Foster Wallace’s magnum opus, Infinite Jest. There isn’t a single human artifact that has molded my perception of the world like Wallace’s door-stopper novel. This is knowledge I’ve gained from a friend that I’ll never get to meet, and it has truly made me feel like a more complete human-being.
One things that continues to amaze me about literature is how its message endures in spite of our ever-changing world. Although we’ve since left the Modern period of literature far behind, William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury is still capable of wowing readers with its unique treatment of time and the human experience. This book is at once a history lesson and a tragedy that encourages reflection in its readers. I think Rick Moody would agree that reading is one of the best paths toward discovery.
Creating a Better World
Sure, literature may just be some words on a page that can only be meaningful if we take time away from the real world to make it so. But make no mistake, the ideas we receive in literature are meaningful. Just like the ideas that have led to the construction of our cities, or those catalysts to our wars. Here in the Twin Cities, Milkweed Editions chooses the books that it will publish in any given year with a set criteria in mind: it has to be capable of changing the world. One of their authors is Deni Ellis Béchard, whose distinct works of fiction and nonfiction are as diverse as his upbringing and worldly experience. Béchard exemplifies Milkweed’s success in meeting this criteria in his third publication, Of Bonobos and Men. Detailing his personal travels through the Congo and his research concerning the evolution of rainforest conservation, Béchard’s novel is a beacon of light in our millennial world of waste and indifference.
It nearly goes without saying: Béchard’s efforts will all be for naught if no one reads his book. So maybe you should go out to the nearest community-oriented, local bookstore and buy a copy. Or not. At least take a look around, and if something catches your eye, give it a shot. Whatever you do, don’t get discouraged by the cruel trials of finals week at a liberal arts college. Because we read for more than just a letter grade. And if I missed anything, leave a comment below and let me know your own best reason to keep on reading.
Student Editor
Meet the blogger:
CONNOR RYSTEDT is a senior majoring in English and creative writing at Hamline University. He’s previously received his AFA in creative writing from Anoka-Ramsey Community College, where he’s had several publications in The Rapids Review and The Campus Eye. In October of 2014, he received the Norman Mailer Nonfiction Writing Award for two-year college students. When he’s not worrying about what to write, he likes to watch football and fight with his parents’ mini-labradoodle.
Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit by Alison Hawthorne Deming, Reviewed by Sophia Myerly
Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit
Alison Hawthorn Deming
October 2014
ISBN 9781571314697
Reviewed by SOPHIA MYERLY
In her fourth book of creative non-fiction, Alison Hawthorne Deming seeks to examine the increasingly tenuous links that bind the fate of humans and animals together on a changing planet. From chimeras and dragons to crows and rabbits, Deming delights in the physical – as well as the intangible – presence of all beings.
Zoologies is composed of a series of melodic essays that reflect on the beauty and brutality of nature. Research is a core feature of each essay in this book, woven through memories and sensory details. In addition, Zoologies showcases the complex scientific and environmental knowledge that has become a trademark of Deming’s work as a poet and essayist.
The structure of the book was inspired by the Aberdeen Bestiary, a book which Deming describes in her introduction as “a catch basin for works of wisdom and imagination inspired by animals from antiquity into the medieval era.” Deming sought to create a “bestiary for the twenty-first century,” and Zoologies achieves the goal of chronicling the wisdom and imaginative force gleaned from the animals and ecosystems she has experienced throughout her life.
Some essays in the collection deal directly with the negative impact that human selfishness has inflicted upon entire species of animals. In such cases, Deming reflects on the impact we have on the world while offering a call to action and healing. “The Cheetah Run” examines the fragility of cheetahs and the trophy hunting industry, while “The Feasting” examines violence and death in the animal and human realms. On this subject, Deming writes:
No one can explain or justify the breadth and depth of human cruelty. Malice and grief abound. The facts come home to us in the triple crown of climate chaos, crashing biodiversity, and ceaseless genocidal war. How terribly ironic it is that we, the animals who wrote ethical principles into the equation of living with others, have turned out to be the most heavy-handed lugs on Earth.
Yet Zoologies also celebrates the beautiful fragility of our friendships with other living beings, and cherishes the insights that the natural world can bring out in each of us. The essay “Owl Watching in the Experimental Forest” centers around Deming’s time as a writer-in-residence at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon. While most of us would not think of an entire forest as an experiment, Deming explores the cycles of life and death that occur in nature beyond the reaches of human influence or active intervention. She offers a view of the world as a living, moving, and changing organism – of which humanity is only one part. While walking around the forest with one of the researchers, Deming had a revelation:
“Is this a good landscape or a bad landscape?” Fred asks as we gaze over the green tapestry. I’m speechless. I want to think that beauty makes a landscape good, but that trivializes the complexity that makes life work. This mess too is good for the scrutinizing attention it brings out in us and for the ecological possibility it gives to flora and fauna.
Deming’s voice has the richness and substance that only comes from having practiced mindful awareness for a large portion of one’s life, and as a result Zoologies carries a weight that lingers in the reader’s mind. This is a book written to be digested and absorbed into one’s consciousness, and it is a book whose call to action and awareness will only become more important as time goes on.
Meet the blogger:
Sophia Myerly is a transplant from the fields of Iowa to the deep forests and flowing waters of Minnesota. A writer of creative nonfiction, her work draws energy from the natural world and the research process. She graduated with a BFA in Creative Writing with a double minor in English and Linguistics and a BA in Psychology from Hamline University in Spring 2016. Sophia is continuing her studies of creative nonfiction in the MFA in Creative Writing program at Hamline University.
