I remember you as Captain Hook, Emma - you were brilliant, genuinely scary and had a really powerful singing voice! Would love to hear your memories of how you were picked for the role over a boy...?
Thank you, Cleo. Lovely to receive this compliment on my performance after all these years! Especially as my memory is one of squirming humiliation at not being able to leap on the stage. I have no memory of how I got the part, I’m afraid.
There’s a shape to this chapter especially, that so sharply captures the pace of how memory swells and subsides, how it leaps, lingers and attempts to find solace. The frantic pace from the maths room to the hall outside the dining hall; the excruciating detail of the bottle green tights and wet piss on the polished wooden floor; the relief found with the kindly matron in the boys’ dorm. I am reminded of TS Eliot’s “humankind cannot bear too much reality”.
I’ve read and reread this several times. The writing so brilliantly carries you along the narrator’s painful journey of memory. I feel the repressed chill (and child). As a reader… the longed for redemption!
This continues in a way that completely captures my attentiveness, the truth of the experiences and how the processing is so alive through the way you write it. That little girl deserves so, so much love and a reminder that in spite of it all, she is an amazing woman.
I love chapter 3! The form is more experimental than the previous two chapters and the many layers of memory are beautifully conveyed -- the narrator repelled by the adult raconteur dining out on the "funny" story of the little girl's legs scrabbling and scrabbling to mount the stage. I can't wait for chapter 4.
Oh Emma – that poor little, small freckled-face girl with short legs. You can feel her childlike exuberance and determination to do her best and give of her all, with the added twist of homesickness - the knowledge of absent parents in the audience. All tempered with a suppressed and deep, dark chasm of fear and trepidation. By gazing up at the music teacher, she is pretending that her little legs in green tights were not being drenched in pee. The epitome of a child’s foreboding of what might be coming, knowing there’s no way out, but silence and concealment essential and maybe guilt, because of course she was in the wrong!
This split narrative style is so interesting and so effective at addressing and conveying the trauma of this little girl’s story (your story) and how it reaches into your older self. Thought provoking and original, altogether brilliant.
I remember you as Captain Hook, Emma - you were brilliant, genuinely scary and had a really powerful singing voice! Would love to hear your memories of how you were picked for the role over a boy...?
Thank you, Cleo. Lovely to receive this compliment on my performance after all these years! Especially as my memory is one of squirming humiliation at not being able to leap on the stage. I have no memory of how I got the part, I’m afraid.
The agony of separation is brilliantly observed - I am thrown right back into childhood.
Thank you, Sarah.
There’s a shape to this chapter especially, that so sharply captures the pace of how memory swells and subsides, how it leaps, lingers and attempts to find solace. The frantic pace from the maths room to the hall outside the dining hall; the excruciating detail of the bottle green tights and wet piss on the polished wooden floor; the relief found with the kindly matron in the boys’ dorm. I am reminded of TS Eliot’s “humankind cannot bear too much reality”.
I’ve read and reread this several times. The writing so brilliantly carries you along the narrator’s painful journey of memory. I feel the repressed chill (and child). As a reader… the longed for redemption!
Thank you so much for this beautiful, insightful comment. I love the Eliot quote!
This continues in a way that completely captures my attentiveness, the truth of the experiences and how the processing is so alive through the way you write it. That little girl deserves so, so much love and a reminder that in spite of it all, she is an amazing woman.
Thank you Dawn!
I love chapter 3! The form is more experimental than the previous two chapters and the many layers of memory are beautifully conveyed -- the narrator repelled by the adult raconteur dining out on the "funny" story of the little girl's legs scrabbling and scrabbling to mount the stage. I can't wait for chapter 4.
Oh Emma – that poor little, small freckled-face girl with short legs. You can feel her childlike exuberance and determination to do her best and give of her all, with the added twist of homesickness - the knowledge of absent parents in the audience. All tempered with a suppressed and deep, dark chasm of fear and trepidation. By gazing up at the music teacher, she is pretending that her little legs in green tights were not being drenched in pee. The epitome of a child’s foreboding of what might be coming, knowing there’s no way out, but silence and concealment essential and maybe guilt, because of course she was in the wrong!
Yes! Exactly! Thank you so much for this comment, Rosalyn.
This split narrative style is so interesting and so effective at addressing and conveying the trauma of this little girl’s story (your story) and how it reaches into your older self. Thought provoking and original, altogether brilliant.
Thank you, Helen. I’m so glad it works for you as a reader.