Book Review: The Future Tense of Joy by Jessica Teich

by BiographyCreative Non-fictiontrigger: suicide

Note: I got this book as an advanced reading copy from Netgalley, but you can read it in September 2016.

So, this book made me cry.

It was in the last quarter, when Jessica intervenes in a issue her daughter is having with a schoolmate. The school has a word, the crisis is averted, and her daughter goes back to being a happy, if somewhat pensive, child.
“It was that simple,” says Teich, “That’s how easily someone could have saved me…”

And I cried, because like Teich, like many women who have been abused, I realised it could have been that easy for me to be saved too. And it stings that no one did.

This is not a novel about abuse necessarily, although Teich does go into her history in depth (abusive boyfriend, absent mother). It’s a story about a woman who sees the world she’s trying to desperately to mould into perfect safety slowly eroding away. Late at night, questioning her choices as she navigates family life, Teich picks up a decade old obituary and sees a kindred spirit in the dead girl, Lacey. Both high achievers, Rhode scholars, women with difficult relationships with their mothers – how is Teich in this life, with her daughters and a husband who adores her, and Lacey in the ground after committing suicide at 27?

The novel then rambles through Teich’s search to uncover Lacey’s life. She contacts Lacey’s family and friends, trying to get a sense of her and trying to uncover what drove her to such a drastic act. At the same time, Teich uncovers more and more of her own life, explaining and exploring her neuroses using Lacey’s life as a mirror.

Some of the writing here is just beautiful. Poignant, reflexive and heartfelt, Teich treats Lacey as a beloved sister. Her love for her children shines, and her pain at not feeling the connection to her family that she craves is exquisitely written in.
That said, the book goes on way too long. The whole last section could be easily removed without losing any of the story. The story about Angelia is pretty, but I really don’t see how it fits in with the surrounding story – if it had been woven in better, introduced earlier it may have worked, but it’s like a story that’s been added later to drive home a point, and it’s quite jarring. The parts about her travelling back to Oxford could have been more succinct, because again, a lot of the conversations she has seem to be added to just reinforce what the book is about.

I feel like a lot of the present day autobiographical content is very self indulgent. Yes, memoir is by definition indulgent, but not THIS indulgent. It’s as if Teich wants applause for working out her demons, returning to her husband, learning to release her vice-grip on her children, and learning to live her life despite the abuse she suffered as a teen. But she doesn’t need to ask for accolade. A lot of women (and men, i guess) who want to read this understand implicitly how hard it is to love and be loved after abuse. How hard it is to let children out into a world that is inherently unsafe. How guilty not being happy with a life that looks perfect on paper makes you feel. Just saying ‘here’s my history, here’s my demons, here’s what I’ve done’ would have been good enough. And made for a book that didn’t drag at the tail end.

The writing style nearly makes up for it. But not quite. However, this would have been an extremely difficult book to write (and harder yet to release into the world), and I have to give Teich props for handling the subject matter with poise and delicacy. At no point did I feel her inclusion of Lacey was voyeuristic or macabre (and I’m pretty sure Lacey’s family felt the same). She shows her daughters in a way that demonstrates her absolute devotion, but doesn’t make them larger (or more perfect) than life. She handles delicate, uncertain and painful topics with grace, and there should be more books that talk about this stuff.

3/5 stars.

 

Pure Morning.

by Creative Non-fictionMemoirNon-FictionTrigger: Self HarmWritten

Imagine, if you will, the sound of a song recorded to cassette from a crackly radio station, then played through speakers covered with stickers from TV Hits magazine. Imagine Brian Molko’s genderfucking lyrics being purred at a volume nearly high enough to compensate for the bad recording technique, the sound bouncing off the purple walls. No posters. Not after Mum discovered the centrefolds from Horse and Pony were taped up four thick, one over the other over the other, a poor découpage of mares, stallions and fluffy foals in green fields. I am at my desk, on a cramped chair, my ears as close to the speakers as is comfortable, mouthing along to lyrics that make my angst-wrapped teen soul believe someone out there knows me.

On the desk is a plain blue biro, a brown notebook, a cream-shaded table lamp, a metal pencil sharpener and the broken clip from a black fineliner I stole from my mother. Molko blares, the speakers crackle and I dig the slanted edge of the sharpener blade into the softest part of my thigh. The song peters out and I lean over to press the rewind button. I have rewinding down to a direct science, I know exactly how far to go on this tape to only listen to a few words of the DJ announcing the song before it starts.

Outside it is night but not dark. I am close enough to the city that on overcast nights the sky is lit with a dirty yellow-grey glow, making the clouds seem closer, heavier and full of menace. A white night where my mouth tastes like salt and metal, my head buzzes no matter how loud the music is and my restless feet tap out a frantic, discordant tattoo on the wheel covers of the desk chair. This room is not a sanctuary, this room is a cage.

There are voices in the hallway – my Mother will come in nine seconds to tell me to turn down the music, to go to bed. I slide all evidence of my crimes into the desk drawer where it rests among old homework assignments, quarter-written stories and the detritus of a fourteen year old with well-established hoarding tendencies. I needn’t bother – she speaks through the door. When I click the stop button, it jumps up with a click and the tape stops whirring. The stop button doesn’t say stop, it displays a tiny unicorn sticker meant for a toothbrush. The play button features a cat. I am suddenly disgusted at the things around me; china ornaments of horses and unicorns, the shaggy yellow dog with the glow-in-the-dark chest on my bed, the white melamine furniture, all overflowing with stuff, the purple paint sponged onto the walls. There is no space in here, there is no air to breathe.

From the bed, in the dark, I can’t see the glowing sky. There are stars on the ceiling and I trace imaginary constellations as I scratch, flaking the dry blood, getting into the wound underneath. The house is quickly quiet, even Lucy, the retriever, is asleep. The slate floors are cold in this house, so after everyone has gone to bed, you can hear her stand and click-click-click across the floor before she not-so-sneakily heaves herself onto the sofa bed.

Eleven pm. Midnight. One. Two.

I don’t have headphones, so the volume is low. Click, listen, rewind, repeat. I am staring at nothing; the blinds are closed and it’s dark and I can still feel the night pressing on me, weighting my lungs, pulling me down. I am not strong enough to bear this sky. The blade has slipped in between two sheets of maths equations.

Skin has layers – epidermis, dermis and hypodermis. I press the blade slowly through the dermis, listening for the pop of collagen and fibre, watching the skin retract, then well with blood. I am consumed with the inside of me, with escaping from the purple room, the white night; going deep into my blood and my bones. White fat makes me recoil – the hypodermis bleeds more freely, as the blood vessels aren’t constricted by tightly bound skin cells. With the blade out, the weight of my upper leg is enough to hold the wound closed. There are a few drops of blood, suspended by water tension in perfectly round balls on the carpet. I lie on the floor, half under the bed and gently pierce the top of each with a tissue corner – as if by magic, the blood climbs upward until not a trace is left behind.

We are all just chemistry.