Dear Outlook Readers,
In fiction, I appreciate the “unreliable narrator” literary device – a story told by a first-person narrator whose account can’t be trusted. Sometimes the narrator is unwittingly unreliable – limited by their lack of wisdom or maturity, they share their story from a narrow perspective – while other times they deliberately mislead readers to present themselves in the best possible light.
I’ve read several excellent memoirs lately, starting with novelist Jill Ciment’s Consent, which made me wonder: are memoirists inherently unreliable or are they the most trusted sources of their own stories? There is, of course, no single answer, but Ciment’s memoir is both a retelling of her story and a reflection on this question. She writes, “The point of view in a memoir is curious. The writer must trick the reader (and herself) into believing that she actually remembers how she felt decades ago.”
At 17, Ciment began a relationship with her married 47-year-old art teacher, Arnold Mesches. They married and remained together until his death at 93. She recently revisited her 1996 memoir, Half a Life, and was shocked to read her distorted depiction of their origin story. Now, she vividly recalls Mesches initiating the kiss, yet she previously wrote a story (with Mesches’ blessing) that depicts her as the flirtatious initiator.
“Who kissed whom first?” she wonders. “If Arnold kissed me first, should I refer to him in the language of today — sexual offender, transgressor, abuser of power? Or do I refer to him in the language of the late ‘90s when my 45-year-old self wrote the scene?” Ciment also questions her own recollections, writing, “The memory of writing the memoir slowly accumulates until it usurps the events you are trying to capture,” she writes. The kiss lasted seconds, but she daydreamed about it for weeks prior and has reflected on it ever since.
Consent is a compelling read, for Ciment’s story as well as her willingness to wrestle with her memory, as well as changes in collective societal attitudes. Read on for additional suggestions – Salman Rushdie’s recently released Knife and Tia Levings’ A Well-Trained Wife, publishing next week.
Happy Reading,
Amy Pagliarella
Outlook Book Review Editor |
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BOOK OF THE MONTH A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape From Christian Patriarchy
Tia Levings
St. Martin’s Press, 304 pages
Publishing August 6, 2024
Why are we fascinated by cults? Podcasts and streaming services offer glimpses into fringe movements such as NXIVM or the Duggar family, revealing the stringent codes of conduct believers were expected to follow, and the abuses they experienced at the hands of powerful leaders. I confess to feeling almost guilty recommending A Well-Trained Wife, as it feeds the lurid curiosity that draws many of us to sensationalist cult documentaries. It is, however, Tia Levings’ honest voice that lifts her memoir into an altogether different category.
Levings was raised in a complementarian church with a frightening understanding of God, in which cancer was described as “a consequence of sin in the world” and “headstrong” girls needed to be disciplined to be better Christians. In Sunday School, summer camps and private Christian schools, Levings internalized the rules and struggled with her feelings of unworthiness. By the time her fiancé revealed his violent nature, she had been groomed to accept and submit; she entered a marriage that was abusive from the start until she was convinced her husband could kill her and their children.
In addition to reflecting on her path, Levings seeks out her childhood friends to understand where their shared fundamentalist upbringing led them — some had completely left the church behind while other women doubled down on their prescribed roles. She briefly extrapolates, providing some understanding of patriarchal Christianity’s appeal, as well as the risks of its growing influence in America.
A Well-Trained Wife shows that Tia Levings is more than her trauma; her story is one of self-actualization as she realizes “Maybe it was up to me to save me.” She is not a victim being interviewed in a documentary, but rather, a survivor who uses her experiences to help us engage with more challenging psychological questions, rather than simply gawk.
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BOOK OF THE MONTH Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder
Salman Rushdie
Random House, 224 pages
Published April 16, 2024
Salman Rushdie was not expected to live. The 75-year-old author had, after all, been stabbed 27 times, in front of a Chautauqua Institution audience who had, ironically, gathered to hear Rushdie speak about the importance of protecting writers. Nearly two years later, Rushdie has lost an eye and partial use of one hand, but he is still at the top of his game as a writer and thinker. Knife is a memoir of sorts — certainly not a comprehensive look at Rushdie’s life and work, but a compelling series of thoughts inspired by his horrific attack.
Rushdie candidly admits that he wrote Knife because he could not write anything else until he had processed his attempted murder. And I’m grateful that he did. Rushdie’s very public attack raised so many questions: What motivated his assailant – a young man who was not even born when the Iranian Ayatollah issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s murder – to launch such a vicious pre-meditated attack? Why did the Chautauqua Institution fail to provide security for Rushdie’s event? What did audience members see and do as the attack unfolded? Is there any explanation for his survival, short of a miracle?
Rushdie also asks these questions. Though some are unanswerable, his creative attempt to make sense of the senseless makes for a satisfying read. Rushdie describes the attack in careful language, allowing it to unfold in real-time, slow motion, as we marvel both at his gifts as a writer and the heroics of his audience (who subdued his attacker and provided emergency medical care that saved Rushdie’s life). Most revealing of all is his imagined conversation with his assailant, who Rushdie has never met and who is expected to stand trial this fall. “I have to imagine my way into his head,” Rushdie writes, crafting a fictional dialogue that seeks to explain not just this attack, but the radicalization of young men who turn to YouTube for religious education and a sense of purpose.
Rushdie remains a determined atheist. He does not ask for our prayers, yet I pray that writing Knife provided the catharsis he needs to return to his joy-filled life with his adult children and wife (the poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths) … and, God-willing, to bless us with more of his work.
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“In the language of a hospice chaplain, you must grieve what you have lost, or what you are losing. Grief isn’t reserved exclusively for widows and survivors. Grief accompanies the small deaths as well as the Big One. I was learning that even if the loss is one I choose, it doesn’t mean I won’t, and shouldn’t, experience grief.” |
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Book Giveaway! Congratulations to last month’s winner Elizabeth Deibert. Thanks to our generous partners at Westminster John Knox Press, they received Proclaiming the Parables by Tom Long.
This month, one fortunate reader will receive a copy of this month’s quoted book Blood From a Stone by Adam S. McHugh, kindly donated by the folks at InterVarsity Press.If you're reading this note, then you're all set! Know someone else who should be reading Page Turners? Send them this link and they'll get entered for a chance to win, too. The contest closes on August 20.
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