Notes on Writing While Reading 18/31 #SOL2024

I was recently asked to facilitate an upcoming book club discussion at Westboro Books, so I quickly acquired three of them, two Canadian literature and one translation. I started taking notes on the pages realizing that this could potentially make its way into my writing workshop.

I started with the International Bookclub selection; a translation from Danish, Blue Notes by Anne Cathrine Bomann. The premise of the book suggests this is science fiction, while the ideas span the breadth of psychology and philosophy. The blurb at the back reads,

“A Danish university research group is finishing its study of a new medicine, Callocain; the world’s first pill for grief. But psychology professor Thorsten Gjeldsted suspects that someone has manipulated the test results to hide a disturbing side effect … Blue Notes is brimming with ethical and existential ideas about the search for identity and one’s place in the world while offering a highly original literary adventure that ultimately underscores the healing power of love.”

Names and dates (September 2024) are used as subtitles below numbered chapters and grieving simmers below the surface of each interation between characters whose descriptions are subtle and inner thoughts are often revealingly funny. For example, Shadi first meets Anna in the quiet of a university reading room where Anna bursts in disturbing the silence. Shadi turns and notes,

…Anna, that’s her name. With her crop top and the vestiages of pink in her short hair, she looks like she just came from a festival. Shadi’s never really spoken to her, but she’s got a pretty clear idea of who Anna is. She’s the type who’s stuck to the reading groups they were assigned by the teachers at the start of the course, because she enjoys having someone to discuss Simone de Beauvoir with until late into the night while she smokes roll-your-own cigarettes and takes a metaphorical hatchet to the patriarchy. (Bowmann 19)

Then I noticed this skillful technique whereby the narrator and the protagonist’s inner voice merge in a paragraph and the reader pulls together threads from previous dialogue carrying it forward with emerging action. The author hints at scenes allowing the reader time to develop context. Anna says,

“I’m heading over to the bag.” Without any knowledge of the kind of bag, the context develops a paragraph later.

The first punches hit home. Precise, swift out and swift back; she could floor a man with blows like that. The yells of others fill the air around her, and the thick reek of sweat scorches her nose. She switches between jabs and hooks, whirls around and aims a hard kick into the side of the bag. How is she going to write the dissertation now? Does she really need to find a new topic? She kicks again.

She can feel her technique slipping as the weariness eats into her muscles. Her feet skid in the drops of perspriation from her brow. Her knuckles sting. And then there’s the whole fucking car crash with the neuro class she failed. As she left, Thorsten suggested she make a formal complaint, but that’s easy for him to say. He has no idea what that would take. (Bowmann 28)

The story continues to switch from 2011 to 2024 – a tragic loss in the past leads to an attempt to eliminate grief. The narrative switches, the tense switches, setting switches, and all of this creates a kind of intensity requiring deep attention to the story. “Like watching a beautiful wound heal over, Blue Notes embraces the necessary scars that hold us together. Andrew F. Sullivan, author of The Marigold.