CAI EMMONS' PAGE: THE BELLS; two Bronwyn Artair cli-fics

THE BELLS
CAI EMMONS
Red Hen Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: As The Bells opens, thirty-three-year-old Niall O'Malley has failed a five-year mission to live as a monk and is attempting to redefine himself as a high school teacher in New Jersey. The transition has been bumpy. He loves teaching history to inner city teens, but he hits a roadblock when a belligerent student, Colton, possibly a white-supremacist, behaves in ways that threaten Niall.

As troubles mount at school, Niall's girlfriend Lluvia pressures him into make a deeper commitment to their relationship. She wants them to move in together with Lluvia's pre-teen daughter and elderly mother. Haunted by his failure as a Cistercian monk and his troubles with one man in particular, the abusive Brother Thomas, Niall abandons Lluvia and heads back to his old monastery in Massachusetts for a final showdown with Thomas, now dying of ALS. Redemption for Niall is elusive as he strives to mend his faith.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Odd as it sounds, unsympathetic people deserve sympathy and understanding, no matter how hard it is to offer. Niall, one of life's least-lovable characters, is a passive abuse sponge. In this story, we hear him absorbing the pressures that the predators around him...his female companion, one of his students in the high-school history class he teaches...sense his vulnerability and mount their cruelty campaigns against him to...what? prove they can? get a desired result from him?...it's this that resulted in my rating being under four full stars.

I completely get why this is a story worth telling. I know others will not be able to invest in Niall because he feels so passive, yet clearly feels rage about his many instances of abuse. As a horror story for the spooky season, this (to me) makes it a perfect read: Finally acting against Lluvia's pressures and demands, going back to the escape-turned-hellscape of his early adult life in the monastery, it seems as though Niall might at last lift the fog of rage that hides his horizons.

Resolving a lifetime of trauma is very very hard. Closer to seventy than fifty, I'm still mid-process. Niall's not even fiftyish, so I'm right there with him, understanding his issues and his weirdly ineffectual...has life taught him nothing?...attempts to gain a handle on the reality of a lifetime spent being acted on, not acting. It is a big ask to spend 250pp with someone floundering in wreckage he does not see clearly, has no map to understand, and no sense of agency (though plenty of urgency propelling him hither thither and yon) in coping with. It is truly psychological horror.

I'm sorry to say I wasn't satisfied by the resolution *on a story level* not based on the result that occurred. If I'd simply wanted a different resolution I'd be giving the writing alone 4+ stars. What I'm referring to is the resolution to the story does not use the beats to build to something, to make the read a journey. It is very probable that this is intentional, as Author Emmons was capable of writing effective outrage fueling logical story resolution.

It feels very poignant that Author Emmons gave the abuser her own fatal affliction as a trigger to cause Niall to act at last. ALS is a terrible, terrifying condition. It is nightmare fodder to understand what is happening to you and still to know what is happening can not be altered.

I'm not interested in most "horror" because it relies on tropes I find deeply silly and utterly incredible. The psychological horror of this story might, had the author lived longer, have resolved itself in a more effective manner commensurate with the investment of time and attention required of the reader. As it is I got genuine frissons of horror from this resolutely reality-anchored story of psychological abuse and its consequences.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

SINKING ISLANDS
CAI EMMONS
Red Hen Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Sinking Islands continues the story of Bronwyn Artair, a scientist who possesses the power to influence the natural forces of the Earth. After several successful interventions, including one in Siberia, she has gone into hiding, worried about unintended consequences of her actions, as well as about the ethics of operating solo. But circumstances call her to action again, and an idea takes shape: What if she could impart her skill to other people?

Gathering a few kindred souls from climate-troubled places around the world—Felipe from São Paulo, where drought conditions are creating strains on day-to-day life; Analu and his daughter Penina from a sinking island in the South Pacific; and Patty from the tornado-ridden plains of Kansas—she takes them to the wilds of Northern New Hampshire where she tries to teach them her skill. The novel, realistic but for the single fantastical element, explores how we might become more attuned to the Earth and act more collaboratively to solve the enormity of our climate problem.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Now that Bronwyn's "out of the closet," so to speak, as someone with a unique and effective ability to change the world's weather as climate change bites us ever harder, she's got qualms.

The men who want to use her powers do not.Retreating from the pressures of the desperate world witb a scoobygroup of others she will teach how to use her newly discovered powers, Bronwyn learns, tests, grows.

Should she simply use her abilities to effect local changes without ever knowing in advance what the global consequences are? Should the same behavior, in other words, that was used to get us into this mess be used to try getting us out? Unlike lesser writers' heroes, Bronwyn considers this ethical and practical conundrum seriously. She does it collaboratively, not solipsistically. She does it with all due haste because the world is changing fast and the consequences are dire (I'd argue condign, as well, but I'm sorta Savonarola-y on the subject.) “Death turns everything inside out. After death, nothing’s the same, for the living or the dead.”

Then, when she's determined what the course of action should be based on all the evidence she can accumulate and all the counsel she can trust, the world feels her scoobygroup's efforts. As climate catastrophes mount, as Bronwyn and her support staff take more and more drastic action, things do change.

Change, then, is possible. Change is necessary. Change can...must...come from inside you as you effect it wherever you are, as you model its reality to anyone who looks or even watches you effect it, and those few who study your efforts to reproduce them for themselves.

This 2021 title deserves our attention, with its prequel for multiple reasons. One is the men and women who surround, support, and assist Bronwyn to bring her vision and her power to reality. Another is the sheer idiocy of male-dominated power structures in their dismissal or outright rejection of ideas from women. A further idea that needs wider currency is the need for women to simply up and do stuff because it all needs doing. Waiting for validation attention or perish forbid permission is no longer an option. The world is very badly in need of all hands running to the pumps to do their own best.

Author Emmons left Bronwyn and company here. I think that's a good thing. I felt the message was delivered, the ideas explored in the depth that informed and encouraged but stopped before overwhelm set in. The books are a good set, a good length of time with these admirable people, and that counts for a lot in a world with too much and not enough always tipping, tipping, tipping....

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

WEATHER WOMAN
CAI EMMONS
Red Hen Press
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: 30-year-old Bronwyn Artair, feeling out of place in her doctoral program in Atmospheric Sciences at MIT, drops out and takes a job as a TV meteorologist, much to the dismay of her mentor, Diane Fenwick. After a year of living alone in Southern New Hampshire, enduring the indignities of her job, dumped by her boyfriend, she discovers her deep connection to the natural world has given her an ability to affect natural forces.

When she finally accepts she really possesses this startling capability, she must then negotiate a new relationship to the world. Who will she tell? Who will believe her? Most importantly, how will she put this new skill of hers to use? As she seeks answers to these questions, she travels to Kansas to see the tornado maverick she worships; falls in love with Matt, the tabloid journalist who has come to investigate her; visits fires raging out of control in Los Angeles; and eventually voyages with Matt and Diane to the methane fields of Siberia.

A woman experiencing power for the first time in her life, she must figure out what she can do for the world without hurting it further. The story poses questions about science and intuition, women and power, and what the earth needs from humans.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY. USE THEIR SERVICES OFTEN, THEY NEED US!

My Review: What the heck are women supposed to do when they discover they have actual, utilizable power? Hide it, or course, because some man somewhere will feel threatened by it because he doesn't have it, or have a way to control it, or simply doesn't like that a woman can do something without needing to check it until a man approves of it.

Meet Bronwyn. She's an ordinary woman in an ordinary relationship with an ordinary man. It ends because he ends it. It ends, in other words, because someone not her has determined her worth is not sufficient to deserve his august attention.

So far this is realist fiction with the twist that the woman has Something Extra. But how she discovers that, what it is, and how extremely valuable it is...that's Cai Emmons' secret story sauce. In giving ordinary-everywoman Bronwyn the Something Extra, Author Emmons is sneaking into a realist-fiction piece the verity that all women have power through the metaphor of A Power. She does this as the world...hers of 2018, ours of 2025...faces unprecednted challenges to our future as a species. This passage in time is very reminiscent of the Black Death in its existential crisis. And here's unregarded Bronwyn discovering she could very well have the means to alter a seemingly inevitable death spiral.

Exploring that is, I think, the reason most reviews and ratings that ridicule and belittle the story are by men. Author Emmons dares to say, "what if a woman has the solution to our crisis? Not because a man worked on it, or because she earned it by studying under men, but in and of herself she possesses the answer, the solution, our collective way out?"

Watch the rats empty from the sinking ship to devour the rope tying us to reality.

That's why I'm offering a full four stars to this cli-fic story of how stupid it is to think you know everything thus shutting down possibly lifesaving ideas from outside your purview.

LIVID, think "12 Angry Men" but make it 1 ENRAGED woman

LIVID
CAI EMMONS
Red Hen Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$18.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A woman who is suffering from a tragic loss is placed on a jury with her estranged ex-husband.

Sybil White Brown returns from Boston to the small West Coast city where she once lived, hoping to heal after a terrible loss. Summoned to jury duty, she is dismayed to be assigned to the jury of a murder trial alongside her ex-husband with whom she had a rancorous divorce. As the trial progresses, she and her ex tiptoe around each other but eventually become disastrously entangled. Meanwhile, Sybil obsesses about the female defendant, whom she believes is innocent. The situation explodes during jury deliberations when Sybil comes face-to-face with her own unexpressed rage.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: If anyone knows the deep contours of female rage, it's Author Cai Emmons...she's received the death sentence that we all dread. Her life will end, and not at some distant and amorphously unknowable date, but quite soon.

The question looms large: How does one assert oneself as a person, a woman, without a speaking voice, without sound waves commandeering attention?

Losing her voice to ALS has not silenced her, she says in LitHub. I'm glad it hasn't...I'm sad it won't get better...I'm deeply empathetic with her character's outrage!

As it happens, Author Emmons reached the end of her journey on the second of January. She was ten days short of her seventy-second birthday. I believe in some kind of afterlife, not one of personal survival or linked to An Eternal Reward or suchlike...but authors, for sure, experience an afterlife as long as their words, ideas, stories are read and thought about by we the living. I myownself will never forget Author Emmons for describing me, through the lens of someone else:

She wasn't old. Indeterminate thirties—everyone seems younger than I am these days—but her skin had been worked over, thickened and textured as if it was used to sealing things out, a skill I recognize.

It is the gift of an observant person to see past surfaces. It is the skill of an author to turn surfaces into substance, to make a whole of a glance and a brushed-past contact into a deep, layered bounce.

When I read in the Acknowledgments that Author Emmons was fired up to write Livid by watching the Supreme Court nomination hearings of Brett Kavanaugh, I was so deeply outraged and infuriated that I put off reading the book. I knew, deep inside the withered and wizened recesses of my whatever-replaced-a-soul, that I would screech in outrage at anything inspired by the travesty of justice and comedy of errors that put the United States of America's Supreme Court in the hands of the scum presently on it. A bit much for me at the time. I put the book aside.

Reading that Author Emmons had died on the second, I felt gripped with the need to learn what she wanted us to know when she chose this inspiration to follow as she herownself began to let go of her grasp on the world. I know there are more books by her coming out this year. I can't say it strongly enough: I think her work is important in subject, appealing in style, and worthy in its spiritual aims. I hope you'll buy them all.

In this story, from its inspiration we can be sure there will be no shortage of enraging subject matter. It's still startling to me that there's a man left alive who has managed to willfully un-know that their condescension and contempt for Womanhood (as opposed to for an individual woman, a different kettle of fish) is a source of volcanic rage and what I'd call a "fond return of contempt." I'd run over the plot for you, but you can read, it's right up there. What I want you to know is how deeply and genuinely Author Emmons explores that fondness I called out.

Sybil, our narrator, seeing Drew, her ex-husband, for the first time since a genuine and deeply painful tragedy ended their marriage, is assailed by the deep and fundamental existence of her anger.

The past will not die. It festers in the body's cells, inflames the tissues, refuses to relinquish its grip. In the face of such intransigence, what can you do but flee?

It is, as Sybil realizes, not possible to extricate her anger from her very being. That realization is central to everything that occurs in this short novel. Drew can't comprehend that Sybil is not going to "move on" or "forgive and forget," both of which nostrums are idiotic and unhelpful as concepts and impossible as goals in my own experience and in Sybil's. What she has done in her lifetime away from Drew and their shared hometown is...heal, scab over the wounds, to give herself a chance at making it through the nights and existing fully in the days of a different life than the one she left behind.

The jury that forms the book's internal audience for Sybil and Drew as the process the real reasons for the end of their relationship is largely faceless and affectless. The two people who count are Sybil and Sybil. Oh, and also Sybil. She is telling the story. She is setting the terms of our relationship with her. She is Responsible. And one gets the distinct impression that this is a unique experience in Sybil's life...think of Marguerite Duras' statement, "I believe there is a miracle in Wanda. Usually, there is a distance between representation and text, subject and action. Here that distance is completely eradicated", quoted about the actress Barbara Loden's one and only directorial outing. In Sybil, Cai Emmons does much the same thing: She utterly erases the barriers between the reader and the character. Not solely by having Sybil narrate the story. The story that Sybil narrates mutates, alters, grows as she tells us more and more of it. By the time the ending comes, heralded by a startling act of redemption, Sybil has finally filled all of her personal space. Sybil has, unlike generations of women, fully and completely claimed all of the mass, all of the depth, all of the breadth of her body, her mind, her heart.

She is, for the first time, her own and her full, self. I was left in complete awe of this feat. Sybil did not, as she began speaking to me, seem as though she would be the kind of character who could, who would dare, to answer this call and stretch her self into the last corners of the mold we call "selfhood." Yet by the end of this compact book, I was standing in Sybil's sole, shining presence. Her rage was too huge to be contained another moment. Her actions, at long last, balanced the delicate and fragile state of inaction and indifference to her self that Sybil was required, as a woman, to assume.

It was deeply and pleasantly surprising as well as subtly and satisfyingly performed in this closely built, quietly molded work of art. I hope you will honor the memory of Cai Emmons in your own way and starting by reading one of her last works strikes me as fitting.