Call It Horses
-
- 10,99 €
-
- 10,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
Winner of the 2019 Dzanc Prize for Fiction
Set in small-town West Virginia in the twilight of the eighties, Call It Horses tells the story of three women—niece, aunt, and stowaway—and an improbable road trip.
Frankie is an orphan (or a reluctant wife). Mave is an autodidact (or the town pariah). Nan is an artist (or the town whore). Each separately haunted, Frankie, Mave, and Nan—with a hound in tow—set out in an Oldsmobile Royale for Abiquiú and the desert of Georgia O’Keeffe, seeking an escape from everything they’ve known.
Frankie records the journey in letters to her aunt Mave’s dead lover, a linguist named Ruth, sketching out her troubled life and her complicated relationship with Mave, who became her guardian when Frankie was orphaned at sixteen. Slowly, one letter at a time, Frankie exposes the ruins of herself and her fellow passengers: things that chase them, that died too soon, that never lived.
With lush prose and brutal empathy, Frankie tells Ruth—and herself—the story of liminality experienced by a woman standing just outside of motherhood, fulfillment, and love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A woman reconciles with the wishes of a late surrogate mother figure in Van Eerden's elegiac epistolary novel (after the essay collection The Long Weeping). Frankie, 36, was raised by her aunt Mave after her parents died, and had been penpals with her aunt's lover, Ruth, a professor of Mave's who encouraged Frankie's writerly ambitions and later died. Now, Frankie continues writing letters to Ruth as a sort of tribute to that wish. With Mave stricken by cancer, the two, along with Frankie's beautiful friend, Nan, embark on a road trip to New Mexico to honor Mave's love of Georgia O'Keeffe. Along the way, Mave, who refused to pack any of her pills except for "the good ones," hints at her impending mortality while Frankie feels unnerved by Mave sharing new details about Ruth with Nan, whose youth, beauty, and ease make Frankie jealous. Frankie holds Ruth close while drafting atmospheric details of their journey ("The bright line of I-40 would pull us into places dried out nearer the sun. It would not be your Sinai Desert, Ruth, or your ancient manuscripts studied on sabbaticals, but it's what we could manage") as the narrative slowly builds to a poignant resolution. The quirky characters and rich landscapes will keep readers invested.
