It's Not Nothing
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- ¥1,100
発行者による作品情報
Rosemary Candwell's past has exploded into her present. Down-and-out and deteriorating, she drifts from anonymous beds and bars in Providence, to a homeless shelter hidden among the hedge-rowed avenues of Newport, and through the revolving door of service jobs and quick-fix psychiatric care, always grasping for hope, for a solution. She's desperate to readjust back into a family and a world that has deemed her a crazy bitch living a choice they believe she could simply un-choose at any time. She endures flashbacks and panic attacks, migraines and nightmares. She can't sleep or she sleeps for days; she lashes out at anyone and everyone, especially herself. She abuses over-the-counter cold medicine and guzzles down anything caffeinated just to feel less alone. What if her family is right? What if she is truly broken beyond repair? Drawn from the author's experience of homelessness and trauma recovery, It's Not Nothing is a collage of small moments, biting jokes, intrusive memories, and quiet epiphanies meant to reveal a greater truth: Resilience never looks the way we expect it to look.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Denelle's bold if frustrating debut circles around a young woman's memories of unspecified trauma as she spirals downward. Rosemary Candwell narrates in nonlinear fragments that hint at terrible things done by her parents. Thinking of her father on Father's Day, she reflects, "He's out there somewhere, frantically wondering, does she remember? She does." Rosemary shuttles from one menial retail job to the next in different parts of Rhode Island, at times living on the street or in a shelter until she moves in to an apartment. She's made repeated suicide attempts—"tried to end it on my own terms. Believe you me. I failed and I failed and I failed and I failed"—and her mother's biggest concern during visits to see her in the mental health ward is what Rosemary has revealed to psychiatrists about the past. She continually edges toward self-destruction until she meets a young woman named Sylvie outside her apartment building, who becomes a friend and offers help. The prose is sometimes razor-sharp (" got a picked and peeled anxiety manicure"), but more often overwrought. While Rosemary's evasiveness over the details of the trauma reflects her difficulty in expressing and working through them, as a narrative device it eventually wears thin. The author shows promise, but this is a bit too raw.
