My Friend Annabel Lee

A little Japanese statue stands on the shelf, her strange white hands still, while the sea’s green waves roll and roll. The narrator hears them with Annabel Lee—and insists her silent friend is exquisitely human.

In the early twentieth century, by the sea near Boston, a young woman of one-and-twenty has found the friendship she never expected in a dusty shop on Boylston Street. She has rescued Annabel Lee, named her for Poe’s haunting poem, and loves her tenderly; yet the statue’s gaze can turn from warm and enchanting to cold, indifferent, and confounding. In their strange companionship, Annabel speaks of the “flat surfaces” of life: the ordinary needs and passing moments that interrupt even our deepest feelings. Is she a mirror for the narrator—or a presence with a mind and mystery all her own?

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