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February 2, 2007
The Lost Night
I finally read a book!
With the sort of irony only possible after writing a post on travel knitting, my size 8 needle that I was using for David’s scarf splintered at the join. I had John’s socks to work on as well, but chose instead to read the book I had packed, The Lost Night
The book is a memoir of Howard’s childhood and the murder of her father one night when she was ten. She saw her father as he was dying; the murder has never been solved.
Though the mystery hangs over the book, finding out "who done it" is beside the point. Everything that happens in life, good and bad, is part of you. Howard’s story is a poignant journal of integration, of taking the unthinkable and admitting that it happened, and that it affected her irrevocably.
Place is often character. Her descriptions of the flat, hot Central Valley region in California are claustrophobic in their suburban minutiae of developments and malls with no urban area to anchor them. The murder isn’t the only violent act in the book. There’s suicide and child abuse; Howard brings the Central Valley to life, paradoxically as something that sucks the life out of people, in such a way that it seems somehow complicit in the misfortune.
The first half of the book is harder to read than the second, mostly because Howard’s detached, almost breezy style (the book is a very fast read given the subject) mirrors her own attempts during childhood and adolescence to glaze over the event as well. When in the narrative Howard is ready to start facing what happened, the tone changes imperceptibly from glossy to porous.
There is no catharsis in the book, not even in the meeting with her father’s last wife, who was there in the house along with her son and Howard on the night of the stabbing. There is integration, which may be less literary, but it’s more honest. Somehow, going back to these places as an adult may not solve anything, but it lets you go on.
Rachel is a colleague and a friend, which added a strange twist to the book. A self-centered observation, but it’s awkward to discuss autobiography with a friend afterwards. What to say? Rachel and I are due to have lunch on Sunday, so when we spoke today I complimented her on the book and mentioned how difficult it was to read something like this and know a friend went through it. For her part, she briefly said it was a long while ago – also true. Writing gives things immediacy and also exorcises some of the passion. The book is worth reading, especially for anyone who grew up in that area – even though I grew up in a completely different suburb in another state a few years earlier, there were wincing twinges of recognition.
Posted by Leigh Witchel at February 2, 2007 10:22 PM
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