Book Review – The Truth About Celia
Author: Kevin Brockmeier
Publisher: Vintage
Binding: Paperback
Publication Date: 2003
With A Brief History of the Dead, Kevin Brockmeier achieved a measure of mainstream literary success. In spite of this, he stalwartly considers himself a genre author. In fact, he has been announced as the guest editor of the 2009 edition Best American Fantasy. It’s a refreshing change of pace from authors who freely take tropes from genre fiction and thumb their noses at genre (I’m looking at you, Margaret Atwood and Jeanette Winterson). Brockmeier’s fiction definitely straddles the line; his fabulations are openly metaphors and allegories; but at the same time, they cannot be ignored and dismissed as dream sequences and alternate states of mind of the characters. The two Brockmeier fictions I read occur in contemporary ‘real’ world; when the fantastic element intrudes, the focus still tends to be on the characters. In short, Brockmeier creates a kind of ‘mundane’ fantasy fiction (to borrow a phrase from Geoff Ryman, the leader of ‘mundane’ science fiction movement). Think of the work of Haruki Murakami, or perhaps, Jonathan Carroll.
His 2003 novel, The Truth About Celia, has a metafictional frame device. The text is authored by Christopher Brooks, a fantasy novelist. One day, while showing his historical landmark house to a tourist couple, his seven year old daughter Celia vanishes. The resulting mosaic novel is Brooks’ way of dealing with the grief and horror. As he isolates himself and his marriage dissolves, he creates alternative realities in which Celia exists, as a teenager or a single mother with a missing past or as a child who has disappeared into another world. These stories alternate with real life events, such as his wife Janet’s psychotic breakdown in a movie theater, or an overview of the small town when a memorial service is held for Celia. Poignant moments abound in Brockmeier’s direct, crystalline prose.
The opening section, simply entitled, ‘March 15, 1997’ tells the story of Celia’s supposed abduction from her point of view, in childlike, glimmering prose. It’s ominous and magical at once. It ends on an unsettlingly enigmatic note. ‘The Green Children’ tells the story of the sudden appearance of two strange, green-skinned children in a fantasy world. The narrator—a stand-in for Brooks—is a giant man who ferries people back and forth over a treacherous river. The green-skinned girl piques his curiosity; the resonances of the text come from the over-arching frame story. ‘The Ghost of Travis Whorley’ follows 14-year old Celia and her relationship with a mysterious boy. It’s a strange hybrid story, part John Cheever suburbia, part gothic ghost story. In the real world, ‘The Telephone’ has Brooks speaking his missing daughter through a toy phone, as his wife Janet strays into an affair. Each of these stories could be in either The New Yorker or in a fantasy anthology. Brockmeier plays a dangerous fictional game; one misstep, and the stories are too precious or clever for their own good. But his sure hand for character and buoyant, evanescent prose never falters.
Brockmeier’s fiction is ‘post-genre.’ Genre fiction informs the novel, in non overt ways. There’s a reference to J.G. Ballard, and the book has a tricky structure that gives a hint of Gene Wolfe’s elaborately layered work. He has create an elegiac meditation on grief out of scraps of fiction. In a way, it reminds me of Michael Cunningham’s similar experiment of thematically linked novellas, Specimen Days. Brockmeier has a new collection of short stories out, The View From the Seventh Layer. I look forward to exploring his unique voice.
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