This story uses place almost as a character. Similar to my story, Harrison puts Clare in a physically limiting place and then tells her story through multiple levels of flashback. Yet the story moves forward. The other component of this story to consider is the "why here, why now" question? Which is unclear to me.
Harrison uses a labyrinth of scenes, varied in their chronology, associatively linked to give you the feeling of being in the mind and enhanced by omniscient drift. He uses multiple devices to tell Clare's story, including conversations with her daughter (imagined but believable) and memories.
At times Harrison's narrative voice can be confused with Clare's thoughts.
"Normally she stood aside and lived on her comments to herself on what was happening to her, but when the pain moved to the left, she moved inside herself, and this had the virtue of being novel within the framework of suffering." It is difficult to tell if this is the narrators commentary on Clare's handling of the suffering, or Clare's own observation of self. It seems to make little difference which it is, as Clare is as much an observer of her own life as the reader herself. Examination of the next five passages demonstrates how easily Harrison shifts up and down the story.
Clare fall to her knees in the cornfield and tries to pray, coming up empty. This leads us into a series of memories of Dr. Roth, their relationship and truths about Clare's life.
"One late afternoon over drinks he said something that disturbed Clare, to the effect that they shared an economic condition that was out of sync, and definitely out of sympathy with ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent of the rest of the world, and they had to walk an extremely narrow line not to die from being rich freaks. He asked how Clare and Donald got their home and she said it had been a wedding gift from her mother. Dr. Roth said his own home had come from his father-in-law on the same occasion, and when had either of them given more than a nominal consideration to the purchase of anything—food, clothing, wine, books, cars, vacations? He said he would have gone mad years long ago without the single day a week he spent as a volunteer at Detroit Receiving, a hospital that serviced the black ghetto and the poorest whites. Then he noticed a hurt look quickly pass across her face before she could conceal it.
"What about me?" she said.
"Oh, your reading in unpleasant areas and your migraines keep the tips of your toes in the real world."
"That's not very much is it?"
"It's usually enough. Our sort doesn't need a great deal of consciousness to get by. Most often sending a check will do."
"I'm not leaving this shit heel fern bar on that sour note." She signaled the waiter for another glass of wine. Clare swore on the order of once a year. "This can't be another monkey occasion." She was referring to a benefit ball they had attended, the purpose of which was to raise money for new accommodations for the chimpanzees at the Detroit Zoo. Donald was in Atlanta for a few days and Dr. Roth's wife had entered a manic shopping phase that could best be resolved in New York City. Zilpha had only recently died and Dr. Roth thought it important for Clare to get out of the house."
Let's look at what moves Harrison makes: Harrison moves from Clare's memory, shifts for one sentence into Roth's point of view, then moves into dialog. He then cycles further back in time (only hours) to narrate the event that just recently preceded the conversation. The story then returns to the shit heel fern bar for another revelation about Clare's "piths and gists", her record of cherished passages she's kept since university. Again, Harrison takes us into Roth's point of view regarding his discomfort with her Yeats "notion to the effect that life a was a long preparation for something that never occurred."
"My piths and gists don't work since Zilpha and Sammy died." We return to Clare contributing to the answer to "why here, why now?" Harrison keeps us at the fern bar for one more commentary regarding Clare's situation and timing; that she is passive and Roth bringing that to her attention makes her nervous. Her discomfort with her life is driving towards action.
"I know you have an aversion to anything Oriental as being too passive, even though you are utterly passive yourself."
"Can I make a donation?" Clare had become nervous.
"Not at the moment. Perhaps later when a donation doesn't mean you're delaying doing something about yourself.
'When you say 'doing something about yourself' it sounds like psychobabble. You know the big section in Borders Bookstore that covers self-improvement.'
'Pathology can only be imaginative up to a certain point. If you like, I'll work on the sentence.
*
"Clare found herself nearly at the end of a row…"
Harrison brings us right back to Clare "doing something about herself." I admit, I continue to ask the question why here, why now? Once Harrison gets me to the cornfield, I completely engaged in the story. But I found I was still asking the practical question about why she would just walk off. She's had money, independence and travel. She could have left her husband at any time, called him from a foreign country with Zilpha, gone to her daughters. I'm not sure Harrison has convinced me that this moment makes sense.
Craft-wise I think the story achieves amazing things with its complexity. Harrison continually cycles away and back throughout the length of the novella, layering in back story in small pieces and weaving them in and then returning to her present state. This is an elegant series of steps that feel seamless. The reader moves with the story in and out of heads, through time without getting lost. The multiple levels enrich the story and move away from formulaic present, backstory, present pattern that I have applied in my current work.
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