Down’s second novel solicits the kind of emotional investment in her protagonist that books like A Little Life or Shuggie Bain lobbied for
When musician Liz Phair sang her 1991 song, Fuck and Run, I couldn’t help wondering at the irony of her choral lament – “Fuck and run, fuck and run / even when I was 12” – lyrics that claimed something akin to agency in a situation that would ordinarily be considered exploitative. In doing so, it becomes a form of self-protection: I did it so you didn’t.
Bodies of Light, Jennifer Down’s second novel, is a meditation on what it means to experience this vulnerability. Its narrator, Maggie Sullivan, is institutionalised, caught up in a world of “foster families, group homes and resi units”, of “scheduled mealtimes bathtimes playtimes sleeptimes and joints laced with speed and grilles on windows”. Her father is a drug addict, jailed after injecting and killing one of his friends while Maggie is young; her mother is dead by the time she is two, OD’ing in a public toilet. At the age of 4 she is molested; at the age of 11, she is molested again.
At home, I examined myself in the speckled full-length mirror on the back of my bedroom door. I hadn’t grown any taller, but my legs had a sinister, womanly outline where my thighs had filled out. There was new flesh on my belly and hips, the places where the elastic of my knickers left faint lines. I flattened my breasts beneath my palms, tried to redistribute their weight in the cups, tried to make them as small as possible. I twisted to survey my bum, my thighs, slightly dimpled. I wanted my girl-body back.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3AWpXGY
via
0 Comments