Slog

News & Arts

The Stranger Suggests

Critics' Best Bets
Music Arts & Food


Line Out

Music & the City
at Night

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Lunch Date: The Chronology of Water

Posted by on Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 1:07 PM

the-chronology-of-water-jpg-c5995287ef8ec257.jpg
(Once in a while, Paul Constant takes a new book with him to lunch and give it a half an hour or so to grab my attention. Lunch Date is his judgment on that speed-dating experience—and this is me, Jen Graves, doing Paul's experiment for myself.)

Who's your date today? The Chronology of Water, a memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch.

Where'd you go? Bimbo's, a Mexican joint on Pike.

What'd you eat? A black bean basic burrito and chips and pico de gallo (about $8)

How was the food? Good. Hearty. Crunchy and soft in the right places. Great tangy pico with big fleshy tomato chunks.

What does your date say about itself? It says that this is "not your mother's memoir." On the cover, Chuck Palahniuk says he's read it something like a trillion times and will never stop. There is also a naked boob with nipple on the cover, but I don't see this at first because it is hidden behind a handsome gray censor strip around the belly of the book. (When I found this I viciously tore it off. No nipple hiding on my watch.)

Is there a representative quote? "So I went in for the kill. I mean I snatched it out of the cold dark air as easily as he pulled songs from the sky and wrapped it in displaced rage and vodka breath and hurled it down at the top of his unsuspecting head until his neck nearly snapped. The way women in their twenties who are working out their ouch on everyone they meet do. Open wound girls. Swinging fist girls."

Will you two end up in bed together? We will, and it's not going to be pretty. Hair will be pulled. She's a furious badass, and I am attracted/revulsed. Can I get a little wisdom up in here? Maybe that's just the nature of the first third of her life, the first 75 pages that I made it through. What I do love is how physical the book is, both in its writing and in its point of view. Her body threatened to rise up from every single page I read. It's war in there. I'm going back in.

 

Comments (9) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment
Packeteer 1
NSFW warning?
Posted by Packeteer on April 21, 2011 at 1:28 PM
2
I know you include a link, but shouldn't the review itself include a brief mention of what the book is about? This didn't tell me anything. You could have at least given a little context for the quote.

Posted by I don't get it on April 21, 2011 at 2:11 PM
vooodooo84 3
@2 this is a recurring feature not a balls to the walls review.
Posted by vooodooo84 on April 21, 2011 at 3:32 PM
4
#3, I know, and I like the idea of this feature, but the execution was lame. An out-of-context quote and Jen Graves saying "I like it! She's badass!" is just kind of pointless.

If she had said at the beginning "a memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch about... [one simple line summarizing the story]", I would've maybe been interested and clicked on the link. But this was basically the equivalent of some facebook friend posting a video of a band I've never heard of and expecting me to watch it.

It just annoyed me.
Posted by Too much time on my hands, I guess on April 21, 2011 at 3:55 PM
5
"The way women in their twenties who are working out their ouch on everyone they meet do."

The fact that this sentence made it into a book that was published by someone is a literary tragedy.
Posted by genevieve on April 21, 2011 at 4:07 PM
Canadian Nurse 6
@4: Doesn't memoir mean "about her life?"
Posted by Canadian Nurse on April 21, 2011 at 9:12 PM
7
#6, Wow, thank you for that description - now I can't wait to read it! A life story of some random woman. How can I resist?
Posted by No doi on April 22, 2011 at 9:57 AM
8
It is not so easy to say what it is about. Shitty but far from unique things happen to this woman, and she is a fighter. There are drugs and there is sex and there are bad parents and there is a stillbirth. Also, I did not say that I liked it.
Posted by Jen Graves on April 22, 2011 at 11:26 AM
9
@genevieve. You (or I) might want to hold off considering something a "literary tragedy" until after actually having read the book. In the context of the piece as a whole, that sentence might start to seem quite perfect for that small paragraph. I'm sure if some random sentence in Joyce's Finnegan's Wake were put under a publisher's microscope, it would probably warrant some comment about the author clearly being insane, writing gobbledygook. Likewise, Bob Dylan on American Idol would have gone YouTube viral as a quick laugh to send to a friend on Facebook. And if not, perhaps it is an imperfect sentence in an otherwise awesome book. The Sistine Chapel probably has a brushstroke or two that are a bit off as well. And don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting this book may be on par with the great Sistine, or with anything by Joyce, or Dylan. Or maybe it's not The Mona Lisa, but is instead that one painting in some gallery that you find more personally rewarding than anything else you've seen in art history books. Who knows? But I'm willing to give it a try based on many of the other elements that seem quite intriguing.
Posted by DaedalusRex on April 26, 2011 at 11:42 AM

Add a comment

Advertisement
 

All contents © Index Newspapers, LLC
1535 11th Ave (Third Floor), Seattle, WA 98122
Contact Info | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Takedown Policy