Fading Away

I rarely read short stories and generally don’t like novellas. I’d rather spend a few hours digging in a little deeper, but I'd heard Jacqueline Woodson speak at the Miami Book Fair so I picked it up. Plus I love reading books about New York - especially it's storied decades.

“Sylvia, Angela, Gigi, August. We were four girls together, amazingly beautiful and terrifyingly alone.”  These these slow forming friendships begin in the dim light of August denying the loss of her mother. For me, the characters of the girls merged together and I had trouble remembering who was who and whose troubles were whose.  I needed more time with each girl to see them each more fully. Maybe that was the author’s point — that as we move through life, the details of the past fade and their edges blur.  August does tell us that “Years erase us.”  Or maybe her missing mother, that tragic unresolved loss, left August unwilling to fully see those living among and with her. After all, she grows up to study death and it’s rituals. "At some point, all of this, everything and everyone, became memory."

August may have been happy with these blurred memories, but I wanted more answers. Looks like I definitely should stick do longer novels.