Good Morning River;
Always delightful to read a good piece of prose. It's funny you know - that as English teachers we probably quite naturally write in techniques, and when we read, pick them out and take not. The crafting in the piece was delicious, and the language tricks you were using had the effect of creating a really very engaging voice.
It nearly felt like an Abigail moment (will let that one sit with you, and see if you could pick it).
For me, the highlights of the piece was the way you set up the books - the Scientific explanation, moving into Nietsche and the myths. It all gave the piece a whole lot of credibility. Perhaps, talking allusions, I should be drawn into a Liesel moment too.
Now - in a moment of confession. The book you recommended for me to give a whirl - I forget its name, the Scandinavian one, with the woman murderer, who had to be taken as a prisoner to the farm house - it will bug me that I can't think of the name. Anyhows, I confess, I couldn't finish it. I got the physical copy from the library and got 1/5 of the way through it, and then I thought that it was perhaps me - so I got the audiobook, and didn't last longer than 20 minutes. But tell me - by the end, the woman - was she hung, or saved?
Oh Burial Rites? Totally get if you couldn't finish it. That woman sure can over work a metaphor!
Oh Abigail.. you know, it wasn't intentional but I DEFINITELY thought of her when I read back over it! Perhaps just because she's shunned, and ends up with a sliver of power and her dabbling in the dark arts!
Liesl? I can only think of The Book Thief. Not sure here.
I'm sure! And as students of literature, and lovers of it. I think I could write before I became an English teacher but teaching it has helped me hone it a bit. The biggest indication of this was when one of my Year 12s pinched one of my pieces from a blog I wrote for them, and wrote it for her creative Sac. Luckily I happened to be the one cross marking and went - hey that piece is familiar! Funny. She got an A on the first marking thank god, otherwise how embarrassing .. 😂 Needless to say she had to resit with her own work.
Yep - Burial Rites, that's the one.
That is an absolutely cracker of a story though, I imagine it provided for many laughs many times over. I used to work with a lady who used to write down the funny shit kids wrote in their creative pieces - and she would pull it out occassionally - it was actually good to lighten the staffroom at different times.
Omg that's a classic.
I always loved the Macbeth analysis: 'he went around butchering like it was his day job'.
Wish I'd kept my funny list..