The Small Backs of Children

May 25, 2015
In this daring novel, Yuknavitch (The Chronology of Water) takes a provocative look at the intimate relationship among love, art, and sex in a group of emotionally scarred artists who want to save one of their own. Written in the voices of characters without first names—photographer, writer, poet, performance artist, playwright, filmmaker, and painter—the novel begins in modern Eastern Europe (likely Lithuania), occupied by an unseen force, where a photojournalist captures an award-winning shot: a young girl running from her exploding home, in which the rest of her family dies. The girl escapes into the woods, making her way to a widow’s home; the widow teaches her about art, and the girl begins to paint. Meanwhile, an American writer who is friends with the photographer, is hospitalized with severe depression. The writer’s best friend, a poet, believes she can help the writer; she enters the war zone to bring the orphaned girl to the United States. Yuknavitch’s novel is disturbing and challenging, but undoubtedly leaves its mark.

Starred review from March 15, 2016

"This, reader, is a mother-daughter story," the American writer-who-is-also-the-mother insists in the latest from Yuknavitch (Dora: A Headcase). The mother-writer has battled debilitating bouts of depression but she's survived thus far, until her daughter's stillborn birth spirals her into silent withdrawal. In an effort to save her, the mother-writer's coterie of artists--including former and current husbands, an ex-lover, and friends--are charged with rescuing an Eastern European girl made world-famous by an iconic war photograph. The award-winning image captures the child midflight, leaping from an explosion that destroyed her family, her home, her identity. "Every novel is a lie that hides the self," the writer warns, and yet the truth proves even more difficult to comprehend. That the characters remain nameless--they're referred to only by their jobs/relationships--adds an oxymoronic layer of immediacy, as if the writer, photojournalist, playwright could be any mother, lover, brother we know. Narrator Amanda Dolan's measured, exacting voice heightens the recognition, making Yuknavitch's prose that much more chilling, alarming, and ultimately unforgettable. VERDICT A sparse, jarring, can't-turn-away experience. ["Gorgeous, scary, and a breathtaking rush to read, this book is less a meditation than a provocation on the power and dangers of art": LJ 5/15/15 starred review of the Harper hc.]--Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC

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