A classmate in an undergrad writing workshop once said to me, “Did you know that the word wine shows up in every one of your stories?” He was absolutely right, but I’d had no idea until he told me. To me, the phrase “a glass of wine” is one of the beauties of the English language, and though I didn’t drink much wine in undergrad, I realized I was mentioning it simply for my own pleasure—I wanted to place an object in my story that was beautiful and desirable, to me and to my characters. Our brains take certain pleasure at the mere sight of certain words on the page: for me, the words wine and cream set off little starbursts in my head, so much so that I will recall even an unremarkable scene involving those words for years, even decades.
Writers know that every book has its own unique challenges. Sometimes a book has point of view issues. Or the timeline is tangled. Or the character’s motivation evaporates and you’re locked in a psychotic staring contest with your own delusion. When I sat down to write my latest thriller featuring an atmospheric physicist, the challenge was obvious: I didn’t know anything about physics.
Sometimes a reader resists a narrative the way a patient resists psychoanalysis. This resistance isn’t an impediment to understanding; it’s integral to the process. The very refusal yields insight. Reading “Time’s Mouth” brought this productive tension to mind as I grappled with, but never quite reconciled myself to, the time travel at the novel’s spooky core.
“Ariane” is a slim novel. That Anet devotes so much of it to these retreads implies that they are fundamentally irresolvable. There’s no way to be “in love,” Anet seems to be saying, without descending into stale tropes or some degree of silliness. And yet, we do it anyway.