Yet these days, I also wonder if I was also drawn to this book for the ways in which many of these lonely characters work to keep themselves alone. Walton announces on the first pages that he has no friends, then immediately sets out on an expedition to the uninhabited north pole. Victor throws himself into work to fill up with intellectual activity the crevices left empty of human interaction, though in doing so, he withdraws himself from human interaction and thereby makes for himself more crevices to fill. “I’d just really rather stay home and finish reading my book,” I’d announce regularly to my parents throughout my pre-adolescence, myself an allegedly lonely school-aged kid.
The distinction between history and prehistory has been dissolving for some time. It confers an unjustified authority on text-based forms of evidence and downplays the materiality of tablets, books, letters and scrolls themselves. As historians broaden their geographical horizons, giving such primacy to written records – if not the Bible then Egyptian hieroglyphs or Sumerian cuneiform – is untenable. The notion of ‘prehistory’ simply does not work for cultures that rely primarily on oral communication. It was this division based on writing that gave rise to the widespread notion in the West that much of Africa didn’t have a history.
They were there, outside the fish and chip shop, all of them. The dad with his household order on a scrappy sliver of paper. The girl of 11 or 12 quietly reciting her own family’s demands, lips miming through lyrics of Mum’s mushy peas and little brother’s Vimto. Teenagers documenting the seconds that passed on mobile phones. They argued over whether gravy on chips was disgusting or not without looking up from their screens. A man of 60 or so joined us, rubbed his hands together and addressed my mum: “You can’t beat Chippy Night can you, love?” For a few splendid minutes, the democracy of the chip-shop queue made everything seem all right.
The world is “in its final stages”, Armfield tells us near the start of the book. Yet her characters do not live as though in an emergency. The siblings moan about their jobs, delayed commutes and relationships that are on the rocks. No matter the circumstances, we will always be anchored by life’s mundanities, Armfield seems to say. It’s reassuring.
My Body Is Paper is a book of dualities, filled with sadness, lust, love, and the bitter agony of feeling one is at odds with oneself. Balancing both the past and present, Cuadros invites us into his everyday life, where he juggles maintaining his romantic relationships with confronting health obstacles, the concerns of his Chicano community, as well as sexuality, religion, and toxic masculinity.