Book Review: Manifestations, by Liz Worth
Book Review: Manifestations, by Liz Worth
by Michael Scott
About half way through this one, I lit a candle. My apartment is a comfortable temperature, and the light quite good for reading, but to survive my midnight journey through Liz Worth’s Manifestations, I needed some extra warmth and glow.
Manifestations introduces itself as a collection of poems. Each piece tells you something different about your illness, or your environment. One piece tells you why you can’t write, another tells why you can’t sleep, why you only breath smoke, why you stopped going to work. Quickly a character begins to emerge. The poems become a sparse, minimal, but carefully crafted short story.
Worth’s sickening, second person narrative hung dankly about me like a fog. She told me I was an alcoholic, a hypochondriac, and a suicide risk. Being addressed as this character, told about my loneliness and paranoia, reminded me of my own plagues. Pin worms in third grade. Head lice my second year of high school. Two and a half years of bed-bugs, in the old shoe factory at 90 Ontario St. A small battle with a family of mice, in the spring of last year. While I’m not currently infested with anything, I do still, from time to time, itch.
Reading Manifestations beautifully recalled that itching. The character is not particularly sympathetic and the prose are so deeply descriptive and miserable that they frequently seem indulgent. In a few places, it was as struggle to keep reading. I wanted to abandon the character to the self-imposed isolation and desperation, just like everyone else in the fictional world had done.
But an admiration for the form kept me going.
I folded the book into my lap, checked my skin for bugs, lit my little candle and kept reading. Worth’s prose were even, simple, and powerfully evocative. The use of second person voice opened a tiny window of sympathy into this hateful character, reminding me of my own most selfish and desperate hours. As each new crumb of narrative exposed itself carefully, from between lines of vivid self pity, I felt suitably rewarded. In the final few paragraphs, Worth is able to reveal both the beginning and ending of her story simultaneously. I left the story, carrying a subtle and satisfying clarity.
Manifestations is certainly not a joy to read, but is quite a splendid little book. If one is going to write correctly about suicide, perhaps it should be inflated, stressful and pathetic. There is an achievement here in the merging of form with content, in the sparse, clean prose, and in a simply presented, perfectly weighted climax. I am happy to recommendManifestations.
By Michael Scott
Buy Liz Worth’s books @ http://www.lizworth.com/
Or buy our books @ http://woodenrocketpress.com/
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