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4.0
Review written June 2019, edited January 2023
Originally reviewed for Big Fiction Magazine; a version of this review is published online there
Tara Deal’s That Night Alive feels familiar but is told in a way I’ve never seen. It is the story of a woman who feels compelled to write even though it’s forbidden in her society. She keeps her writing secret, but she does write, about all her goals and dreams, and all the things she finds beautiful in her world. That is familiar in literature and in life, but the vessel for the story is new: the story is told through vignettes in reverse order. Some of these vignettes are numbered and dated to make the order clear, and some are titled with paint chip names. This story is read back to front, thus emphasizing expectations both met and subverted. On page 9, the narrator’s doctor says she can put her rings back on, and the narrator muses, “black jade won’t save me now. (Some people think they ward off evil spirits.)” It isn’t until later on, early in the timeline, that the reader hears of the narrator’s growing wealth and the jewelry she purchases with it, including the back jade, that she must not wear “except in extreme cases,” according to her contract. She cannot reveal anything about her job.
The narrator’s world is an unfriendly one, full of recording devices and monitors, tracking people everywhere. There are alarms and chemicals in the air. Individual exploration of cities is not always permitted, nor are border crossings. The seasons aren’t the same due to climatic readjustment, and “people don’t like to talk about the weather.” It is not a world where one can write in public. No one sends letters, and there is no need for gorgeous, satisfyingly heavy paper. Her world is one where creativity is going extinct, and where being a writer is not seen as a profession but as a burden. The narrator talks about jobs from the older era that are still admired, such as electrician and barista, but writers “seem more like rats than pets,” and it is suspect to be a writer, not glamourous. It’s a bleak world, and it’s difficult to live in, like a crappy apartment with blank white walls. The narrator doesn’t like the empty white walls and looks for color wherever she goes. She reads out of desperation and writes as if her life depends on it.
Her job of crypto-reportage is likewise unfriendly. She becomes the Paris correspondent and writes about the city while others search for secret codes embedded in her words. She knows nothing of the codes; her job is to provide passages and keep her paychecks secret. Her job sounds like a dream, but it requires her to sacrifice her personal life, as well as her private writing. “They” control what she writes, where she lives, what color her hair is. The reader witnesses the controlled conditions she lives in before hearing about the youthful optimism that used to fill her.
That Night Alive illustrates how we tend to procrastinate, by starting with the narrator talking about what she never accomplished despite badly wanting to and how she only accepts this because she knows her time is up. The narrator is about to die, and she has come to terms but not to peace. The reverse order tells the reader the unhappy outcome then shows how it came to be. Throughout the book, the reader hears what the narrator wants to do—to write a manuscript, to write a perfect epitaph, to read old books, to visit Japan, to visit Shelley’s grave in Rome, to drink cafe au lait from a thick bowl—and knows she never got the chance, or she never got the chance to do it again on her own terms. Some things she achieved, but only partially, only once, or only because her work sent her there, so she gets to taste how exquisite life can be then has to return to her secretive writing in her equally secretive job. Perhaps the narrator wouldn’t want to drink coffee out of a bowl forever, but regardless, she moves on when she is told to.
Deal forces the reader to think about their own list of things that they would regret never getting to enjoy on their own terms. I’ve heard my twenties are vital to set my life on course, and some people put a lot of pressure on this. But with this book in mind, I think this is less about finding a solid job and fitting into larger society and more about visiting the places I dream about and achieving the creative projects I can’t ignore, no matter how much my dystopian government wants me to. The narrator gets a good job, and the reader knows this long before reading about her first getting hired. The job security was never in question for the reader, and neither was how much the narrator accomplished of her other goals. With the reverse order of this story, the discovery process is more about how important these things are, or aren’t. The narrator’s employer tells her that revisions are limited, so she must “do it right the first time.”
The narrator notices little moments; she observes her surroundings and is drawn in by certain things. She mentions how she once saw a man talking to his dog while dragging it uphill, and he convinced the dog to follow him to the top of the hill where there was a patisserie. She writes this observation down because it seems important to her. The man and the dog might not remember, and likely had no idea they were being observed, but she saw something in this act. This is something I think and write about, too; we are always being observed, and we are always observing. What we see can influence us and what we show can influence those around us even if we never meet. This irresistible urge to record moments of human behavior is all the more crucial in a heavily controlled environment. Life is beautiful, and the narrator wants to witness and bask in its miraculous details. Like so many others do, the narrator values adventure, change, unpredictability, travel, art, and life.
The narrator’s appreciation of tiny moments goes hand in hand with her perception of what other locations are like. She describes these moments that might define a place and simultaneously might define humanity and the remaining good in it. She describes Venice as the place people sip cool pink wine among canals and ignore disturbances. New York City is where electricity, pigeons, and fire escapes are beautiful, where lovers smudge bricks with smoke and a taxi sparkles like a canary yellow diamond. Tokyo is the place where green tea and sake are served in nonmatching cups, where no two cups are the same. All the vignettes have a focus on color and on individuality. With the reverse order, the reader hears about the narrator’s experiences in the places she visits before hearing about her dreams of visiting them.
In one of the paint chip vignettes, the narrator describes an interaction she observed between a mother and a child. The boy is fascinated by a dead dog’s body, while the mother discourages this and “gathered up the things of her world, dried thyme and blue pots, candles and zucchini.” The narrator imagines the woman hoping her child has learned his lesson about which things he ought to cherish. This reflection conveys the differences in people’s worlds, the different details a mother and child focus on. The beauty each person finds is unique and meaningful. A dead dog’s legs sticking up in the air is different than candles and zucchini, and I’m personally more fascinated by living dogs, but there is value in all of these. The narrator enjoys watching, listening, inhaling her surroundings. She finds joy in the fact that others might experience these same things at different times, that she is not the only one who will receive this joy. Through Deal’s detailed accounts, the reader gets to inhale these moments and feel this joy, too. The narrator teaches us that, even in a heavily monitored world, the act of watching is not inherently evil, that despite the government-mandated lack of privacy tamping down humanity, sometimes the act of observing is the human act that will save us and remind us why we’re here.
Near the end of the reader’s time with the narrator, but early-in chronologically, the narrator shares her belief that “life is not worthwhile unless it leads to something. You have to go somewhere.” The narrator goes many places, but later on, she feels she is going nowhere. She looks forward to dying after accomplishing certain things, but by the end, she is unsatisfied. She has unfulfilled desires and goals, of travel and color and creativity. Her life has not gone everywhere she wanted it to. The reader is introduced to the narrator at the end of her life, but it is not clear what it has all led to. The reader then retraces the narrator’s steps in a hunt for meaning, in a quest to discover what it is that makes life worthwhile. Maybe it’s candles, maybe it’s a poem on a paint chip. Maybe it’s the stranger across the street. Some days, it is just the act of living. The narrator celebrates the beauty in impermanence, though she is a bit reluctant to be impermanent herself.
Originally reviewed for Big Fiction Magazine; a version of this review is published online there
Tara Deal’s That Night Alive feels familiar but is told in a way I’ve never seen. It is the story of a woman who feels compelled to write even though it’s forbidden in her society. She keeps her writing secret, but she does write, about all her goals and dreams, and all the things she finds beautiful in her world. That is familiar in literature and in life, but the vessel for the story is new: the story is told through vignettes in reverse order. Some of these vignettes are numbered and dated to make the order clear, and some are titled with paint chip names. This story is read back to front, thus emphasizing expectations both met and subverted. On page 9, the narrator’s doctor says she can put her rings back on, and the narrator muses, “black jade won’t save me now. (Some people think they ward off evil spirits.)” It isn’t until later on, early in the timeline, that the reader hears of the narrator’s growing wealth and the jewelry she purchases with it, including the back jade, that she must not wear “except in extreme cases,” according to her contract. She cannot reveal anything about her job.
The narrator’s world is an unfriendly one, full of recording devices and monitors, tracking people everywhere. There are alarms and chemicals in the air. Individual exploration of cities is not always permitted, nor are border crossings. The seasons aren’t the same due to climatic readjustment, and “people don’t like to talk about the weather.” It is not a world where one can write in public. No one sends letters, and there is no need for gorgeous, satisfyingly heavy paper. Her world is one where creativity is going extinct, and where being a writer is not seen as a profession but as a burden. The narrator talks about jobs from the older era that are still admired, such as electrician and barista, but writers “seem more like rats than pets,” and it is suspect to be a writer, not glamourous. It’s a bleak world, and it’s difficult to live in, like a crappy apartment with blank white walls. The narrator doesn’t like the empty white walls and looks for color wherever she goes. She reads out of desperation and writes as if her life depends on it.
Her job of crypto-reportage is likewise unfriendly. She becomes the Paris correspondent and writes about the city while others search for secret codes embedded in her words. She knows nothing of the codes; her job is to provide passages and keep her paychecks secret. Her job sounds like a dream, but it requires her to sacrifice her personal life, as well as her private writing. “They” control what she writes, where she lives, what color her hair is. The reader witnesses the controlled conditions she lives in before hearing about the youthful optimism that used to fill her.
That Night Alive illustrates how we tend to procrastinate, by starting with the narrator talking about what she never accomplished despite badly wanting to and how she only accepts this because she knows her time is up. The narrator is about to die, and she has come to terms but not to peace. The reverse order tells the reader the unhappy outcome then shows how it came to be. Throughout the book, the reader hears what the narrator wants to do—to write a manuscript, to write a perfect epitaph, to read old books, to visit Japan, to visit Shelley’s grave in Rome, to drink cafe au lait from a thick bowl—and knows she never got the chance, or she never got the chance to do it again on her own terms. Some things she achieved, but only partially, only once, or only because her work sent her there, so she gets to taste how exquisite life can be then has to return to her secretive writing in her equally secretive job. Perhaps the narrator wouldn’t want to drink coffee out of a bowl forever, but regardless, she moves on when she is told to.
Deal forces the reader to think about their own list of things that they would regret never getting to enjoy on their own terms. I’ve heard my twenties are vital to set my life on course, and some people put a lot of pressure on this. But with this book in mind, I think this is less about finding a solid job and fitting into larger society and more about visiting the places I dream about and achieving the creative projects I can’t ignore, no matter how much my dystopian government wants me to. The narrator gets a good job, and the reader knows this long before reading about her first getting hired. The job security was never in question for the reader, and neither was how much the narrator accomplished of her other goals. With the reverse order of this story, the discovery process is more about how important these things are, or aren’t. The narrator’s employer tells her that revisions are limited, so she must “do it right the first time.”
The narrator notices little moments; she observes her surroundings and is drawn in by certain things. She mentions how she once saw a man talking to his dog while dragging it uphill, and he convinced the dog to follow him to the top of the hill where there was a patisserie. She writes this observation down because it seems important to her. The man and the dog might not remember, and likely had no idea they were being observed, but she saw something in this act. This is something I think and write about, too; we are always being observed, and we are always observing. What we see can influence us and what we show can influence those around us even if we never meet. This irresistible urge to record moments of human behavior is all the more crucial in a heavily controlled environment. Life is beautiful, and the narrator wants to witness and bask in its miraculous details. Like so many others do, the narrator values adventure, change, unpredictability, travel, art, and life.
The narrator’s appreciation of tiny moments goes hand in hand with her perception of what other locations are like. She describes these moments that might define a place and simultaneously might define humanity and the remaining good in it. She describes Venice as the place people sip cool pink wine among canals and ignore disturbances. New York City is where electricity, pigeons, and fire escapes are beautiful, where lovers smudge bricks with smoke and a taxi sparkles like a canary yellow diamond. Tokyo is the place where green tea and sake are served in nonmatching cups, where no two cups are the same. All the vignettes have a focus on color and on individuality. With the reverse order, the reader hears about the narrator’s experiences in the places she visits before hearing about her dreams of visiting them.
In one of the paint chip vignettes, the narrator describes an interaction she observed between a mother and a child. The boy is fascinated by a dead dog’s body, while the mother discourages this and “gathered up the things of her world, dried thyme and blue pots, candles and zucchini.” The narrator imagines the woman hoping her child has learned his lesson about which things he ought to cherish. This reflection conveys the differences in people’s worlds, the different details a mother and child focus on. The beauty each person finds is unique and meaningful. A dead dog’s legs sticking up in the air is different than candles and zucchini, and I’m personally more fascinated by living dogs, but there is value in all of these. The narrator enjoys watching, listening, inhaling her surroundings. She finds joy in the fact that others might experience these same things at different times, that she is not the only one who will receive this joy. Through Deal’s detailed accounts, the reader gets to inhale these moments and feel this joy, too. The narrator teaches us that, even in a heavily monitored world, the act of watching is not inherently evil, that despite the government-mandated lack of privacy tamping down humanity, sometimes the act of observing is the human act that will save us and remind us why we’re here.
Near the end of the reader’s time with the narrator, but early-in chronologically, the narrator shares her belief that “life is not worthwhile unless it leads to something. You have to go somewhere.” The narrator goes many places, but later on, she feels she is going nowhere. She looks forward to dying after accomplishing certain things, but by the end, she is unsatisfied. She has unfulfilled desires and goals, of travel and color and creativity. Her life has not gone everywhere she wanted it to. The reader is introduced to the narrator at the end of her life, but it is not clear what it has all led to. The reader then retraces the narrator’s steps in a hunt for meaning, in a quest to discover what it is that makes life worthwhile. Maybe it’s candles, maybe it’s a poem on a paint chip. Maybe it’s the stranger across the street. Some days, it is just the act of living. The narrator celebrates the beauty in impermanence, though she is a bit reluctant to be impermanent herself.
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