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A review by spygrl1
The Truth About Celia by Kevin Brockmeier
4.0
Kevin Brockmeier's "The Truth About Celia" contains within it The Truth About Celia, a collection of stories by stricken father Christopher Brooks. 7-year-old Celia vanished on March 15, 1997 -- one moment she was playing in the yard, and the next she was gone. No trace, no clues, no resolution. Nothing Christopher Brooks has done since could really be described as coping -- he agonizes, he blames, he yearns, and he speculates. Was Celia kidnapped? Is Celia dead? Did Celia slip through the membrane separating our world from another? Could Celia come back? Could Celia contact him? Has Celia grown up? Has she forgotten her childhood? From his tortured speculations he spins these stories, The Truth About Celia. Of course, the only true truth about Celia is that she's gone. She's a mystery that will never be solved.
So, a word about the post-modern nature of the text is in order, I suppose. Experiencing the authorship of the book is interesting. How often as you read do you consider the author? As you're reading The Truth About Celia you can forget all about the author for a time; then when you remember the author, you first think of Christopher Brooks, the bereaved father: How much of this is true? How accurate is he being in his descriptions of himself, his wife, the police officer, the priest, the drunk? What does his wife think about how he told her story? How well did he know Celia? Which Celia is the "true" Celia? How is Christopher holding up? How did he manage to transmute his grief into literature? How do you begin to shape and edit such painful source material? Then you remind yourself of Kevin Brockmeier, and of the fact that Christopher Brooks doesn't exist. Which starts a new chain of questions: What does Brockmeier want to say about loss? How does it feel to erase yourself as the author? To what extent is Christopher Brooks Kevin Brockmeier? Is Christopher a creation or a stand-in? How accurate is Brockmeier's portrayal of loss and grief? And does Kevin Brockmeier know what happened to Celia -- did he invent a secret history for her that he withheld from Christopher?
So, a word about the post-modern nature of the text is in order, I suppose. Experiencing the authorship of the book is interesting. How often as you read do you consider the author? As you're reading The Truth About Celia you can forget all about the author for a time; then when you remember the author, you first think of Christopher Brooks, the bereaved father: How much of this is true? How accurate is he being in his descriptions of himself, his wife, the police officer, the priest, the drunk? What does his wife think about how he told her story? How well did he know Celia? Which Celia is the "true" Celia? How is Christopher holding up? How did he manage to transmute his grief into literature? How do you begin to shape and edit such painful source material? Then you remind yourself of Kevin Brockmeier, and of the fact that Christopher Brooks doesn't exist. Which starts a new chain of questions: What does Brockmeier want to say about loss? How does it feel to erase yourself as the author? To what extent is Christopher Brooks Kevin Brockmeier? Is Christopher a creation or a stand-in? How accurate is Brockmeier's portrayal of loss and grief? And does Kevin Brockmeier know what happened to Celia -- did he invent a secret history for her that he withheld from Christopher?