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A review by lucasmiller
In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods by Matt Bell
4.0
I listened to an interview with Matt Bell on a podcast called Other Ppl with Brad Listi. It is a literary interview show that I have never been able to get super into. I guess I don't read enough to keep up. Bell is warm and thoughtful in interviews. He sounds approachable and dripping with creativity in the sort of hothouse MFA way that some writers can pull off. His novel Scrapper was the major topic of the conversation, but when I went to amazon later that day, this, his first novel, stood out for whatever reason. This was about two years ago, and I have finally taken it off the shelf and read it intermittently while my wife is out of town and my sister and her boyfriend came to visit for a few days.
Mythical is the best way I can come up with to describe the story. The fantasy elements have the weight and simplicity of Biblical proportions, the singing into existence of a life, and the ways it can come crumbling down. There is something elemental about the setting and writing that reminded me of reading Hopi creation myths in an anthropology course in undergrad. There is magic and realism, but not magical realism. In fact reality is glossed over pretty thoroughly.
The violence of marriage, childbirth, pregnancy, form the core here. This book might be a long prose poem about familial relationships. Maybe it is just about marriage.
This book borrows into you while you read it and it has left me feeling emptied out. It was powerful in a way, but also hard to grasp a hold of completely. I'm really not sure what I'll think of it in a week or a month, but it was a moving experience to read.
Mythical is the best way I can come up with to describe the story. The fantasy elements have the weight and simplicity of Biblical proportions, the singing into existence of a life, and the ways it can come crumbling down. There is something elemental about the setting and writing that reminded me of reading Hopi creation myths in an anthropology course in undergrad. There is magic and realism, but not magical realism. In fact reality is glossed over pretty thoroughly.
The violence of marriage, childbirth, pregnancy, form the core here. This book might be a long prose poem about familial relationships. Maybe it is just about marriage.
This book borrows into you while you read it and it has left me feeling emptied out. It was powerful in a way, but also hard to grasp a hold of completely. I'm really not sure what I'll think of it in a week or a month, but it was a moving experience to read.