Featuring magical realism and “Orlando”-esque touches, the two linked novellas plunge the reader into the slippery world of an aging writer as she delves into her half-remembered childhood and re-experiences volatile relationships. The swirling structure, with its interwoven narratives and warping time periods, deals with the treacherous nature of memory and how an author, Sidonie Ross, returns to the past in order to illuminate and understand it; how unhealed wounds from childhood re-surface in adult consciousness like emotional thorns, especially those relating to shame, guilt, disappointment, betrayal, and rejection.
I received a copy of The Black Leopard’s Kiss & The Writer Remembers in exchange for an honest review. What follows is my opinion and mine alone. There was no compensation for this review.
What can I say about The Black Leopard’s Kiss & The Writer Remembers by Laury A. Egan? Well, don’t go into this drunk from a different book. You want to have all your senses with you, all of your emotions, and all of your mental power to deconstruct what you are going through as you read. And you will be going through something. Even if you don’t relate to the characters, which I did to a point (writer, here), you will want the time.
And you aren’t putting it down as you read, maybe between the two novellas the book is comprised of. You might pause between them, but won’t once you start a novella.
It’s hard to put into words just what I was feeling as I was reading. Between the two novellas, The Black Leopard’s Kiss was my favorite. For . . . well, I’m not being helpful by saying everything. But something about that novella keeps running through my head no matter how much I think about it.
Could it be the magical realism? Perhaps. It’s not explained how the events were able to happen and what the rules are. You will be pulled in every direction, confused and quaky. But there is something integral in there that calls to you. Something near primal but more . . . brain itchy. If that makes sense.
The Writer Remembers is another novella written in the first person with another narrative woven. It, too, pulls at you in different ways.
I know I’m being abstract, but that is the only way I can explain it. Egan has a way with words that is both literary and common. I can’t imagine anyone having trouble reading it, but understanding the full scope of what they read might be an issue. Even I am grappling with it all, in a good way. I like books that scratch the brain and have you wonder what you’ve just read- what it could mean to you or the writer.
It’s a book I can see used in a literary theory class. It’s a book I can see a book club diving deep into. It’s probably a book I would read again in a few years. Just to see if my brain can find new avenues to a conclusion.
Casia's Corner 