Good morning Deepam, I read your blog in the car yesterday and could not send comments via phone. So I'm back during PJ Writing. I'm delighted that friends are hosting you as you tour your book across the country. And I share your despair in hearing another story being queried that is much like yours. There are many of us with these stories. That in itself is disturbing. But please continue. The rest of us will find our way in to our beginnings when the time is right.
As for Andrea and her outing of Alice, well done. What surprised me was not that the assaults happened and that the stepfather had been charged, but that the court judgements had been deep-sixed. Where was the outrage? How could life in Clinton return to any form of normal?
Alice wrote dark stories. They were familiar to me: My mother's family came from that part of the country and I knew there were sprouts of reality in each tale. When I was old enough to join the aunties in the evening, I heard similar stories at the kitchen table. In one of Alice's later books which I have not found the courage to find on my shelves, there are two stories that I found profoundly distressing. The one about a mother-daughter relationship that drifts into nothing. The other about predatory sexual activity by an older man with teenaged girls. I think now that Alice was trying to tell us that she was struggling. But who knows?
Unlike many readers/writers, I will not rid my shelves of Alice's books. I will reread each of her books. Her writing shone light into dark corners. It's possible we never wanted to believe the horrors/dangers that lurked there could be real.
Thank you, Deepam for opening up this subject for discussion. I've been thinking about it too, about Andrea Robin Skinner and her mother, Alice Munro. Say their names, I tell myself, because both names are important in this story. He robbed from them. Not only did he sexually abuse Andrea, but he broke something between her and her mother. He got in there and whatever trust existed between them, whatever love was there, he damaged it. He is the monster in this story, for me. He will always be the monster. As far as your novel, Deepam, please keep writing your story because I want to read it. We need all the stories.
I appreciate your observations about your recent western trip, and your feelings of guilt about the ever-present worldly strife. I am also struggling to process the shocking and distressing news about Andrea Robin Skinner's sexual abuse at the hands of her step-father, Alice Munro's second husband. Daily and weekly, we hear of these cases. I sympathize with your dilemma about another such case being similar to what you are writing about, but I think it only underlines how relevant your story and others like it, continue to be.
Good morning Deepam, I read your blog in the car yesterday and could not send comments via phone. So I'm back during PJ Writing. I'm delighted that friends are hosting you as you tour your book across the country. And I share your despair in hearing another story being queried that is much like yours. There are many of us with these stories. That in itself is disturbing. But please continue. The rest of us will find our way in to our beginnings when the time is right.
As for Andrea and her outing of Alice, well done. What surprised me was not that the assaults happened and that the stepfather had been charged, but that the court judgements had been deep-sixed. Where was the outrage? How could life in Clinton return to any form of normal?
Alice wrote dark stories. They were familiar to me: My mother's family came from that part of the country and I knew there were sprouts of reality in each tale. When I was old enough to join the aunties in the evening, I heard similar stories at the kitchen table. In one of Alice's later books which I have not found the courage to find on my shelves, there are two stories that I found profoundly distressing. The one about a mother-daughter relationship that drifts into nothing. The other about predatory sexual activity by an older man with teenaged girls. I think now that Alice was trying to tell us that she was struggling. But who knows?
Unlike many readers/writers, I will not rid my shelves of Alice's books. I will reread each of her books. Her writing shone light into dark corners. It's possible we never wanted to believe the horrors/dangers that lurked there could be real.
Thank you, Deepam for opening up this subject for discussion. I've been thinking about it too, about Andrea Robin Skinner and her mother, Alice Munro. Say their names, I tell myself, because both names are important in this story. He robbed from them. Not only did he sexually abuse Andrea, but he broke something between her and her mother. He got in there and whatever trust existed between them, whatever love was there, he damaged it. He is the monster in this story, for me. He will always be the monster. As far as your novel, Deepam, please keep writing your story because I want to read it. We need all the stories.
I appreciate your observations about your recent western trip, and your feelings of guilt about the ever-present worldly strife. I am also struggling to process the shocking and distressing news about Andrea Robin Skinner's sexual abuse at the hands of her step-father, Alice Munro's second husband. Daily and weekly, we hear of these cases. I sympathize with your dilemma about another such case being similar to what you are writing about, but I think it only underlines how relevant your story and others like it, continue to be.