I went to the library after work, on some saturday not long ago that already feels long ago, because I didn't want to go home. (I paid the price for what I wanted to avoid, as those things usually go. A day, not put off after all, wanted to end that has already ended. I never learn my lesson.) I knelt on the library floor, avoiding skinless knees, (from some clumsy accident that I felt way stupider about than I should've. Well, clumsiness has already been well documented in the Twilight saga so I won't go on) and my eyes found Laura Kasischke instead of Anna Kavan. Knig-o-lass of goodreads had recommended to me one of her influential favorites, Suspicious River, by Kasischke. The book fate gods had spoken, or something.Oh yeah, and the plot description read that Leila is a hotel clerk in Michigan who moonlights (graveyard shift lights! Coming home later and later lights) as a prostitute. If anyone might, uh, want to make some extra money... Suspicious River also works as a how-to guide on hotel clerk prostitution in the state of Michigan (it is not hard nosed on the affair so much as it is hard headed. Something hard. Or headed). Google privacy being what it is you can't just search "How to be a prostitute" anymore without the pigs knocking down your door. My three start rating is a conflicted one. I was in some place between love and frustration, at times. When Leila walks through the outlet malls and fantasizes about some other future and what it could be for her if forces in her control took hold of the part that kept her from taking control. Just working as a shop girl, maybe a little shop lifting. Money saved up towards something else. I can relate to that because I am a person who avoids things and looks forward to having something to look forward to, without even knowing what it is.I sat in a library chair, curled up with skinless knees that stung with any of the "It's just my body" bullshit that Leila told herself in the really, really time to take control now moments. It was very The Neverending Story except I wasn't a pansy ass little boy who liked to sit in his daddy's lap. Leila is the anti mama's girl. It wouldn't have been appropriate, trust me. There were the creepy kind of guys milling around. The ones that never seem to be eyeing books. I couldn't tell what they were eyeing (eye contact, um, not a good idea). Something disturbingly unknown and very lurky. I started "casting" the men in Leila's life with these dark library men. The Texan pimp was tall and remained on the outerline of my eyeline whenever I happened to be reading about him. The men behind me were the men in Leila's past, like the preacher who used her like the toilet seat guys like that like to call girls they think Leila are like (I'm too sad to think about that now so moving on). I felt Leila's out of body it's just my body that's not her body in the present. The past... Well, if you know that there's no such thing as that traumatic childhood story that blots out the whole rest of you like an eclipse that just won't leave... I could feel it like something in your throat that you can't swallow away when she couldn't stop herself from doing it. The bravado that even she didn't believe. The husband who wasted away his body for control over his life. I would have said it wasn't about control but more like not letting go of an idea once you had it. Or, you know, narcissism. Yeah, you can say "I do this because I am this" and I'm still going to think where it is going is more important. So Leila's mom fucked her uncle and wasn't much of anything besides that (that depressing toilet thing, again). It didn't end well. Valentine's day, venarial disease day, visitor's day in prison. Because of doesn't beat the walking in place feeling that I had had when Leila is in her shopping mall, or missing when she reaches for the missing fat on her husband in bed. There could have been a way to reach for the past but as written it was too explanation (I keep saying that! I'm doing it now. Explain schemain). It was almost women who write letters to men in prison reaching. I wished it was more like that. Like the potential of those men walking around and knowing there's a part of you that doesn't trust anyone, not even yourself. Of course, this could just be me. I know that I have my own ways and things that touch those dawning places in me that make me feel like I know where it could be going or make connections to other things. I wish Suspicious River had been one of those and it wasn't except in moments (good moments, though). A whole review just to say that.Leila is described as a palely pretty (or is it prettily pale?) redhead who could still pass for young. She dresses to be vulnerable. That's Leila. Dressing to be vulnerable and the stolen underwear isn't as tough or getting away with as much as she might want to say it is. I casted her too. Adrienne Shelley is one of my heroines dead or alive (r.i.p). (Especially as a writer. She could make me feel good about seeing things.) She would have had the shouldn't really be breaking and willing itself the rest of the way thing that Leila should have had. And I know that Paul Bryant said it was a bad movie (I love it) but I still could live forever on Samantha Morton's performance in Under the Skin. Everything I could realize and much better because the heart pulls, beats, bleeds and wheels (turning, clockwork and predictable like) and all on her face and body. Mama reasons and reasons don't matter 'cause that's just a trap anyway. I could have every meal ever on The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer on the self destruction alone. You have to understand it's not a secret handshake world of abuse to get the what comes next part. Why did Kasischke have to go and tell me what was happening! She's supposed to be a poet. And that's mine.Oh, and I was disappointed. Kasischke is a poet. Her river analogies didn't do anything for me. They should have done something for me. I live for that shit! (Maybe not as much in Hopscotch or The River Ki. Okay, maybe not rivers. I was born by a river myself. And I hope I never start weaving my life history around the singing river and murdered indians). Sorry, Knig! I don't mean to complain this much. I'm glad I read it. My knees healed (but not before I had to reach on my tippy toes for the Sorrentino).P.s. Amazon tells me that this is a movie, after all. Molly Parker is in it. I have a somewhat irrational that is actually pretty irrational dislike of Molly Parker (rational 'cause she's no good). It's a bit like Ethan Hawke showing up in good movies to make them less good (only, unlike Hawke, she doesn't have the only good as an egotistical Tom Cruise part). So, Molly Parker means no Suspicious River movie for me. I've been avoiding The Life Before her Eyes adaptation of another of her novels even though my favorite Sarah Polley is in it (Uma Thurman is often very good, too). I heard bad things. Parker, what makes you think I'll watch you when I haven't watched one of my favorite actresses (since I was eleven, no less)? Are you insane? Stop stalking me!
I may never get over this book. Luckily I can just read it over and over for the rest of my life. That said, it's not for everyone. The language is often more like poetry than prose. The story is heart-crushing with very few moments of levity. But the writing is magical. Some sentences made me stop dead and look around me, as if to make sure I was still on Earth. I called my best friend and read her paragraphs over the phone. I couldn't believe it when I learned that it's out of print. I want to buy up every used copy I can find and surround myself with them. If I could grab only five things to save in a fire, this book would be one of them.
What do You think about Suspicious River (1997)?
I raced through the last handful of chapters to find an "un-ending" which was really frustrating. One of those endings you have to complete for yourself. So I jumped on the web to find some perspectives and found the story had been made into a movie with the authors participation. I was compelled to buy the $10 DVD on Amazon prime to try to find some conclusive answers. Back to the book, the writing is true to the author's form: lots of allegory, simile and poetic description ad nauseum. Makes for a beautiful story but when the going gets good I find myself able to skip multiple paragraphs without missing a plot point. That being said the plot did get good. There are a current day and flashback sequence that are intertwined to explain why the main character is equal parts irreversibly flawed and frustratingly apathetic. It's hard to get a visual perspective of the book's length on e-reader (sigh) but this was short enough to zip through in day (it took me about 2-3 weeks of picking it up a couple times a week for an hour or two). The last thing I would mention is, while I enjoyed the story, I did not feel much for the main character besides the urge to shake some sense and feeling into her. She doesn't seem to wake up until the final pages when it is possibly too late.
—Veronica Wills
I loved Laura Kasischke's In a Perfect World, and we're publishing her new book, The Raising, in March. Laura is a poet, and both of those books are beautifully written yet also fairly commercial. Suspicious River is different. It's about a young woman, Leila, who has started working as a prostitute at the motel where she handles the front desk. It is much more htmlgiant-esque than target-esque like her later books, and it makes me want to read the rest of them to see if this was a subtle shift or a sudden change. I liked reading it a lot.
—Erica
I read a memoir about a woman who was reading one book a week for a year and one of her chapters talked about great first lines. Suspicious River was one of the books she mentioned.First line:"The first time I had sex with a man for money, it was September..."I was instantly intrigued. My college library happened to own a copy of this book, so of course I checked it out. This book is very dark and sad and beautifully written, and the main character isn't very likeable. But the thing is that she doesn't give a damn whether she's likable or not, and I like that.
—Kayla
