What Was Left of Her A Story of Ghosts by Victoria Hattersley; Whirl of Birds Short Stories by Liana Vraijitoru Andreasen
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
What Was Left of Her A Story of Ghosts by Victoria Hattersley
This is a summary of my review. The full review is on
LitPick.
What Was Left of Her is very reminiscent of the old Gothic novels like Jane Eyre or Rebecca. It explores the outer atmosphere built on suspenseful austerity and the inner psychology of the troubled people within.
Two sisters, Cassie and Alex reunite after the death of their Aunt Lucie. While going through her house, the two recount their troubled and disturbed childhood with the loving but haunted aunt who raised them and their developmentally disabled potentially sociopathic cousin, Bella. While they remain in Lucie’s coastal home, strange things start happening. Cassie sees someone out of the corner of their eye, hears whispers, and things are mislaid. She is beginning to wonder if maybe Bella who was believed to have disappeared might still be alive.
The characters inside are troubled miserable souls notably Cassie and Bella. Cassie is a recovering alcoholic with a fragmented memory. It’s hard to tell whether the ghosts are real and surround her or whether they are in her mind.
Even though Bella is absent through most of the book, she is still very much in the family’s mind and consciousness. She was a seriously troubled woman who may not have been physically capable of controlling herself but also may have been and did not care. The description of her could go either way and is only provided by third person accounts from Cassie and Alex.
The cousins' personalities and actions merge until it’s hard to tell how much of Cassie’s memories are accurate, whether they were things that Bella did or whether Cassie was projecting and who was haunting who.
Whirl of Birds: Short Stories by Liana Vraijitoru Andreasen
This review is also on Reedsy Discovery.
Liana Vraijitoru Andreasen’s anthology Whirl of Birds Short Stories is an extremely difficult book that reveals complex narratives and themes.
It captures the abstract, the allegorical, the symbolic, and the metaphorical and turns them into understandable commentaries on the characters themselves and the societies in which they and the Reader inhabit. It's a book that isn't always easy to understand but it's impossible to get out of your mind.
The best stories are:
“The Puppet Show”-This is a very creepy story that takes the whole “we are mere puppets on a string” metaphor literally. Kids enjoy a puppet show particularly the ongoing adventures of Princess Gina who gets in various cliffhangers that put her in peril.
This is a very surreal short story that implies a theme of possessing someone's talent and soul. It's not a coincidence that Gina the Puppet shares the same name as Gina, who works for the puppet show and narrates the adventures. In the Puppeteer’s eyes, both Ginas are one and the same and he believes that in owning one, he has control of the other.
He controls Gina who is a brilliant performer and storyteller and tries to manipulate circumstances around her. He invites various male performers to play the character, Radu, to join them almost as though to test her fidelity. Each time they commit transgressions, the men disappear leaving Gina more isolated and dependent on the Puppeteer.
Significantly, there are three men therefore three tests. Three is a magical number that appears often in fairy tales, like the kind of stories that the Ginas star in. The Puppeteer is writing his own story and controlling the narrative of Gina's life. He treats the human Gina like a character that does whatever he wants them to. She has no story beyond the one that he created for her.
The final pages show both the end of the Puppet Show and Gina's relationship with the Puppeteer. It depicts that the puppeteer can't control everything, that he is as much a pawn, a puppet, in larger games and larger stories that surround him. He can't control changing tastes, that children are always looking for the next big thing and once they find it, they throw out the old thing. He can't control when people get lives of their own and move on and away from him, in effect changing the plot.
He especially can't control the outside world, when revolutions and violence can occur. Instead, he is left alone with his incomplete story and no one that cares or is even interested enough to listen to it.
“Stolen Light”-This story uses an ominous natural phenomenon as a metaphor for the family observing it. Jose Angel, a young boy, sees a mysterious cloud approaching Las Vegas. Terrified, many have theories but the boy has only certain things in mind. If the world is ending, he wants to get some nagging questions answered about his missing father.
What is particularly compelling and frustrating is the lack of answers that this story provides leaving events ambiguous. There are no definite answers to what the cloud is. In fact the characters' speculations say more about themselves than they do about the phenomena itself.
Some say the cloud is a government experiment and it's a conspiracy. Others say that it's an impending alien invasion. Still others think that it's the Biblical End of Days. They act how most people would in such a situation. They make their own conclusions in the face of no answers or ones that they disagree with.
Jose Angel is like many teens. He wants his own life. He wants to satisfy those urges that he has for companionship and belonging. He is less concerned with the thing in the sky than he is with the things that are troubling his mind.
Among those questions are those about his father. He asked his mother about him and she gave non-answers which left him as confused as everyone else is about the cloud. Then conveniently an encounter might provide a solution but it only raises more questions and potentially puts Jose Angel in danger.
This story demonstrates how our thoughts can become cloudy with our own questions and speculation. We might get an answer but it may not be what we expected or liked. Sometimes it leads to more questions and makes things even cloudier.
“Whirl of Birds”-Birds usually represent color, flight, independence, and freedom. But sometimes they can also represent dread, violence, scavengers, predators, and death. This is what happens as Bianca is on a drive and is pursued by a very persistent flock of birds that keep following her towards an unpleasant encounter.
The story is reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” as the birds hover around her. Bianca isn’t frightened of the birds. In fact she is enchanted by them and her own thoughts. She wonders where they come from and where they are going. She sees meaning in the sky but can’t yet articulate what it is.
Her thoughts also drift towards various names like “Steve,” “Andy,” and “Sam.” We are not told of her specific relationships with these men though we can make inferences based on a phone call with Andy and that Sam enters her mind the most but dissipates upon encountering a car crash. These names suggest connections but quite possibly long gone ones of people who were once important to her but now no longer are. They flew away from her mind as she was driving down the road watching birds fly towards her.
While the birds and Bianca’s thoughts suggest a liberating experience, there is something else that is at play. They could just as easily be symbolic of something more sinister. The birds are vultures, carrion eaters, usually associated with death. They circle over her car like they are waiting for something. Bianca, whose name by the way means “white” or “pale,” drives along with them, almost feeling spiritual and emotionally connected with them. It could very well be that she is symbolic of “Death on a Pale Horse” and it doesn’t care who the people around them are. They are just names that will come to an end soon, not people with experiences, stories. Her history with them doesn’t matter because it will end as all things do.
There is an eerie climactic encounter with an unnamed woman where once again we are told very little about which also parallels “Bianca and the birds as death” symbol. There is no personal connection and they are uncertain and afraid of each other. Bianca’s appearance frightens the woman but the story seems to apply that she is who Bianca is there for. She may resist but she will face Bianca, the birds, and death no matter what.
“Mahogany”-This story is almost a modern day adaptation of the Greek myth, “Pygmalion and Galatea” in which a sculptor falls in love with his creation but this puts some commentary of modern life to the tale.
Al, a woodcarver, is not a lonely bachelor like his ancient counterpart. In fact he has a nagging wife and disinterested kids. He has a life that Pygmalion might have envied of people surrounding him and he may have at one time loved. But life got in the way, voices were raised, comments were ridiculed, and arguments broke out. A family that might have been close once is disconnected from each other. They share a last name and a roof over their heads but that’s it. There is nothing but noise, misery, and despair. Al can only find silence and acceptance through his art.
Despite his assurances that he is not having an affair, Al is clearly in love: with his own creation. He carves a beautiful woman out of mahogany. This is someone who will not belittle, or disagree with him, will treat him well, and that can look, act, and say anything he wants. Like the puppeteer with Princess Gina, he has complete ownership of her. She is a fantasy, a story and it’s one in which he can create.
However unlike the Puppeteer and Pygmalion, it’s a story that he would rather keep for himself. The Mahogany Figure represents the ultimate beauty represented in art. She can never be captured or possessed and certainly never be owned. In Al’s mind, he doesn’t want his carving to come to life, grow old, and become shrill, cold, and unloving. He wants to preserve her as she is, forever young, forever beautiful, forever innocent.
“Driving With Sara”-This is a haunting story about age and loneliness and how desperate people sometimes do desperate things to make connections. The Narrator is an old woman who is irritated with her pestering daughter and diminishing life so she makes a connection with a stranger named Sara.
The Narrator realizes that her life is not what it was. It is breaking apart piece by piece from interests, to people that she once knew, to pets. She is seeing parts of her identity move away one by one. What is particularly sad and memorable about it, is that it is not from an illness like Alzheimer’s. These actions are caused by a daughter who thinks that she knows best and infantilizes her mother. The attention only seeks to isolate her and make her feel lonely.
The Narrator’s connection to Sara is one of mutual strangers but she thinks that it gives her the love and support that she is looking for from her daughter. This woman is delusional but her mind is so troubled and traumatized that she can’t tell the difference between what is true and what she imagines about Sara.
The irony of Sara’s appearance is a grotesque and dark comic one that seems to put a fatalistic punch line to this poor woman’s life. In being unable to truly bond with her daughter, the Narrator seeks another very unhealthy and troubling bond with someone who is also rejecting her in her own way. Rather than acknowledging that, the Narrator would rather remain in this state than admit what is painfully true.
“The Return”-Loneliness is also the culprit in this story of a father communicating with his daughter by phone. Unlike The Narrator and her mother who live a stifling isolating experience which leaves the mother longing for a connection that makes her feel less confined and lonely, Melvin’s relationship with his daughter, Ella, is already isolated.
Melvin projects an image of a kind and efficient worker, but he is starting to slow down. His work is less noticeable and he is distracted. He slowly loses confidence and eventually his placement at work. As long as he had a role at the office, he was known but as it diminishes, he is made redundant, faceless, someone easily discarded. The job has deprived him of his humanity and left him alone and disenchanted with the outside world.
His home life is equally isolated. His wife is dead and he is separated from his daughter by distance. They only communicate by phone which Melvin hates. The results are that Melvin is desensitized and disconnected from the life around him. He is physically cut off from others, so mentally is as well.
He becomes involved with an experiment involving rats. This experiment is foreshadowed when he tells a disturbed Ella a story about rats committing violent actions out of love and respect. In his loneliness, he is personifying human interaction with animals. The things that he wants: love, respect, understanding, empathy are things that he believes that he sees in rodents. This isolation, unmet longing, and the desperate need to have those longings met cause him to go to extreme means to get them. Those means present a horrible lasting impression on Ella and the Reader.
“What Lingers”-This story personalizes one of the most historic tragedies by giving us two characters who experienced it and share an intuitive connection because of it.
At first we aren’t told where Alex and Katya are and what disaster has befallen them. There are hints with words like “radiation,” and references to the odd sky color and opening valves. The clues start piling up until proper names like “Pripyat” and “Three Mile Island” enter. Then it becomes more apparent what is going on and what the characters are experiencing. It’s a universal thing. No matter what the tragedy is, people who are associated with such an event will always feel connected to it.
Besides giving clues for the Reader to guess where they are, this approach demonstrates the humanity that such tragedies bring. It doesn’t matter when or where they are, but those who have been through them will share a bond of mutual survivors. It creates links of kinship that go beyond friends and family.
Alex and Katya’s link is explored in an intuitive and possibly psychic manner. They are brought together by this tragedy and their relationship. Even though they are in another place, they recognize each other as someone who understands and has been through the ordeal. They reach beyond that memory and are able to connect on a more personal level.
“Valley of the Horse”-This story presents an ominous energy found in nature and how it parallels grief. Zak is haunted by his various interactions with a judge and a dying horse on his way to and from work.
Judge Ivy and the horse seem to be cut off from the edge of the world. Zak pities the horse who is clearly suffering and Ivy who can do nothing but watch her die. Their interactions run the gamut between casual, revulsion, indifferent, sympathy, anger, depression, defiance, and ultimately acceptance. Ivy is a man who wants to believe that he is doing his best for his horse and wants to be with her during his painful experience. He doesn’t want to hasten it, but suffer through it with her.
Zak is drawn to this man because he recently suffered the loss of his partner, April. Even though he is with someone else, his thoughts of April never diminished. Ivy and the horse are constant reminders of the person that he lost and the guilt that he felt for things that he did and didn’t do with April. In some ways, Zak is reliving his own experiences including the life that he didn’t have with her. Zak and Ivy are parallels in loss and the emotions that are associated with it.
One of the most telling moments is when Zak rages at Ivy and a crowd gathered around the horse. Since Ivy is a judge, Zak is calling him out on his treatment of the horse and how he can let her suffer. It’s a bit heavy handed, but he is also comparing Ivy to God, who is often described as a judge on why April died as well. He wants to know why she died and why Zak didn’t recognize the signs to help her until it was too late. He wants to know why he, like Ivy, just watched her suffer instead of helping her.
“Exorcism”-The title suggests one thing but the text of this story tells something else. At first it appears that Mrs. Mitchell is the titular exorcist and she is there to extract a demon from Tony Reyes, a young man. That is not what happens.
What we are given instead is a character study of a young boy through the perspectives of his father and his English teacher. They both share memories of Tony as they knew him. Mrs. Mitchell saw a bright, polite student who answered questions and had a deep understanding of literature. His father saw his son who was a happy jokester but became troubled, quiet, and withdrawn as though he were possessed.
Senor Reyes’ descriptions of Tony’s subsequent behavior are eerie as it details a teenager who might be losing his grip with reality and sanity. He is troubled by voices and destructive thoughts. It’s a traumatic nightmare told from the point of view of an anguished parent wanting to take the pain away from his child but who is helpless with not knowing what it was.
It’s left purposely ambiguous whether or not Tony was possessed, showing signs of schizophrenia or depression, or was just simply acting out as a troubled teen. All that is known is that he is gone, was not the same person that he was before, and has left behind two authority figures who bonded with him but could not understand what he was going through. They had a limited frame of reference based on their own associations and experiences and were unable to communicate with Tony or find helpful solutions that may have saved him. Instead, they are left wondering why.
“At Taft Point”-This story is reminiscent of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” in that it demonstrates the futility of blind obedience and never questioning what one knows isn’t right.
A group of tourists visit Taft Point. At first it seems like a pleasant visit to nature. It’s beautiful and imposing. There is a deep spiritual connection as the visitors feel God’s presence in the view around them. It's almost a meditative but disconcerting experience.
There are hints that not is as it seems within the group. The women are dressed alike with long skirts and braids. There are a lot of children. They speak often of God and their leader gives a speech filled with metaphor and generalities but no specifics about the group or their motives. It’s not outright scary but it may put the Reader at a distinct unease that there is something that is off about these people.
As the characters talk to each other, their reason for being there and motivation becomes clear. It is a terrifying experience not just because of what is being done but the willingness of the people to do it. There is a slight bait and switch as one of the group tries to disobey and one expects that those closest to them would rally to their side. Instead, they ally with the rest of the group, not the outsider leaving them to their fate as a final decision is made. These people are so driven by their leader’s view that they lost their free will and are willing to follow him to commit atrocities.
This blind obedience is so prevalent in society today whether it’s through religion, politics, nationalism, philosophy, and any group that provides thought and identity. If one is so drawn to the group, they will surrender everything: friends, families, beliefs, faith, laws, work, country, relationship, money, intelligence, standards, morals, ethics, common sense, and finally their own lives just to be a part of it. The less they question and research only the sources that they are told to, the more likely they will surrender everything to someone who will profit off of them and end their lives rather than be seen as anything less than a deity.
“Rabbit in the Hat”-One thing that this anthology has is an ongoing theme of people using their art to make their voices heard. This is particularly scene in this story of Bill Morris, who has worked in a museum for over 40 years and has shown artistic talent himself. His closest friends and colleagues attend an exhibition of his work.
Many of the people use their frames of reference on how they see Morris: as a quiet unassuming single man that had been just there in their lives, faded into the background. They didn’t know him. They only knew what they saw in him. His real self is explained through his art.
Morris’ art covers three rooms. The first two are more ordinary, landscapes, still life. They represent the exterior. A man who quietly observed everything around them and was able to capture it. The words that no one heard, the man that no one saw showed them the outside world that he saw.
The third room explores a darker more subterranean consciousness inside Morris, one that is honest, naked, violent, sexy, and more real than what they had previously known. They are forced to confront their own secrets, inner lives, thoughts, and insecurities and lay them bare. It is a joke, maybe, but it is also a chance for Morris and the other characters to face their inner truths and authentic selves.
“Sound Waves”-Another ongoing theme in this anthology is whether forms of communication brings us together or drives us apart. This one explores the power of changing technology as seen through radio. A spooky night at a radio program. DJ Charlie Tainter receives a mysterious phone call that causes his colleagues to question the man and where he comes from.
The entire setting is in the radio station during the program so it’s a compact and limiting environment. Charlie and his co-workers can only go by the voice on the radio, the Internet, and Charlie himself to piece together what they are given. Charlie says one thing. The caller says another. The Internet says yet another. The accounts don’t tell a complete story instead it’s all accusation, denial, and information that is later discredited. It’s hard to tell what the truth really is and if the characters don’t know, the Reader certainly doesn’t. We are left to our own conclusions.
It seems that this device, radio, like other technological marvels is created to be a source of communication. Unfortunately, it can only communicate so much. Fittingly, another form of communication is used, the Internet. Both can create and distort sound and images. Both can tell you what’s considered good or bad, right or wrong and shape views. They provide information as it is given not necessarily what is true but what people want to believe. Because of that, we don’t know what to believe.
A possibility is presented in the final pages, one that transcends space and time and relies more on imagination than information. It calls for the characters and Readers to think beyond what is laid out in front of them and look for possibilities that are beyond what they are told. Words, news, voices, information can be altered and subjected to reinterpretation. When faced with that information, a person should weigh their own options and look inward for what they perceive and believe.
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