Monica Holloway does a great job of introducing many characters and coming back to them, either in a big or small way. However, if you had told me that Joann would be a central character in this memoir, I wouldn’t have believed you based on the first 200 pages of the book. The story didn’t seem to be about her at all up until that point. Maybe, then, Holloway should have started the memoir at age 18? And as we chronicled all of her lovers (which I found boring to read and felt they were only included for their novelty), the memoir about surviving and recovering from incest would have made more sense.
I found college through the time of Joann’s confession to be very boring; I didn’t know where the story was going, but I trusted (hoped) that because there were so many pages left, something was going to happen. I liked Monica enough to want to see her through to the end. Hearing about Holloway’s love life seemed to be getting further and further away from the point, which I thought was her “getting out” of Galesburg and making it—a hero story.
When I finished the book, however, I felt that the stories of her lovers served a purpose for the second half of the book and her love/sexual coming of age couldn’t be separated from her story as incest survivor. And then, of course, I realized the book wasn’t just about family and “getting out,” it was about denial, secrecy, depression, and incest. I concluded that the stories of her lovers (abusive boyfriend, Whittaker, Patrick, Daniel) needed to be there in the end, but that the writing in those years of her life was rushed, bordering on melodramatic, and coated in a teenage romance feel. If they were there on purpose, and not for novelty, they weren’t fully explored in terms of the story. These relationships seemed to be written to discuss sex, period. Or with Daniel, the lack of sex. I didn’t feel that any of the men were explored in further detail besides as vehicles to write in Holloway’s relationship to sex. Interestingly, what had less importance than all of the sex, and seemed to me purely for novelty, was the mortuary story—the actual driving with dead people. This book had less to do with driving with dead people as it did with, maybe, driving with extremely angry people or driving with people who might kill you or you might sleep with.
After Joann entered the story as a primary character, we went down a very different road. Holloway began speaking for her sister Joann. She wrote her memories into the story. She even asks, “Was this my story too? …Or was this only Joann’s story? I didn’t know (256)”. Memory, from this point on, begins to get interesting. She uses italics and begins going back into the childhood she presented to us one way, and counters memories with new questions; we begin to question too. I think this was a great way to discuss memory in terms of something you’ve tried to block out, and the process of retracing the possibilities and filling in gaps. “Was she preparing us for him? Was it unconscious? (259)” “Why would Dad be glad Joann was gay and that she was dating a black woman? (260)” It is also a very honest way to describe the process of recovering memory. I thought the therapy sessions were particularly important there. Holloway brought in some “experts” in therapists and in the book The Courage to Heal, I think as a way to gain our trust (the readers) as she began to question everything she said was “true” memory in the beginning. I think she handled this really well, actually—dealing with the fact that in incest and in therapy—memories may not be easily retrievable, the story nonlinear.
On pages 278-286, Hollaway writes Joann’s attempted suicide and subsequent stay in the recovery center as if she were there witnessing it. This was not Holloway’s voice, but her sisters. She juxtaposes Joann’s memories with her own reactions to them. This was a definite switch from the way the rest of the memoir was written. This technique, along with the self-questioning of memory, were surprising craft choices that helped the story become something larger.
I appreciate Melissa that you directed some of your blog to the angle i mentioned in class. While you were dissatisfied with the development of her own particular story you seem to be more engaged by the later parts where dichotomy is central, doubt is dealt with. Perhaps she is too focused on the collective experience earlier on
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