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Title: Stay: A Novel by Nicola Griffith ISBN: 1-4000-3230-X Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 10 June, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.22 (18 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A powerful and unforgettable book
Comment: I have followed Nicola Griffith since her earliest books (Ammonite and Slow River) and her short stories. I've always admired the beauty of her writing and the humanity of her characters, and Stay is a remarkable addition to her body of work.
Stay continues the story of Aud Torvingen (the hero of The Blue Place) who has shut herself away in a cabin in the woods to mourn the death of her lover. Aud is grief-stricken and full of guilt because she believes she is responsible for Julia's death, and it seems she is determined to stay that way.
Griffith has always made full use of environmental and physical details (Slow River has been noted for its use of water and light as metaphors, and in The Blue Place Aud is constantly aware of her own body moving in the world and the sensations and textures of the things around her). In Stay, the entire forest ecology becomes a metaphor for Aud's state of withdrawal and grief ("The birds were quiet, the sun streamed down, and for a moment the valley felt like a place out of time, secret and silent and still, where no one intruded and nothing ever happened. Then I saw that the gilding on the trees up the mountain wasn't just sun but the first tints of autumn which would seep downhill until all was copper and russet and gold and, not long after that, bare.")
Change is coming to the land and to Aud. An old friend convinces her to leave her refuge and find his missing fiancée. Aud wants to stay in the woods, but her lover made her promise to stay in the world, to stay connected in spite of her rage and her pain.
This is the metaphor that structures and enriches the book: Aud learning that to 'stay,' she must change and become something else. In order to keep her promise to Julia, she has to grow beyond the person that Julia knew and leave Julia behind. Griffith is wonderful at weaving many layers of image and meaning into a narrative that moves quickly but always keeps us in Aud's head and heart as she navigates her way to New York and back again. I was impressed by the small, precise touches that Griffith uses to show us that Aud is really on the edge, not tracking well, and vulnerable: as one example, she reaches the city and opens her suitcase to find she's packed "three pairs of socks, two books, my phone, and a can of half-frozen concentrated orange juice."
I was also impressed by the development of Aud's relationship with Tammy, the missing fiancée. They start out disliking and distrusting each other, and then begin to understand each other better as they spend time together on the mountain, healing. Again, the layers of metaphor abound: "When dirt is disturbed, it becomes unpredictable: perhaps when turned and tilled it grows fertile and lush; perhaps erosion sets in and the whole turns to sand. Some soil is never meant to be turned; it's best left frozen and hard-packed. Sometimes it can be hard to tell until you try."
Griffith has been widely praised for The Blue Place, and with Stay she makes Aud more complex, more compelling, and just as fascinating as ever. The writing is lush and lyrical whether Griffith is talking about violence or healing, and Aud's journey through grief is convincing. Stay took me through a spectrum of emotions on a journey that I won't soon forget. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of literary work that doesn't pull punches or simplify the human heart.
Rating: 5
Summary: believe the subtitle
Comment: The subtitle of Nicola Griffith's new book, Stay, is "a novel," but the cover illustration and flap copy suggest the usual ho-hum noir tale: an ex-cop PI riddled with grief and guilt over the death of a lover hiding in the woods to avoid the world, who, big surprise, is called back by a friend to find his missing girlfriend. Been there, done that I thought. But by the end of the first paragraph (woods as waterfall? a quinquireme of Ninevah?!), the subtitle started to make sense. By the time I reached chapter two, I didn't have any doubts: Stay is a novel, and a superb one. It's subtle when you don't expect it, and brutal -- shockingly so in places -- when you've let down your guard. It's a powerful exploration of grief, loss of innocence, and rage. And its power comes from the narrator, Aud Torvingden.
In an interview for Bold Type (yes, I googled her name), Griffith says that Aud (rhymes with shroud) "embodies the long journey toward reconciliation of all those parts of our culture that have been artificially levered apart: mind and body, nature and civilization, art and science, man and woman, tenderness and brutality." It's an astonishing claim, but Aud is an astonishing character. She's larger than life -- insanely rich, and capable, and good-looking -- while being simultaneously, and believably, fragile, and vulnerable, and human.
Because of a promise she made her dead lover (which sounds like a cliche, but Griffith makes it work), Aud agrees to track the missing girlfriend. To do that she has to leave the woods, which is where I started to understand that Aud's loss has pushed her over the edge. Or has it? The dead lover appears and disappears (which sounds like another cliche, but in Griffith's hands its not -- it reminded me of Toni Morrison's Beloved), and I alternated between heart-thumping tension and lump-in-throat empathy as Aud struggles with a decision. Can she keep the promise she made to her lover to "stay in the world, stay alive inside," or will she turn her face from the painful vulnerability that is her only hope of redemption? The beauty and suspense lies in the way Griffith describes Aud's inner turmoil. She blends a kind of hard and fast noir technique (tracking the missing woman in SoHo; riffling through a sociopath's loft) with quiet, lyrical passages (showing a stranger around the woods). Some of the juxtapositions are shocking: a brutal beating is described in gorgeous prose. A violent fight is described as a kind of ballet. And quiet emotions are given a visceral edge. It's appalling and exhilarating and moving, and I've never read anything like it. My world looks different.
Rating: 5
Summary: she does it again
Comment: Niccola Griffith has written another wonderful novel. Perhaps her greatest strengh as an author is her ability to delve so effectivly into the mind of her characters and make them fully developed without resorting to any cliche' or formula. In this follow up to the Blue Place we get to see Aud's tranformation through grief and sadness--and it works. Keep it up Niccola!
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Title: The Blue Place by Nicola Griffith ISBN: 0380790882 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 08 June, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Ammonite by Nicola Griffith ISBN: 0345452380 Publisher: Del Rey Books Pub. Date: 30 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Slow River by Nicola Griffith ISBN: 0345395379 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 01 August, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: One Degree of Separation by Karin Kallmaker ISBN: 1931513309 Publisher: Bella Books Pub. Date: 01 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Different Dress by Lori L. Lake ISBN: 1932300082 Publisher: Regal Crest Enterprises Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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