Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s coming off of Marquez, McCarthy, Steinbeck, Faulkner, but I seem to be getting irked by some small inconsistencies in Haigh’s writing.
He came to her silently at night, careful not to wake his parents on the other side of the wall. She remembered his cold hands under her nightgown, his breath hurried and shallow. His eyes shut tight, he seemed to disappear inside himself like a turtle retracting its limbs. The first few times, at Hambley, he’d withdrawn from her, making a mess on the floor; once they were married he simply left the mess inside her. (p. 42)
Not quite in sync with the already revealed fact that she was pregnant when they married.
She hadn’t thought of Evelyn in years. It was a special gift of hers; the ability to rewrite past disasters, to unhappen them in her mind. The worst debacles, her memory simply refused to record, so that there were periods of her life she barely recalled at all: her mother’s illness, the long months after her death. Birdie’s memories of Missouri stopped after the first year, when the gossip about Ken and Evelyn Luck started. (p. 43)
She then continues on to tell the story of Evelyn, albeit briefly, but remembered. Although I do love the line, "to unhappen them in her mind." Then the Kimbles move to a college town, and another affair starts up:
A particular girl called often, first several times a week, then every day. "This is Moira Snell," she announced each time, as if Birdie should recognize her name. Her husky voice became as familiar as that of the weather girl, a plump little blonde who stood in front of a Virginia map on television.
Then one morning the husky-voiced girl came to the house. She looked nothing like the weather girl: she was tall and thin, her eyes rimmed with dark liner, her hair the color of molasses, hanging straight and shiny down her back. She wore blue jeans and a blouse that left her shoulders bare. She wasn’t wearing a bra. (p. 43)
In the first paragaph, it would certainly seem to me that if Moira called daily, Birdie certainly should recognize her name. The reference to the weather girl in the first paragraph seems awkward, since its only purpose in the second is to say that Moira looked nothing like the weather girl (why would she?) and there was no comparison made between the voice either.
Perhaps I’m just being too picky, but the author seems to want to draw our attention to details, but the details don’t add up to either enhance or reinforce any point. This is where good editing would have helped, I think, to make the narrative smoother and more tuneful. Language shouldn’t make one halt and wonder in the way of Huh? unless its so damn good that it’s an Ohmygod sort of Huh? immediately followed by a wow.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology