Book Club: THE ANTIDOTE

Summary

Book Riot - The Podcast: Book Club Discussion on The Antidote

Release Date: March 14, 2025
Hosts: Jeff O'Neill and Rebecca Schinsky
Episode Title: Book Club: THE ANTIDOTE

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Introduction: Navigating Remote Recording and Live Events

In this episode, hosts Jeff O'Neill and Rebecca Schinsky delve into their discussion of Karen Russell's novel, The Antidote. Recorded remotely from Jeff's home in Portland, Oregon, the hosts candidly address the challenges of remote podcasting, including minor static issues and the informal setup. Jeff shares insights about their recent live event at Pals, expressing gratitude to attendees and teasing future live recordings in New York.

Jeff O'Neill [00:53]: "Doing it mobile recording can be real honest with you. Doesn't sound great... We're learning how to do in person things."

Rebecca adds to the conversation by highlighting the integration of their remote recording mics and the ongoing efforts to enhance live event interactions.

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Upcoming Content and Engagement with Patreon Members

The hosts outline several exciting upcoming projects and events tailored for both Patreon subscribers and general listeners:

• Powell's Event Recording: Available soon on Patreon.
• Regular News Show: Dropping every Monday.
• Guest Appearance: Tracy Thomas from the Stacks podcast will join midweek to discuss the dynamics of talking about books on the Internet.
• Bonus Episode: A special discussion on classic literature that is essential for being well-read, inspired by a Patreon member's request.
• Double Header Episode: Featuring Laura McGrath, an academic specializing in publishing statistics, discussing intriguing metrics in the world of books and reading.

Jeff O'Neill [05:03]: "If we had Laura and Brenna from Sir Khan at the same time, I think my brains would leak out of."

The hosts encourage Patreon members to engage by guessing what might appear on their upcoming lists and to participate in future live events.

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Deep Dive into The Antidote by Karen Russell

Plot Overview:
The Antidote is set in the fictional town of Ouse, Nebraska, amidst a devastating dust storm followed by catastrophic flooding—a narrative backdrop inspired by real historical weather events. The protagonist, Antonina Rossi, known as the "Antidote," possesses the unique ability to perform "vaulting," a process where she helps townsfolk offload unwanted memories into her care.

Key Themes and Speculative Elements:

1. Memory and Forgetting:

   • Antonina’s role as the Antidote serves as a metaphor for collective and individual forgetting, exploring why societies choose to erase certain memories and the repercussions thereof.
   • The concept of vaulting introduces a speculative mechanism for memory management, raising questions about privacy, exploitation, and the ethics of memory manipulation.

2. Environmental Degradation:

   • The town's struggle with climate challenges mirrors contemporary issues, highlighting the consequences of environmental neglect and unsustainable farming practices.
   • Characters like Harpaletsky, whose farm remains unaffected by the drought, symbolize isolation and the perils of being an outlier in a struggling community.

3. Historical Reckoning and Cultural Memory:

   • The narrative addresses deep-seated historical injustices, particularly the displacement of the Pawnee people, although their direct presence in the story is notably absent.
   • The book probes the complexities of white guilt, collective responsibility, and the often-overlooked voices of marginalized communities.

Character Analysis and Development:

• Antonina Rossi (The Antidote):

  • Her bankruptcy during the storm signifies a loss of control and the fragility of her services, propelling her into vulnerability.
  • Her interactions with Del, Harpaletsky’s niece, reveal her resilience and adaptability as she collaborates to sustain her business despite mounting challenges.

• Del O’Lecky:

  • A dynamic young woman eager to apprentice under Antonina, Del embodies ambition and the desire to find purpose amidst chaos.
  • Together, they concoct schemes to continue the vaulting business, which introduces elements of camaraderie and ingenuity.

Hosts' Perspectives:

• Jeff O'Neill:
  Appreciates the speculative elements Russell employs to illustrate the dark consequences of forgetting. He praises the intricate world-building and the emotional depth of the characters, particularly Antonina's realization of her complicity in the town's moral decline.

  Jeff O'Neill [09:16]: "Things are going to be weird, but they're not performatively weird. It's not weird for weirdness's sake."

• Rebecca Schinsky:
  Finds the book's deliberate pacing and rich side quests engaging but feels that the latter part of the novel becomes overly didactic. She critiques the absence of Pawnee characters, feeling it undermines the book’s cultural reckoning.

  Rebecca Schinsky [14:06]: "But I do want to think as a reader that we're understanding this, that someone who was from a lower social category in his home country and has been pushed out of it comes to the United States..."

Critical Insights and Constructive Criticism:

• Narrative Structure:

  • While both hosts commend the book's ambitious scope and the beauty of its prose, they express reservations about the concluding sections. The overt moral messages during the town hall meeting are seen as heavy-handed, detracting from the nuanced storytelling developed throughout the novel.

  Jeff O'Neill [23:14]: "What the antidote to these problems... is remembering, is a collective remembering and reckoning with the truth that..."

• Representation and Absence:

  • The lack of direct representation of the Pawnee people is a significant point of contention. Both hosts feel that their absence dilutes the story's impact on cultural memory and historical accountability.

  Rebecca Schinsky [37:33]: "And I also wonder, how would Russell have done that when the Pawnee have not forgotten. They can't forget."

• Speculative Elements:

  • Jeff values the speculative constructs like the quantum camera and the mechanics of vaulting as narrative tools that enhance the story's depth. In contrast, Rebecca is more critical, suggesting that some elements may feel superfluous or detract from character development.

  Jeff O'Neill [12:44]: "But realizing that some of the deposits she's received are functionally confessions of people who have committed terrible crimes."

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Concluding Thoughts: The Antidote's Resonance and Recommendations

Despite some critiques, both hosts agree that The Antidote is a thought-provoking and richly written novel that merits reading. They appreciate Karen Russell's ability to intertwine speculative fiction with poignant social commentary, even if they feel the execution could have been more balanced.

Jeff O'Neill [34:12]: "It made me think a lot about. Especially the last episode of Reservation Dogs."

Rebecca Schinsky [46:24]: "But good, great, wonderful writing."

For listeners interested in Karen Russell's work, the hosts recommend starting with her earlier novels and short story collections to fully appreciate her distinctive narrative style.

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Notable Quotes

• Jeff O'Neill [00:53]: "This is our book discussion of The Antidote by Karen Russell. Doing it mobile recording can be real honest with you. Doesn't sound great."

• Jeff O'Neill [09:16]: "Things are going to be weird, but they're not performatively weird. It's not weird for weirdness's sake."

• Rebecca Schinsky [37:33]: "And I also wonder, how would Russell have done that when the Pawnee have not forgotten. They can't forget."

• Jeff O'Neill [23:14]: "What the antidote to these problems... is remembering, is a collective remembering and reckoning with the truth that..."

• Rebecca Schinsky [46:24]: "But good, great, wonderful writing."

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Final Remarks

Jeff and Rebecca conclude the episode by affirming their recommendation for The Antidote while acknowledging its imperfections. They encourage listeners to explore Karen Russell's broader body of work to gain a deeper understanding of her literary prowess.

Jeff O'Neill [46:17]: "Great, wonderful writing."

Rebecca Schinsky [46:06]: "If you like Karen Russell, I would certainly recommend picking it up."

Listeners are invited to engage further by visiting Book Riot's platforms, including their website, Patreon, and additional media channels.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Snoop Dogg]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

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@T mobile.com/apple intelligence requires iOS 18.1 or later. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Upgrade your business with Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. Shop pay boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning fewer carts going abandoned and more sales going cha ching. So if you're into growing your business, get a commerce platform that's ready to sell wherever your customers are. Visit shopify.com to upgrade your selling today.

[Snoop Dogg]

Hey everybody, Jeff Here a couple things. This is our book discussion of the Antidote by Karen Russell. Doing it mobile recording can be real honest with you. Doesn't sound great. We're learning how to do in person things and a couple of settings errors did the best they could to make it somewhat listable. Still pretty rough. I'm going to be honest, there's a little tiny static first 30 seconds that does go away, but I really sound like I'm in a hallway down the street from Rebecca. Not ideal. Totally understand if it's not up to your listening standards but for some of you maybe it's worth it to hear us talk about Antidote that last night as I'm recording this last night we had our live event at Pals. Thanks so much to everybody. Came out. I think I'm more sort of debrief and other things to do when we're back together. Dropped off the airport a little while ago. The recording of that is live. It's a live room. I think it's going to sound better than what you will hear if you keep listening for the Antidote. But I think we also got some questions and comments and we work with folks for future live events which I think we're going to do some I think at Pals. I think in New York again into this year we're thinking about some stuff so we're learning. Appreciate your patience if you want to skip this one because it's just unpleasant to listen to. Totally understand that but I did want to put it out there for you also. And we had a really good time. So thank you so much for all the time out, friends, family, listeners. So here's the show. We'll talk to you later. This is the book Riot podcast. I'm Jeff O'Neill.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I'm Rebecca Schinsky.

[Snoop Dogg]

And I'm looking at each other on couches. This is so weird.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I thought we might sit side by side, but here we are. Make it even weirder than it has to be.

[Snoop Dogg]

Side by side.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, like you're in an armchair. I could sit in the armchair next to you.

[Snoop Dogg]

When you and Bob go out together, do you sit side by side in a booth?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Absolutely not. That's for psychopaths, Michelle.

[Snoop Dogg]

Have we ever done that?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

A few times.

[Snoop Dogg]

A few times. Michelle's here in the background doing work. We're in my house in Portland, Oregon. It's the afternoon of our recording at Powell's. This is a multi purpose podcast recording 1 principally, we're here to talk about the Antidote by Karen Russell. We're also trying our remote recording mics.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Getting ready for tonight.

[Snoop Dogg]

And also just out of need, we're getting the show on the camel. Rebecca's here. I guess by the time people are hearing this, we are done with the episode. There's no come to pals tonight.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right?

[Snoop Dogg]

Thank you in advance for those you. To those of you who will have come. It's a real adventure intensives right there.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It sure is.

[Snoop Dogg]

Yeah, I really got that right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And if you're having FOMO but you're a member of the Patreon or you're thinking about becoming a member of the Patreon, the episode will drop there later this week, early next week, just depending on editing timelines. And we don't know how complicated that editing job is going to be for Jeff over the weekend.

[Snoop Dogg]

We're not sure how that's going to go. But thanks for, for considering it. Thanks for all the kind wishes for people who can't come and said good luck and come to a city near you. Who knows, Rebecca?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Snoop Dogg]

Who knows what's going.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Also, fun stuff coming up over the next.

[Snoop Dogg]

Yeah. What do we have on the Patreon and the regular show?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right, so we have the Powell's event will be in the Patreon very soon. We'll do the regular news show. That'll drop on Monday and then midweek next week we'll be joined by Tracy Thomas from the Stacks podcast. We're talking about things we like and things we don't like about talking about books on the Internet So Patreon members, feel free to take your guesses about what will make our lists in the comments. And our next bonus episode at the end of next week will be about the classics you actually need in order to be. You need to have read in order to be well read, which was a request from a Patreon member and we were chatting over coffee this morning about our different approaches to answering that question. So that should be really fun. And then week after next, we'll have a double header with Laura McGrath, who is a person who studies publishing from an academic stats perspective. And she'll be coming to talk to us about the most interesting stats in the world of books and reading. And I cannot wait to know what she has brought. We asked her to come in with us cold, so we don't know what she's going to be telling us, but it should be a great time.

[Snoop Dogg]

If we had Laura and Brenna from Sir Khan at the same time, I think my brains would leak out of.

[Jeff O'Neill]

My just dopamine explosion.

[Snoop Dogg]

I wonder if they've ever talked, but I hope. I'm sure they get along swimmingly. But they need to talk to us. We can be their medium through which they communicate. So we can sort of be the. We can be the Bloomberg terminal of information flow for the publishing.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I never knew that that was an aspiration until you say it out loud.

[Snoop Dogg]

You know, you gotta say it. We're gonna manifest that. And then I guess if you want to get reading for our next book club, our book discussion, we're going to be talking, I think audition is next. What we're talking about from Katie Kitamura.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes. Yeah, we'll be talking about two book clubs, sort of back to back audition by Katie Kitamura which comes out on April 8th. Somehow it is almost April. We'll be talking about it for an episode on the 9th. And right before that, Patreon members, we're going to do a book club for the 10th anniversary of the Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro.

[Snoop Dogg]

Kazu Ishiguro novel.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You're gonna lose the ability to tell that joke. And that's maybe the reason that I scheduled that.

[Snoop Dogg]

I guess. Also on the Katie Kira Murphron, I'm having her as a guest on First Edition. That's gonna come out the Pub Week. I think that's an April 8th publication.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Indeed it is.

[Snoop Dogg]

Yeah. So first edition over there. Always pump in Patreon Instagram. All the things will be in the show notes or bookride.com listen and let's do our get our first sponsor break in the can.

[Jeff O'Neill]

This episode is sponsored by Last Twilight in Paris by Pam Jenoff. Stick around after the show to hear an excerpt from the audiobook. London 1953 Louise, adjusting to life as a housewife, finds a necklace in a secondhand shop and recognizes it from her time with the Red Cross in Nazi occupied Europe. Convinced it holds clues to her friend Franny's wartime death, she follows the trail to Paris with her former boss Ian. Their search uncovers secrets about Levitan, a department store turned Nazi prison, and Helene, a woman separated from her husband during the war. Inspired by a true story, Last Twilight in Paris weaves a gripping mystery with themes of sacrifice, resistance, and love's enduring power. This is perfect for fans of Kate Quinn and Kristin Hannah. Again, it's inspired by a real department store in Paris that was converted to a Nazi prison camp. Stick around after the show to hear an audiobook excerpt from Last Twilight in Paris by Pam Jenoff.

[Snoop Dogg]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match Limited by state law not available in all states. We happened to be in Portland together on Tuesday night, which was weirdly my birthday. I mean it's not weird that it was March 11th to my birthday that happens every year. But that you were here, you flew in and then we made some plans with my my some my brother and sister in law and we're gonna go out and there's one event probably, I mean I like going to book events or I'm trying to go to more of them and there's probably one author that may have tempted me away from my go and have tiki drinks and you know, chill was Karen Russell. Her launch event in Palace. She lives in Portland now. I don't know, I need a backstory there, but she's out of Florida and it was tempting to like screw that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Let's just go see Karen Russell. We have met our collective book event quota together for the year this year I guess. Actually that was last year, last fall when we saw rolling 12 month, right. Rumaan alum and Jennifer Egan at the Strand. Karen Russell would have been great. This was. I think we can spoil the show a little bit. It's a good book.

[Snoop Dogg]

Yeah, I mean I actually just finished it last night. I think I like it less with the last 50 pages, but we can talk about that a little bit here in a minute. The Karen Russell ness of it all. It's been a while since we've got a Karen Russell book. We were talking to someone at Pals the other day hasn't read a Karen Russell book. So where do you start? I think swampland.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You definitely start with swamplandia.

[Snoop Dogg]

Rebecca, what do you think when you hear a Karen Russell book? What do you. What's the experience you're getting ready for? What do you expect when you're doing Karen Russell?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Things are going to be weird, but they're not performatively weird. It's not weird for weirdness's sake. She's doing weird.

[Snoop Dogg]

I was fired at Tom Robbins posthumously.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But I still wouldn't know.

[Snoop Dogg]

I know, I know you wouldn't know.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But still weird. In service of digging into some idea or some question, in the case of this book, it's weirdness that helps us I think have a way into a topic that in a straight ahead novel about this you might. It could maybe verge on like a little more polemic or preachy.

[Snoop Dogg]

Is this first non Florida book?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, that's a great question.

[Snoop Dogg]

I didn't go back. No.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Vampires in the Lemon Grove had some things outside of Florida. A lot of the short story collections have pieces outside of Florida.

[Snoop Dogg]

Yeah, I guess I think of them as all Florida books, but that could just be.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, short. And swamplandia is just so potent.

[Snoop Dogg]

Yeah. So 428 pages. It's called the Antidote. I don't think we've said that name out loud yet.

[Jeff O'Neill]

First novel in 14 years set.

[Snoop Dogg]

It's bracketed by two real life weather events. A dust storm in Nebraska that was followed a week later, like a few days later, not very long, by enormous flood. Like 24 inches of rain in 24 hours. As the stat mentioned here.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's Black Sunday.

[Snoop Dogg]

Yeah, a dust bowl followed by a storm. There's not a lot left of this town of Ouse, Nebraska.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Fictional town.

[Snoop Dogg]

Fictional town of Ouse, but representing, you know, a lot of small farming towns. This one's in southwest Nebraska, not too far from the Kansas border. Character is what's called a prairie witch. And she's called the Antidote for reasons that I think are metaphorical and figurative, figurative and literal. And her particular talent, and it seems like most of the prairie witches sort of talent, is to do this thing called vaulting. What is vaulting?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Vaulting is where a prairie witch will receive a memory that you no longer want to hold for whatever reason. You might expect these would be exclusive, exclusively negative memories. But sometimes it's like the memory of the best day of the person's life and she doesn't. Russell doesn't take us into why someone might not want to hold this memory.

[Snoop Dogg]

There is one moment where a guy says, I want to come back to this when I'm old, have it be new in my mind again. Which is kind of a beautiful.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And so the vault idea, these are functionally human memory banks. You can off board your memories into a vault into a prairie witch. You even get a deposit slip and they sort of go into a trance when you're speaking your memory. So the antidote in this story, she uses an old fashioned ear horn. You would speak your memory into the ear horn and she's in her trance, so she doesn't really know what you're telling her. You get privacy, presumably, you get some level of confidentiality. And then you get your little deposit slip. And should you ever want that memory back, you can go back to your prairie witch with your deposit slip and she will reverse the trance and speak your memory back to you at the same time also not remembering what you've said. So you can imagine all of the ways that like this might be useful for people to get rid of traumatic memories or in the case of the character you were just talking about, to store something that is like so precious, they want to come back and experience it anew. But also there are a lot of creepy, sinister, harmful ways that a person could use this. And our character here, Antonina Rossi is her name. Before she becomes the antidote, she finds herself party to all of these.

[Snoop Dogg]

Yeah, it's. It's a thought experiment or a conceit, not unlike severance, in which when you start thinking about the uses of it becomes more. It actually becomes quite a bit darker.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes, right.

[Snoop Dogg]

About what can happen and what does happen. And there are quite a few manifestations of it being used mostly for ill.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right.

[Snoop Dogg]

And that's the beginning of the speculative fiction. There are other speculative fiction elements to this. There's a quantum camera that, you know, one of the, one of these works, Progress Administration things programs during the Great Depression was to send photographers out into the field. And so we get this character named Cleo who comes to town and she basically finds a magic camera. And when you take a picture of something, it could be the past, could be the future, even theoretically, even possible futures. Possible past. Which is pretty interesting. One of the characters, Harpaletsky, his farm, for whatever reason, is immune to the drought. The Storm. And I think the flood ultimately, too. Or does it flood at the end?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't believe it.

[Snoop Dogg]

Floods.

[Jeff O'Neill]

He does ultimately find himself subject to some of the same things that his neighbors have struggled with, because the fact that he's the lone exception to it, you would think it would be great, like, well, I've got wheat and nobody else does. But he talks about how lonely it is to not be part of this collective difficulty, but also to find yourself the subject of, like, what is he doing differently? What does he know that we don't? Or, why is he special? Or maybe he just thinks he's a hotshot, that his fields are still bearing wheat, his crop is still growing at all over the course of this week, and he looks out at night and sees, like, weird lights glowing from his field. We never really know what that is. There are supernatural things happening in this world, and part of the Karen Russell of it all is that it's not all explained. Like, one of the ways. No, like, one of the ways that I think often literary genre differs from, like, harder versions of genre is that there's not world building in the sense of. Here are the mechanics of training a prairie witch. Here is how they learn to go into their trances. Here's how this quantum camera works. These things just appear in the world, and we take them as given that this is how this functions. The people in this town know about prairie riches. They know about vaults. This is sort of just how it's always been. Nobody's asking too many questions, and you don't need to worry about it too much.

[Snoop Dogg]

And the plot of the novel, I guess one of my eyebrows about it is, could this have been 75 pages shorter and tighter? Because the. The first, the flood, is the sort of instigating action. I'm sorry, not the flood, the storm, the dust storm. And during the storm, Antonia Rossi, the vault, the antidote, loses her ability. Yeah, that's the. That's actually what changes the status.

[Jeff O'Neill]

She goes bankrupt.

[Snoop Dogg]

She goes bankrupt, and so that her deposits are wiped out. Not only can she not access those, she cannot even take in more deposits at this point. And she realizes pretty quickly that that puts her in grave danger. You know, kind of like if your money was in a bank and the bank would belly up. You're certainly pretty mad at the bank manager or the owner of that bank.

[Jeff O'Neill]

People have given you all kinds of sensitive information.

[Snoop Dogg]

Another thing that happens is in the course of realizing this and kind of putting her life back together, she gets approached by a young woman who is harpalecky's niece, Del. Del O lecky, who likes to play basketball with her basketball team, which is some of the charm. There's some charms.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There's some great scenes in this.

[Snoop Dogg]

Driving the bedwetter, the bus across Nebraska. Wants to be taken in as an apprentice witch because she thinks she might have the shine, I guess you would.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Say, in the shine. Or that she could learn.

[Snoop Dogg]

Yeah. And also she can make money. She needs to make some. She needs to get some stuff.

[Jeff O'Neill]

She's got the hustle. Del's got the hustle.

[Snoop Dogg]

Definitely has the hustle. And together they concoct a scheme to continue the vault business. But it's a little bit more great and powerful Oz behind the curtain, Right?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Snoop Dogg]

And that doesn't go super well. Right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And when we meet Antonina, the antidote, she's waking up in the town jail because the sheriff has brought her and we know that he regularly brings her to receive deposits from people who have done something or any variety of things that unfolds over the course of the story as ultimately she fakes receiving a deposit while she's actually hearing about what this sheriff and some of his compatriots have done. So like in the. That's kind of what happens.

[Snoop Dogg]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

In the. They, you know, the dust bowl happens. Her bank is bankrupt. Del is trying to. Serial killer situation, Right? Well, yeah, there is a string of murders and the local sheriff is positioning them as serial killers. Maybe trying to win his next election. Dell is trying to win the local basketball tournament. And at the same time, all of these townspeople are reckoning with the involvement that they've had in what's happening to their land, that they have farmed so much that all of the topsoil is gone. And this is why after a dust storm, things are destroyed. But also when they get these heavy rains, there's nothing to protect their land from that kind of erosion. They're beginning to understand themselves as being complicit in their situations. Antonina is beginning to understand herself as complicit in other things that are going on. And I think we. So we've done the like. What's. What happens. The. What's it about is a like that. It's about the utility of memory and also of forgetting of. Why would people want us to forget? Who benefits when groups of people collectively forget? And what do we do when we understand that? What do you do when you find that you have been complicit in something that you thought you were a victim of, but it turns out you're not the oppressed, you're the oppressor. Or maybe you're both in different situations.

[Snoop Dogg]

Yeah, it's interesting. I can't help but feel, on the whole, I like the book. I didn't read it. I feel like I maybe would have preferred 11 short stories with these characters still, but their own particular version, their own particular journey, because we get all these characters, it takes quite a while to establish them, bring them in, get their backstories, relationship, and then get them all into the same place. There's this climactic town hall meeting, essentially. And then we get people standing up and preaching and saying the point of the book.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I had a hard time.

[Snoop Dogg]

I feel like we could have gotten the message without that. You know, we get the quantum camera, we get the house for unwed mothers. Like, just tell the story straight. And I'm not entirely sure how much the speculative fiction elements helped me. Me.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, that's interesting.

[Snoop Dogg]

Like, is there a version of this story where Del's a pretty compelling character on their own? Cleo is a pretty compar. Compelling character on their own. What? I don't really know what the speculative elements helped us do throughout this.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think I maybe liked the speculative elements more than you did. As we get Antonina especially realizing, like, I guess, sound the spoiler siren.

[Snoop Dogg]

Yes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, yeah, no, but realizing that some of the deposits she's received are functionally confessions of people who have committed terrible crimes. And she did not know what they were telling her before, but now she knows. And so she's been helping this sheriff get away with really bad stuff. Del's. Or it's Harp. Yeah, the uncle. Harp the farmer is also the recipient of his father's deposit. And he learns about his father's experience coming to the US From Poland, being one of the first white settlers in the Midwest. And the information that was and wasn't given to those immigrants about why they were being taken there, how to work with the land or not. They were driven out of Poland in a similar kind of genocide.

[Snoop Dogg]

Otto van Bismarck. Another L for Otto Van Bismarck.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And that he realizes that his father participated in helping to push Native Americans out of the American Midwest in the same kind of system that pushed him out of Europe. And I found some of those speculative elements to be really useful for, like, now you have forgotten. And so how do we wake up to it that everything gets revealed? And it's not just, here's what's been going on, but you have to face that you are part of it.

[Snoop Dogg]

They're mechanisms of Realization. And I think they're interesting in that regard. I just. I think there's versions of that where, I don't know. It could have been done differently. One of my other questions about the book is the Pawnee people who have been displaced but are still around in some. And, you know, we get a map at the end that shows various treaties that were brokered and then ignored and moved farther south into Oklahoma. We do not get a single Pawnee character, voice, or presence, or they're completely gone from this particular story, even as their displacement is so much more proximal to ours at the same time. And again, this is colored a little bit because I just talked to John Hickey about his book Big Chief, where we talked in that book, in our conversations about how these populations are alive. These stories aren't over, whereas this book makes it seem. And a lot of the genocide and violence has been done, but the game isn't over. I mean, it's still going on even today. And for someone. And Russell seems so attentive to bringing in other voices in this book, she must have considered. She either didn't consider having a Pawnee voice in this book or a character or some other kind of perspective, or she did and decided not to do it. And I think both of those are interesting in telling in their own regards. This is about, I guess, to some degree, white guilt about getting in, you know, Indians, as they understand them, off their land. But it doesn't really go anywhere from there. Like, it's sort of, someone says we should be able to do something. There's no answers. We find ourselves in this. You know, I find myself in the present historical moment with similar kinds of questions. I don't feel like this moves the conversation forward about that at all.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's interesting. I think the title of the book really goes to that. Like that she is called the Antidote, but the book is also the antidote. And so the question is, what the antidote to what?

[Snoop Dogg]

To what?

[Jeff O'Neill]

And what is the antidote, then? And clearly the problem at the heart of this for Russell is the forgetting, the individual and collective forgetting of the wrongs that we have done and the ways that we're willing to let other people suffer for what we think is our own good. And we're starting to see the members of the. You know, the town folk here are starting to experience the consequences of their own. They messed around, and now they're finding out, you know, that, like, they took the land. At one point, Harp even just straight up says it, look at what is happening to the soil without roots. We're the children of these crimes of memory. We took this land from the people who know how to care for it. And now not only do we not have land, they don't have land. It hasn't worked out well for anybody. I think Russell is saying the antidote to these problems and also like the antidote to where we are right now in the world with climate change and also cultural conversations and, you know, this rightward swing, frankly, that is attempting to wipe out ways of being and ways of thinking is. Is remembering, is a collective remembering and reckoning with the truth that. That we don't put the unpleasant memories aside. But I also had the same quibble that you had with the last 50 pages, that the book makes its own case, and I thought it made it pretty well. And then you have that town hall meeting where then Harp just says the point of the book.

[Snoop Dogg]

Yeah. And I don't know, you felt a little insulted.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I did, too, but I already got it. I already got that having purposefully forgotten all of these things is a problem and reckoning with them is critical, and that he is just kind of lectures his fellow townspeople about it and thereby is sort of lecturing the reader. I didn't love and I didn't think it was necessary. And I think if I could ask Karen Russell one thing, it would be about that choice.

[Snoop Dogg]

I think my most generous reading of it is that we get the whole speech and then it doesn't work.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right. That's true.

[Snoop Dogg]

That the point is that even if someone says it aloud in plain language, someone who's a trusted member of the community, he's been elected leader of Grange Hall. Right. Even his voice, they do not have ears to hear it. And that part maybe is more contemporary because I think about, you know, we live in Portland, Oregon, and a lot of the things we go to have a land acknowledgment in front of it, which is great. But the question is always, so what?

[Jeff O'Neill]

What is this?

[Snoop Dogg]

Are we done? Are we absolved? Is that the antidote to generations of violence? Because we're still sitting on this land, that we're. What is an acknowledgement do for anybody? I guess because it is remembering. But I think the book maybe turns back on itself. Maybe Wade Russell means. I don't know that land acknowledgments, remembering, documentation, because they're presented pretty good evidence that that's what happened and the serial killer is not who they thought it was. And you know what? It doesn't matter for the Right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That truth does not matter feels very true to the time that we're in right now. And I think maybe that is one of the ways that incorporating these speculative elements makes it easier or more possible to look at. Here's what happens.

[Snoop Dogg]

Even if you had magic showing you what you did wrong, we still wouldn't believe it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Exactly. Yes. And that she's. She kind of walks you up to this place. I think this is actually a quibble I have with, like, a lot of media right now, and I'm seeing it in movies and in some TV shows as well, is that I feel like they don't trust the reader or the viewer as much as we can be trusted to get the point of the thing that, like, I don't need you to say, well, here's the problem. We took the land from the people who know how to care for it. Because she does a beautiful job over the first, like, 350 pages of laying out these things and folding together all of the storylines, that it was just unnecessary to make it so overt. And I think that takes away some of the magic. Like, the pro prose is really, like, crackling and alive in early parts of the book.

[Snoop Dogg]

The early parts of the book, when the characters aren't speaking, it's Russell doing Russell.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Snoop Dogg]

So I think that there's a version of the book. Again, it's a little bit shorter. I don't think this is. Again, we've already sounded the spoiler horn. This is way more happy ending than I would expect. A book about the erasure of Native American people than I would expect. Right. Pretty much everyone we followed kind of.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Gets what they want. And that's. That's like kind of the alternate history of it all, is that you can make the ending different. You can say if we try to remember more. Memory can be a tool of resistance. But also, like, what choice do we have? We have to remember. We have to try and use the tools that we have to try to create change and resistance. And also, it might not work or it might not be enough, but it's the first, like, the first step.

[Snoop Dogg]

I think the version that I find myself returning to is if Harp and Cleo and Del and Antonia, we know they're going into that meeting to lay it all out, but then we end the book there.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Snoop Dogg]

Because that's. Because that's kind of what we're thinking. What would happen if we really just laid it all out there? Because that's all there is to do, I guess. Right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. I wanted that to stay A question.

[Snoop Dogg]

Mark, I think what would actually happen?

[Jeff O'Neill]

What would happen once they go in there and they say everything and they show their evidence, and Cleo's got photos of the sheriff burying a woman's body that he claims the serial killer killed. And now it's just there, you look for yourselves and see. And I think it really does come back to what you were saying about those who have ears to hear and eyes to see. What would happen? Would people do it? And we're seeing, we've been seeing for the last eight or 10 years in our own media that having evidence doesn't seem to matter.

[Snoop Dogg]

And maybe that. Maybe that is the ultimate point, is that the. The remembering feels like that acknowledgement, the remembering. Like, well, you've got to do that, but that's necessary but not sufficient to whatever, wherever it is, the better future for all that. I guess we were all, well, certain of us, I guess I would say, would like to enact. But like this, the. The step after we did this, it sucks.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right?

[Snoop Dogg]

It's ongoing. And as far as I can tell, no one's really made another much of a step past. You're talking like, you know, Coates reparations or something like that. Like, that's kind of as far as this conversation goes. And so a lot of ways, to me, at least, the book feels pretty familiar. Like, as an idea set.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think that's right. And it feels a little more like the last 50 pages make it feel a little more book club friendly.

[Snoop Dogg]

Well, I do wonder about that. Like, I do wonder about.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Because the first 50 pages, one of my notes in the margin on, like, page 20 is like, I am so activated right now. Like, the first chunk of work, you're.

[Snoop Dogg]

Not really sure what's happening.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And it's Karen Russell doing Karen Russell things. And I was like, my heart is beating so fast while I'm sitting here on my couch reading this and trying to get into this world that she's created. And that's the magic of, like, that's the magic of reading. And that's really specifically the magic of Karen Russell. So to make it all said and overt at the end makes it too easy and does some of the work that we should be doing as readers and that I hope authors can trust us to do. And it did feel to me like either Russell was concerned that she wouldn't reach all of the readers if she didn't say it that overtly, or somewhere in the editorial process, somebody gave notes that you really need to say it directly. And Then you could, you know, there's some intern at Random House writing alike. And what did you think about the outcome of this meeting? And how could we. You know, I don't know. I just didn't. I did not love the last 50 pages, but I think it's a. It's a good book. But the way that it ends keeps it from being great in my reading.

[Snoop Dogg]

And people that are you or not you or me may like it better for those reasons. Sure it is. It does resonate more with a. More, I guess I would say a more commercial literary. Commercial upmarket. And we are covetous and protective of the oddballs that we love. And I do not want them to deod themselves.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, right. Exactly. Stay weird. And the rest of the book does stay weird. Like she. It's a pretty ambitious, sprawling book. Like I hear you on. Maybe it could be 75 pages shorter. But also the side quests are kind of great. Like, we don't just know that the antidote was a teen mother. And part of this story is that she doesn't know what happened to the son that she gave birth to. And she's been leaving, like, little breadcrumbs for him around in hopes that as an adult now, he might come find her.

[Snoop Dogg]

And then that all falls away, though. I mean, it sort of gets abandoned.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But we actually, like, go spend some time with her in the home for unwed mothers. We get to go off on, you know, the bedwetter bus while Del is driving her team. And we get to see her have this budding relationship with a team and starting to understand her sexuality. And so Russell's doing some interesting things there with teen girls having relationships with each other in 1935 Nebraska, with no cultural example of what it is to have to be a lesbian functionally, we get Harp's childhood memories. Actually, the book opens with one of Harp's childhood memories and kind of comes back around to it. And I loved that. That feels like the Karen Russell of it all to me, too, that we're gonna go on side quests. I prefer.

[Snoop Dogg]

I want to dwell in those places rather than come back to the central whatever of what's going to happen to the town or how are we going to figure this stuff out.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And those side quests are the kinds of things that a lot of authors like. Well, when we talk about the problems with debut novels, like in lesser hands, those side quests become baggy or distracting or they don't feed into the main narrative. And Karen Russell knows how to hold all of Those things. I was like, okay, we're doing this. We're doing all this ambitious stuff. Stuff. And it all works. And then you get to the last 50 pages and she just says too much.

[Snoop Dogg]

Yeah. And. And I don't know, because it is literary fiction, it doesn't have to abide by the rules of genre trope. But it's pretty weird to have this big serial killer thing and one of the character's parents is killed by it. And we just sort of say, ah, I don't need to know. Why does it matter? I mean. And I guess there's a world that makes sense, but it sort of dropped kind of like this.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Or we don't actually know if her. If Del's mom was killed by the serial killer.

[Snoop Dogg]

Well, we don't know. We don't get any clarity except that the story that was told wasn't it. But we don't get resolution that actually this person was this and this person wasn't. Yeah. I do think is when she's trying to come off of those side quests towards the end that the threads don't form a satisfying tapestry. Which means to me, I'd rather just have the threads.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Snoop Dogg]

Kind of by themselves.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It made me think a lot about. Especially the last episode of Reservation Dogs.

[Snoop Dogg]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And the little bottle vignette episodes where like now we're just gonna do an hour of this mythological story.

[Snoop Dogg]

Right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I. I would have been fine with her doing that or I think maybe the short story or like linked short story collection stories.

[Snoop Dogg]

Because it's sort of almost that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right. Would have served that. Yeah. It's. It just didn't quite come together right. At the very end.

[Snoop Dogg]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's totally worth reading.

[Snoop Dogg]

It is definitely worth reading. And I guess it had a little bit more of. Yeah, I think you're right. That. And I'm not trying to be disparaging about book club books at all because there's.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think it's like our shorthand for more commercial accessible commercial kind of.

[Snoop Dogg]

And it. I guess I'm feeling it pulled its punches ultimately. That's artistically, stylistically, morally. Maybe not. But I. That there were no even side quests where someone saw upon me in the distance doing like even those images of Pawnee are in the quantum camera and they may or may not exist. I just kept finding that such an odd choice to remove that those real people were even as there was a moral. The moral reckoning sort of felt intellectual rather than real because the people were just so pushed to the side. Even still and there's an odd document at the end, too, by someone that Russell consulted. James writing in giving a several page quick overview of the reality of Pawnee people and what they did to try to almost to reintroduce them, acknowledging that they're not in the story. It's very odd.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I think it would have been with the story centering so much on forgetting and the purposes that the government would have to make you forget something, the purposes that individuals and communities have for forgetting. It made sense to me that she centered the story on the characters who are actively forgetting.

[Snoop Dogg]

Right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, centering is fine, but absence at all is extreme. That, like, you don't bump into them. And then there is, like, the characters do go to great pains with Cleo, who's a black character, to point out that, like, there are not many black people in town. But because they all have to live so close together and they have to rely on each other, their lives are more. There's less segregation. At least this is what the white people say. That's what they do say that there's less segregation than you might see in other places. Or, like, folks can't get hung up on race because we all have to depend on each other. Now we don't get to hear a black character confirm.

[Snoop Dogg]

No, no. Notably as an outsider, that that's the case.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I think you're right that it would have been interesting and useful to show some Pawnee characters somewhere in the book. And I also wonder, how would Russell have done that when the Pawnee have not forgotten? They can't forget.

[Snoop Dogg]

They can't forget.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's not available to them, and it certainly wouldn't serve any purpose. So how does that sit next to this reckoning that everyone else is going through?

[Snoop Dogg]

And I think it's an artistic one, that. It's an artistic question that bleeds into sort of our real world. How do we reckon with that? You know? And those. I think those questions are considerably more interesting to me than we should remember what we've done. Okay. Yes, I agree. I'm on board. I've been briefed.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And what next?

[Snoop Dogg]

Or even. Even dwelling with. There is no next. Like, I don't know that, because the next, I think, is so radical that most people can't. I think that one reason that the townspeople are activated in that, you know, it becomes a brawl, like, they're almost lynched, because I think they do kind of skip from the realization of what that means, of what that is, to the moral consequences. We should not. We should leave we should. This is not ours. We are criminals.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right. There's that. I think the harder reality is that, like, we have not come to a way to make reparation because people are not going to agree on one. But the. What next is that you refuse to let that happen again. It's the never again.

[Snoop Dogg]

The never again again of it all. But that doesn't seem to be. It didn't work for that speech. No.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I mean, it's not working right now.

[Snoop Dogg]

It's not working right now either.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But I think that's what Russell is calling us to that if you are really activated, if you are really radicalized by the remembering of what has been done and by being forced to face the true human pain and reality of it, the way you demonstrate that is in refusing to be complicit the next time around, like now that you are aware, you have been complicit in ways that you didn't understand at the time. You can't unsee that. You can't unknow that about yourself. There will be another opportunity to be complicit in something else, especially as a white person in the United States. So there. What do you do in the next time?

[Snoop Dogg]

And maybe, you know, I found it pretty interesting where Harp gets the deposit from his grandfather.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's his dad.

[Snoop Dogg]

His dad. And these cycles of displacement. Right. Where. And again, it's. The penny is polished a bit where that kind of says, like, this is empire. Like the word empire is in there. And this is what does this. I think it's one where if you just tell the story of getting pushed out of Poland by the Germans, I would like to think that an attentive reader such as myself, and you would not find it too difficult to say that is not unlike coming into Nebraska in 1885.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right. Harpe's father, having fresh from Poland, is on the train and encounters his first black person who's a porter on the train. And this is also his first experience with racial caste and hierarchy in the US and he just says on a low rung of the ladder, but higher than the black porter. I felt that new height in my body. And this is part of his confession to the antidote is this recognition. But I want to think as a reader that we're understanding this, that someone who was from a lower social category in his home country and has been pushed out of it comes to the United States, where being white is the currency and is having this encounter with a black person. And there's. I think it's a Show don't tell moment and she tells a little too much there. But the book overall I think worked for me and I would recommend it for the Karen Russell lines. There are just great sentences in descriptions of the planes.

[Snoop Dogg]

And again, as a product of the planes, the tornado S machina, I'm a little over, to be completely honest with you.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You've seen Twister a few too many.

[Snoop Dogg]

Times in wizard of Oz and just there's. You can't have a story set in Nebraska, Canada without one twister making an appearance here. I was also thinking about it in the context of other Great Plains literature because notably Russell is not a Plains native. She's not a Willow Catherine, she's not a William Least Heat Moon. She's, you know, and of course all Depression era Dust bowl set live in the dust cloud. Shadow of grapes, of course.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Snoop Dogg]

Which is. Which is a climate in a book about capital and labor as much as it is here. And another thing that occurred to me while thinking about it is, you know, the what is going on now in the Plains and monocultures and crops in Monsanto's and the climate and really cultural effects of monocultures and industrial scale farming. If there is a wake up call to like all these things sort of already happen all the time. I do the historical fiction part of it. This is one place where I. I think about historical fiction that has a social message as being a little bit attenuated because it always feels like it'd be a bottle episode of the universe. Right. Like, I think it gives the reader distance to say this thing is over. And even like the German to Poland to Poles to Pawnee, it gives us some distance not actually to look around what's going on right now. It's like this is a different story. Another thought I had is what if there's a vault witch in ooze, Nebraska in 2022? Like, what if this is a contemporary story of forgetting? I think it's a much more challenging book writ large.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think so too. I can't remember what the line was, but there's something early in the book that was like, oh, this is going to be about the cycles of forgetting. Because the first 10 pages or so she doesn't tell you what time, like where we are in time. You don't know that it's 1935. So the first little bit bit of the book felt to me like this could be the future. Like this. Is this a dust bowl? Yeah. Like I hadn't read the synopsis about where we are in Time. So we're in this, like, climate crisis, this dust bowl, There's a prairie witch. I don't know where we are. And I would have believed that this is set in the future or even, like, a couple of years from right now. And then to find out that it was 1935 made me think, like, okay, she's taking us back into the past, but she has shown us that it's possible right now and it will be possible again. And so this is basically 100 years ago. Those people are experiencing consequences of forgetting. We are now also experiencing consequences of forgetting. And we're doing the whole cliche, people who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it thing. Like, we are having a climate crisis right now for similar reasons to the crises that they had in 1935, because we haven't gotten any better at reckoning with the truth.

[Snoop Dogg]

Yeah. And I think that phrase doomed to repeat, I think there's an interesting troubling of that if you think about intentionality, where those who forget history have the privilege of repeating it. Right. They get to do the same thing over again. Because if you take, you know, similar dynamics, I mean, there's still Pawnee and native peoples in the plains, and, you know, they're not as proximal as they were to this particular place. But what if the. What if the antidote wakes up and they. Ice detention camp? Speaking of displacement and migrations because of empire and agriculture, the fraud story now is economically incentivizing, with a nod and a wink, people to come from South America and Mexico to work without documentation. And then we wake up one day and decide to be pissed off about that and kick them out when it's convenient for us to do so. And I think those questions would have felt more. The questions here, I think, are important, especially around tawny people, but the always alreadyness of this cycle kind of gets shunted away by being ready years in the past.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think maybe the book is suffering then for Russell, having worked on it for so long.

[Snoop Dogg]

Yeah, maybe.

[Jeff O'Neill]

She says in some of the back matter that there's been a version of this book with her for her entire writing life, that she's been spinning on this idea for. For decades, I guess, and trying to come to a way to write it responsibly. And she's worked with Native writers, and there's all this stuff in the acknowledgments about that, that I wonder, if she hadn't been carrying some, like, dust bowl prairie witch idea around for 20 years, would we have gotten Something a little bit more present and a little more.

[Snoop Dogg]

Alive that gives us. Wasn't this a. I want this peri witch story about a dust bowl. And what's it going to be about? Comes a little bit Leader, possibly.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Or like, you know, if a couple elections had gone differently in the last 20 years. This book looks different and we're. We're reading her through the eyes of where we are right now. But this moment of maybe she wakes up in an ice. Like somebody's writing that book right now.

[Snoop Dogg]

Right. And maybe it's not Karen Russell. I mean, that's fine. In terms of sort of last notes, I think it's a sort of a B B Plush.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think that's right.

[Snoop Dogg]

If you like Karen Russell, I would certainly recommend picking it up. If you've never tried Karen Russell, I.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Would go to Swamplandia, read Swamplandia or the short story collection St. Lucy's Home for Girls.

[Snoop Dogg]

Was that before Swampland?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think it was, yeah.

[Snoop Dogg]

I should have looked up my chronology.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's great. It has some of my favorite stories ever in it.

[Snoop Dogg]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But good, great, wonderful writing.

[Snoop Dogg]

Yeah. The page turning was not the problem, I should say.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And the language. She has fun with language. I have just a couple lines like a festive feeling in the air, like a penny rubbed between two fingers. My favorite here is going to mass at St. Agnieszka. Feels like attending a headache with 50 strangers.

[Snoop Dogg]

All of her ways of describing, like, just. There's almost the writerly challenge of describing the weird air.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Snoop Dogg]

Was always interesting to see her try to tackle. There's about a copper penny at the bottom of a dirty.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, yes. Yeah, that was a good one. A seed is a funny little casket. Bury it and something springs to life. But this also I copied in a couple examples of places that I thought she got a little too saying the thing of, like, if you do not have the power to say no, your yes is meaningless. Like, just don't. Don't say it.

[Snoop Dogg]

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what to say about that. All right. Shoes. Email podcastookriot.com show notes bookriot.com Listen. I'm not looking at anything, Rebecca. Content. I'm looking into the air. I'm going into my vault.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Patreon.com book r cry podcast and then.

[Snoop Dogg]

Also, yeah, check out first edition. Had some good interviews over there. More coming out soon. All right. Is it power nap time?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Power nap time.

[Snoop Dogg]

All right, thanks, everybody.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Thanks so much for listening today. We hope you'll enjoy this excerpt from the audiobook of Last Twilight in Paris by Pam Jenoff.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

1 Louise Henley on Thames, 1953.

[Snoop Dogg]

The.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Fog is rolling in low across the Thames as I shutter the second hand shop on Bell street for the night, the mist weaving its way, tentacle like, into the alley where my bicycle leans against the side of the grey brick building. The sudden gloom seems to signal a change, the start of something ominous. I draw my woolen scarf closer around my neck against the brisk September air, then climb onto the rickety shopper and begin to pedal home. I navigate through the town centre, then left on Hart street and toward the base of Henley Bridge, welcoming the stillness. There's no one out at this late hour to require a greeting or stare at me oddly. When I moved here seven years ago after marrying Joe, the bucolic Oxfordshire town had at first seemed like a haven, a welcome refuge from my mum's dismal flat in South London. Only later would I realize how small the town actually was, how stifling it would become. Ten minutes later I reach home. Our low two story house on the outskirts of town at the end of Orgrave Road is identical to the half dozen others in the row, grey brick with a tiny front yard just large enough for a single rose bush each. It is situated in one of the new housing developments that had been erected hastily after the war. The site had formerly been a crater where a bomb had fallen, and I sometimes breathe deeply and imagine that I can still smell the gunpowder, though the house appears well kept from a distance closer, I can see the little faults even in the near darkness, the cracks at the foundation, a bit of trim around the window that is beginning to fall. I glance at the coal bin and make a mental note to ask Joe to fill it in the morning. Of course, he will be on his third brandy, or perhaps fourth, so he won't remember if I mention it now. Inside, the house is still. Joe is asleep in his chair, reliving the battles he fought as he does every night. His newsboy cap sits on the table and he is still wearing his white dress shirt from his long day at the accountancy firm, sleeves rolled. Joe's auburn hair remains military short, though his face is a bit fuller now with age. I lift the tilted glass gently from his hand and stub out the cigarette, a player's medium in the ashtray. Though I worry about him drinking too much, I don't begrudge him the temporary escape liquor provides at least he drinks at home, bottles purchased from the off license rather than getting pissed at the Old Bell or one of the other pubs like some men in town do, staying until closing or even later for a lock in and stumbling home at all hours, embarrassing their wives. I touch his cheek, then nudge him gently. Go up to bed, dear. Joe rouse himself, mumbling unintelligibly before shuffling off. I watch with a pang of sadness as he retreats. Joe had served in the British army during the war and had spent more than four years on the ground in active combat. Lucky, some call him, because he was never captured or even wounded. I can see the scars brought on by living under that kind of strain, though, watching friend after friend killed, never knowing if each day would be his last. Neither Joe nor I had ever talked in detail about what either of us had done during the war. It lies silent and unspoken between us. A Dark divide My mind reels back to the other day when the children had been playing hospital. They were using an old gauze bandage, wrapping it around a doll. Seeing this, Joe, usually so even tempered, had become distraught. You're wasting medical supplies. He cried. Don't you know that some people don't have enough of those? His eyes had been wide with horror as he surely remembered men bleeding out when there hadn't been bandages to save them. I had taken his arm. It's okay. That's just an old scrap of cloth. It really can't be used for anything else. His eyes seemed to clear then. Yes, of course. Sorry. He retreated, his old calm returning, but I could see in that moment the deep places where he hid his anger and pain. Eight years have passed since the war ended and Joe came home far longer than he was over there. Time to get on with it, stiff lipped English folks seem to say, and Joe has gotten on with it, putting his bravest face on to mask the pain. He goes to work and keeps the garden neat and pays the bills, everything that a good husband and father is supposed to do. Only I'm close enough to see the scars that will never fully heal, and I wish there was more I could do to help him. I walk to the kitchen and pick up an empty packet of crisps from the counter, left there by one of the children, no doubt. I consider being annoyed and then decide it isn't worth the trouble. I move around, cleaning and straightening. It is late and I'm exhausted. Tidying up might have waited until morning, but my own childhood had been a never ending stream of empty beer bottles and unkempt rooms, and I don't want that for my family. I simply cannot rest unless things are in order. When I've set the kitchen to rights, I walk into the living room and sit down by the low table to work on the jigsaw puzzle that Joe gave me for Christmas, depicting a lovely image of the Welsh countryside in summer. I pick up a piece and study the jagged, half done puzzle, finding a spot and trying it. The piece snapped satisfyingly into place. That is the thing I love most about puzzles. Something that moments earlier had made no sense at all now fits. I reach for another piece. I should go to sleep, I know, but these few minutes of solitude are worth more. Five minutes later, I tear myself away from the puzzle and start upstairs in the nursery, a fancy word for the children's shared room, which is just large enough for two single beds. The twins, Ewan and Fedra, are sleeping soundly. I pick up a Beano comic from the floor and place it on the nightstand. Winnie the Pooh lies open, spine up, and I regret not making it back to read to them before bedtime. I normally only work when the children are at school, wanting to be home for them in the afternoons and evenings. Joe doesn't mind my helping at the shop as long as it doesn't interfere with taking care of the house and children. But Midge had asked a favor. Something came up and she was called away suddenly. Could I stay and close up and straighten things for the night? So I'd left dinner and Joe agreed to put the children to bed. At first I'd worried whether he could manage it, but despite his demons, Joe is good at being there when I need him to be.