Sometimes, I like reading creative nonfiction because I can imagine myself in the story that the author is telling. I don’t have Robert Macfarlane’s physical courage, but even though I would never swim in the ocean in the Outer Hebrides, as he does in The Wild Places, I can imagine doing it—not enjoying it, but doing it. But other times, the experiences that the author describes are so alien to me that I cannot imagine them. Adrienne Gruber’s luminous essays in Monsters, Martyrs, and Marionettes are that kind of writing. Pregnancy, childbirth, motherhood: these are experiences from another world, or at least another body. That’s one of the reasons I like this book so much. I want to learn about things I would otherwise never understand. Like Adrienne’s daughters, I want to witness it all.
Adrienne and I are in the same writers’ group, which meets on Zoom every month or so, which means I read some of these essays in draft form. How amazing it is to see how they have changed and developed. I wish I could write like this—that I could find the poetic associations Adrienne does between, for instance, an old car and the tired body of a mother after the birth of her third child. And I’m inspired by her frank honesty. As I read these essays on the first leg of my flight to Halifax, I realized how much my own writing has been influenced by Adrienne’s. I aspire to write this beautifully, this bravely. I hope I get there eventually.
I should’ve read this book on Mother’s Day, rather than on Father’s Day, but better late than never.