Resumo de Mouthing The Words

During the development of a creative writer, the habitual routines and methods of the author reveals their idiosyncracies. Writers like Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Woolfe were found to write most of their stories standing up. For others, its the editing process that engages in the physical reconstructions of their work. Where Michael Ondaatje will cut and paste with scissors and scotch tape in the preliminary stages, Eudora Welty will pin her work together into a giant map size document. But the most common of eccentric traits for writers - is the desire for seclusion. The need for isolation from all distraction is necessary in order to compose undisturbed. Much like Camilla Gibb, who found solace in a trailer on the sandy shore of Lake Ontario. With nothing more than a box full of cash and a laptop plugged into a diminutive stove, can this type of experience be what contributes to the essence of successful writing?

During the summer of 1997, Gibb concealed herself in isolation from all distraction to work on her debut novel. Alone in a trailer with nothing more than food and a laptop, the words of the magician reminded her she was left with no excuses. Gibb sought literary solitude for a season in that trailer, with the rest of her life outside completely on hold - to write. This forced seclusion of literary hibernation allowed Gibb to delve into the bowels of her memories and muses, to develop a narrative that would three years later award her with the Toronto Book Award. After spending months in isolation, you have to wonder; what did Gibb have to say ? What was she in such desperation to reveal to the world?

Mouthing the Words is a harrowing portrayal that reveals a darkness that exists in a child?s life. Elements of abuse come from an alcoholic father along with the neglect from her mother. These traits appear traditional in comparison to little Thelma?s world of the second grade, where she knew the taste of daddy?s ?smoky tongue in mouth.?? Your attention is immediately taken and you are left to watch a five year old grow through childhood with imaginary friends - one is named heroin, without an e. Thelma proceeds to grow through physical expressions like forms of puberty; anorexia, self mutilation, depression, and as far as borderline schizophrenia. These syndromes proceed to mouth the words of what she has been thwarted to say all along. Gibb writes Thelma?s story without the romanticized light at the end of the tunnel. Instead there is a doctor with a pen light checking the pulse of an anorexic eighteen year old who spends summers in delirium, with an I.V. in her arm, screaming in her head ?but I do know how to swallow, I?ve had years of practice.?? Gibb sinks into a first person narrative in similarity to Dostoevsky or Faulkner, written with the same lucid stream of consciusness to mellow extreme drama. The story lapses simultaneously into memories of the past, fears of the future, and the reality permanently trapped in the mind of a victim. This writer presses her audience into crossing the grotesque boundaries most of us never wander, where Gibb insists to invite the reader in. Watch for Camilla Gibb?s third novel, Sweetness in the Belly, released in March 2005.

Resumos Relacionados