I was inspired suddenly, at two-something in the morning, to write a blurb of a novel I have yet to put into existence. It feels so real to me. It is like a sleeping child that will one day grow older. I will make this tangible, one day.
The title of it, is called, “STORIES TO TELL OUR KIDS.” I hope you’ll enjoy it. Feel free to leave any points of constructive criticism.
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“STORIES TO TELL OUR KIDS,” manifests itself as a non-fiction hybrid, sketching a portrait of the seemingly-mundane life of a twenty year old named Claire. She retells, in skin-touching detail and breathtaking clarity, her whimsical and capricious experiences around the globe. Told in either first or third person, her unconventional writing style of quirky vignettes, prosetry and short stories strewn together as an unpredictable collage induces any reader into her metaphysical and lucid reality. She finds this comparable to the rhythm of a brief summer rainstorm, or the sensation of standing in the midst of an unpredictable wind.
Haruki Murakami, her most reveled, fiction-writing muse, puts this exact feeling into words: “It’s hard to tell the difference between sea and sky. Between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart” (Kafka on the Shore).
In no particular order her tales consist of metaphors and similes rooted in simplicity. They are cherished old photographs at the bottom of a drawer. Claire’s voice wields emotion like a great river. Running the length of the Garden State Parkway, through the intimate stretches of time etched between herself and her true love; It runs north to Montreal, a city of shimmering chartreuse and marigold scents and across the Mediterranean, where paper-skinned grandmothers smile toothless in stone villages on the Mars-like surface of Crete. Wearing the soles of her mother’s worn shoes, she finds herself traversing her heritage along the clear-water coasts of the tiny Philippine island of Coron. This is her unending adventure.
At the end of each day, Claire will watch the sky grow heavy in its tangerine succulence. And in this sweetness, wherever she may be, she will daydream of small children to lovingly tuck into sleep.
“These,” Claire will whisper to her lover, “are the stories to tell our kids.”
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