31 May / Vanishing Monuments by John Elizabeth Stintzi [in Booklist]
The novel’s narrator answers, under certain circumstances, to Alani, Al, Allie, Annie, Sofia, even Hedwig or Hedy, although the latter two are names belonging to the narrator’s mother. For the last 27 years, parent and child have been estranged, since a 17-year-old Alani ran away from Winnipeg with girlfriend Genny to Minneapolis, never intending to go back.
In middle age, Alani is comfortable (enough), settled in a little house across the street from Genny, teaching as a local “visiting professor” who has never left, hired despite having nothing more than a GED, and currently enjoying national recognition as an unconventional photographer. Now, mother lies in a care facility, her dementia having erased her past and, recently, even her voice. Alani is pulled to return, to confront the “memory palace,” their home before the schism, a house that still holds within its walls too much dysfunction, dislocation, and loss.
Ontario-born, Missouri-based nonbinary poet John Elizabeth Stintzi makes their fiction debut, leading Alani room by room through a stifling labyrinth, surviving madness and memory to somehow, maybe, emerge, finally, whole.
Review: “Fiction,” Booklist, May 1, 2020
Readers: Adult
Published: 2020