by Corrine Watson
September 2, 2021
Corrine Watson is a freelance writer and editor based in Charlotte, NC with her baby dragon, Ophelia. Corrine enjoys writing speculative fiction that hovers on the edges of reality and dares to dip into the mysterious. Keep up with Corrine on Twitter @CorrineWatson6
What Isn't Remembered by Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry; University of Nebraska Press; 266 pages; $19.95
Winner of the The Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry’s short story collection, What Isn’t Remembered, is packed with striking prose depicting the complexities of loss and self-discovery. In these sixteen stories, we often find characters at their worst. They’re at the peak of grief or the precipice of change, and Gorcheva-Newberry captures the characters’ journey to self-discovery through their reflections of the past and longing for a better future in ways that feel universally human.
Whether through death or separated families, the characters grieve for the loss of loved ones as well as their own past life. While the loss is felt, the stories never feel tragic as the author gives us a sense that there is always more waiting for the characters. The death of a parent, sibling, or friend is often the inciting action that moves the plot, but we also see things in the aftermath as the characters move on with their own lives. In the opening story, “Boys of Moskva River,” we meet Leova who is grieving after the murder of his older brother. Far from his mother’s favorite, Leova reckons with his identity as he reflects on his father who abandoned the family before he was born and his brother whose shoes he’s been left to fill. He describes falling into his brother’s inherited lifestyle as putting on an “ill-fitted glove.” It’s clear that as he compares himself to his brother and looked up to him as a child, but Leova must come to grips with his disillusionment to pursue his own goals and care for the family his father and brother abandoned. This story sets the tone and theme for the collection as it depicts some of the ways that identity can be influenced by family and situation, but through growth and self-discovery Gorcheva-Newberry shows how these characters can forge their own path.
While death has a sense of finality and form, the author also explores the complexities of lost desire. We see characters falling in and out of love and losing desire for things that were once pillars of their lives. Although they grieve for what was lost, they struggle to reshape themselves. In “Lullaby for My Father,” a man feels disconnected from his culture and family and struggles to find belonging. After two years of being divorced, his wife has remarried and his children have found happiness without him. Although he feels like an outsider, there is no bitterness in this story and he says he’s “...happy and heartbroken, which was like unrequited love – a confluence of pain and desire.” This gives the story a sense of loneliness as we see how these unrequited feelings are less directed towards people but for the person he could never be for them and the life he could never have.
While connected by Russian heritage and immigration, the characters often feel rootless in the way that they have little desire to identify with their new home, while also acknowledging that they have no desire to return to their home country. This lack of grounding is also reflected in the characters’ personal lives as they struggle with the abandonment or separation of parents or spouses. Rather than beginning these stories at the moment of separation, Gorcheva-Newberry introduces us to the aftermath to show how the wounds never quite heal and the hole left in their lives cannot be filled. After her estranged mother’s return in “No Other Love,” Helen can’t help but feel the same anger and betrayal towards her mother that she did when she was a child. While her mother steps into the role of a grandmother seamlessly, Helen becomes jealous and threatened by the bond her mother forms with her daughter. As she reflects on her childhood, Helen becomes disconnected from her own life and acts in ways that seem self-sabotaging until she ultimately follows in her mother’s footsteps.
Packed with vibrant imagery and style, Gorcheva-Newberry structures the emotional complexities of these narratives in ways that linger with the reader. Throughout the collection the author illustrates the nuances of self-discovery through melancholic and often frustrating characters. Readers will find familiarity in these stories as the collection brilliantly captures how identities and desires develop and shift and how the pangs of grief linger with us over time.
©2021 West Trade Review
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Loss, Longing, and Self-Discovery in Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry's
What Isn't Remembered
FICTION REVIEW
Image by Luigi Boccardo on Unsplash
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