The Thrill of Victory and the Agony of Defeat

Sep 29, 2019 Book Review…, News

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Book: Where There are Monsters
Author: Breanne Mc Ivor
Critic: Glenville Ashby, PhD

Breanne Mc Ivor delivers the most damning diagnosis of the human condition with quiet and ease, a subtlety that belies the urgency of her message. Her tales unwind seamlessly, some are literal, others abstruse and cryptic.
‘Ophelia’, a tale of unrequited love comes to mind, and so too, ‘Red’ and ‘The Course,’ all teeming with the ghosts of repressed minds. In the former, pathology is turned inward, an edgy, destructive kind of narcissism that screams for professional help.
The narrator is blinded by darkness, recalling her episodic struggles, convincing herself that she “wasn’t a fully functioning human being.”
The past and the present merge. “…I reach out to pick up the glass,” she recalls, “but then I see the scars on my wrist and I remember the last time I hurt myself. I’d thought it was a good idea then, too. I’d talked to myself and I thought that logically, I was making the right choice.”
In the ‘Present’, guilt surfaces, haunting the living, robbing them of innocence.
“Surely, someone “cut out to be a mother” would have defended a new baby growing inside her and not let her husband drive her to one of his gynecologist friends…She wouldn’t have lain back on the table, let them pull her feet apart with stirrups and numb her body so that she couldn’t even feel the baby leaving.” She must now pull down his picture from the wall, remove the constant reminder of the deceased, as if he were still in control.
Mc Ivor’s characters never grapple for attention. Still there are inner monsters stirring the senses, leaving their imprint on the imagination.
It is in Trinidad’s diverse mosaic that McIvor crafts her narratives, mixture of existentialism and humanism. Amid life’s many vagaries, there are no guarantees. Behind the façade of privilege, there is triangulation, fractured childhoods, irrepressible conflicts and parental guilt that strain resolution, if only it were that easy.
And in the tempestuous streets in ‘Ophelia,’ the bad areas where life can be snuffed out like a candle in the wind, dreams struggle for reality and “bullets [open] a hundred eyes in the body and each one weeps blood.” Marcus, the protagonist begs for answers, “Jesus, f—k. Don’t I deserve at least one parent who isn’t a piece of sh—t?”
In Mc Ivor’s world, monsters do live, more as permanent residents than mere figments of the mind. These residents wreak havoc on the body, forcing them to suspend reason, to seek answers in the most unlikely of places. “The Course” best exemplifies this. Folklore and the phantasmagoric are the go-to option when the characters become unhinged by the weight of despair. Caution is thrown to the wind, as curative credentials are conferred upon strangers. Magic and superstition take hold.
Everywhere, there is enough psychopathology to go around, be it self- immolation, self-loathing, social anxiety, mania or delusions. And for good measure, Mc Ivor’s male characters are, for the most part, wanting, overly selfish, abusive and abrasive. And there is a fair share of irony; all is not as it seems.
Here, love is encrusted with duplicity and selfishness. Feelings are repressed only to hemorrhage after the dead are long interred. And unrequited love, so promising despite the odds, never bears fruit, eviscerated by unseen forces.
For some, like Indira in ‘Never have I ever,’ “the real horror is having what you wanted, but not quite being able to keep it,” a statement markedly evident in the tragic ‘Kristoff and Bonnie.’
Not all love is marred, though. There is much to be said for filial piety and vicarious love; the love of a mother, in particular, selflessly endures. This is evident in ‘The Boss,’ where the doggedness of a boy to succeed, helped by his mother, pays dividends.
Surely, some thrive amid the cacophony of despair; ambitious crafty and intuitive they are determined to emerge from the cesspool of poverty. In “The Boss,” the resilience of the protagonist grows and he is willing to stand his ground against his stepfather, ever sealing his bond with his mother. He is the antithesis of the lead character in “Ophelia,” a young man seemingly blighted by circumstances despite his dreams of theatre and romance.
And we are served with the irrepressible “Pembroke Street,” a wistful tale that captures the permanence of change. Amid memories of a torrid affair in a time that closeted gays, life proves to be an ever morphing organism bending and shaping us to its liking. Decades bring changes, not only to our bodies, but to the places we once knew so well.
‘Where there are Monsters’ is a deftly crafted work. It paints an indelibly dark picture of human existence, of lifetimes spent struggling for identity and relevance. But the will to survive manages to outpace every hovering shadow. Indeed, there is light in every darkness.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

Feedback: [email protected] or follow him on Twitter@glenvilleashby
© 2019 Breanne Mc Ivor
Where there are Monsters by Breanne Mc Ivor
Publisher: Peepal Tree
ISBN 13: 9781845234362
Available at Amazon
Ratings: Recommended

 

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