The Spleen and the Vowel

Page 18 American Book Review The Spleen and the Vowel Kim Chinquee couldn’t buy masks, so we did other things to disguise ourselves instead. My brother made his bones stand out and assumed a jaundiced shade. My mother’s hair fell away. Then some of her teeth fell out too. A policeman helped her nose go nice and crooked. I wore sores. We disguised ourselves as weaker than we were. Both wise and unwise, the young woman is a lone steel-toed survivor. Konar provides a lively cast through the eyes of the unnamed young woman. The young woman’s father, a vitamin-making nurse, nurtures everyone but the young woman and her half brother; the narrator considers this brother an overachiever: “He seems to prefer the illustrated version of things, the saturated mock-ups of real life organizations such as the spleen and the vowel .”And when threatened by the brother and father’s developing relationship, this protagonist latches onto a sketchy character from the street, imagining the woman as a “step-in” brother, and the protagonist asserts her control, telling the woman to act the way in which she’d want her brother to behave. Later in the book, our anonymous protagonist latches onto Mr. Smudge, justifying her existence by making herself a martyr, thinking she has to save others: “The kids that I’ll save, they’ll thank me.” Equally, she is aware of Mr. Smudge’s nature, coming of age with her keen sensibilities: But I can’t fool myself into believing he’d be a good father. He makes me think about things that I’d rather not. Like certain facts. Like how, sometimes, when you become an adult, you’re no longer a child. You put away your childish things until you have nothing left, and that’s when you start hurting people, that’s when you start stabbing them in the back and telling them you’re down in the mouth, because there’s nothing like fighting with nothing to make a person feel alive, except for maybe, touching them where they don’t want to be touched. Konar is somehow convincing, mastering the believability in this absurd, wretched tale. And yet, in its wretchedness, Konar underlines this world with bits of hope and humor, making it bearable, livable, and in ways delightful and pleasant. For instance, the father makes a splashing entrance in the book in such a quirky, bizarre way, begetting wit: a man walks in. This is my father…. I don’t know why he doesn’t want to look at me but I figure it might have something to do with my face. He can probably tell that while people touched me I had to think of something else, and so I thought of him, and I didn’t know what he was like so I made it all up…. Later in the scene, when the father finally speaks, he tells the young woman he ran a red light, and the woman replies, “How red was it?” Affinity Konar makes a smashing debut in this quirky original coming of age tale. With a language so unique, this version of a young woman’s life is illuminating and bold, defying all sentiment. In portraying a story of a young protagonist’s search for her identity, and a longing for motherly love, Konar takes us on a worthwhile journey. Though mostly bleak and sometimes wretched, Konar’s version is a book of promise, a stunning illustration. Kim Chinquee is the author of Oh Baby (Ravenna Press), the forthcoming collection Pretty (White Pine Press), and is co-editor of the forthcoming anthology Online Writing: Best of the First Ten Years (Snowvigate Press). She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and a Henfield Prize, and lives in Buffalo, New York. Affinity Konar invents a language of her own in her debut novel The Illustrated Version of Things. Original, affecting, and raw, the words and syntax vividly illustrate a young woman’s longing for her mother. The unnamed protagonist, having grown up in foster homes, mental hospitals, and juvenile homes, with a half-brother (who she sometimes calls Moses, sometimes Miguel), lives...