Ha!! I knew it! 😊 (Very satisfying reveal.) Love the sensory detail of hearing the scratch of the pencil on canvas as a young child. This sentence blew me away: "My mother was standing at the center of this void and summoning from it a world so flawless and intricate that it made the room and everything in it, including me, seem like a primitive sketch, unfinished and inconsequential." And this one is so pitch-perfect for a resentful teenager, I LOL'd: "I had a compulsive urge to shout to the class that this brilliant artist watched about a million hours of television, never went anywhere, and preferred a bag of Doritos to about any other food." Beautiful evocation of what it's like to have a famous artist for a parent - that sense of competition. Bravo! 👏
You were ahead of the curve, my friend. I'm glad this reveal landed so well with you. The novel shifts a lot from this inflection point. The narrator is now fully a part of the story though she will try not to be. Thank you for being here and for the kind words, Julie.
I’m made very happy by this reveal. And I’m again so impressed by how committed you are to keeping Kelly so totally imperfect. It makes me love her so much more.
That’s why I love her so much, because I so deeply relate to her imperfection! And, I might argue that writing imperfection well is actually really rather difficult… I don’t often see it so perfectly captured
The sentence about being the child of an artist, you’re always competing with the art made me pause. My son Ives is an artist. He once said he didn’t know if he wanted children because to succeed at art you had to give it everything. Perhaps his way of articulating what Ben said in just a few words!
That sentence is so unassuming and loaded. The artist-parent relationship is such complicated territory. I’m interested to see how it goes forward from here!
Thanks, Stephanie. It is indeed a complicated thing to balance. I don’t think I did a very good job most days. When I’m being less generous, I feel like I split myself down the middle and never gave my all to either my art or my kids. But the truth is we are elastic and expand to make room for everything we love.
Dare I posit that giving all to either children or art isn’t something most people end up actually doing, even without kids or without the art; perhaps I’ll even go so far as to say nor should we?! But what the balance is and how to manage it is probably the ongoing question. I guess we just keep trying, as you so beautifully put it, to make room for everything we love.
Hey Sheri, I thought I responded to this earlier. Apologies. Ives is wise beyond his years. I think it’s very hard to give a child the kind of attention they need and still have enough gas in the tank to be a serious artist. Thanks so much for staying with the story.
This makes so much sense Ben, that Marabelle is both daughter and the narrator of the story!
But I feel sad for her, she carries a deep melancholy in her narrative now; that she felt inadequate compared to Kellys work, that the paintings she worked on gained more attention, that days could pass without conversation even when she was tiny, all this must weigh heavily... I wonder how this will roll out in the rest of the story, even though Marabelle intends to remain in the background?
Ha!! I knew it! 😊 (Very satisfying reveal.) Love the sensory detail of hearing the scratch of the pencil on canvas as a young child. This sentence blew me away: "My mother was standing at the center of this void and summoning from it a world so flawless and intricate that it made the room and everything in it, including me, seem like a primitive sketch, unfinished and inconsequential." And this one is so pitch-perfect for a resentful teenager, I LOL'd: "I had a compulsive urge to shout to the class that this brilliant artist watched about a million hours of television, never went anywhere, and preferred a bag of Doritos to about any other food." Beautiful evocation of what it's like to have a famous artist for a parent - that sense of competition. Bravo! 👏
You were ahead of the curve, my friend. I'm glad this reveal landed so well with you. The novel shifts a lot from this inflection point. The narrator is now fully a part of the story though she will try not to be. Thank you for being here and for the kind words, Julie.
Agreed — a satisfying reveal!
I’m so glad it worked out.
I’m made very happy by this reveal. And I’m again so impressed by how committed you are to keeping Kelly so totally imperfect. It makes me love her so much more.
I’m good at writing imperfection. That’s not hard to do when you’re imperfect. :-)
That’s why I love her so much, because I so deeply relate to her imperfection! And, I might argue that writing imperfection well is actually really rather difficult… I don’t often see it so perfectly captured
The sentence about being the child of an artist, you’re always competing with the art made me pause. My son Ives is an artist. He once said he didn’t know if he wanted children because to succeed at art you had to give it everything. Perhaps his way of articulating what Ben said in just a few words!
That sentence is so unassuming and loaded. The artist-parent relationship is such complicated territory. I’m interested to see how it goes forward from here!
Thanks, Stephanie. It is indeed a complicated thing to balance. I don’t think I did a very good job most days. When I’m being less generous, I feel like I split myself down the middle and never gave my all to either my art or my kids. But the truth is we are elastic and expand to make room for everything we love.
We are elastic! True.
Dare I posit that giving all to either children or art isn’t something most people end up actually doing, even without kids or without the art; perhaps I’ll even go so far as to say nor should we?! But what the balance is and how to manage it is probably the ongoing question. I guess we just keep trying, as you so beautifully put it, to make room for everything we love.
Hey Sheri, I thought I responded to this earlier. Apologies. Ives is wise beyond his years. I think it’s very hard to give a child the kind of attention they need and still have enough gas in the tank to be a serious artist. Thanks so much for staying with the story.
“I’ll do my best to disappear back into the telling.” …something tells me she doesn’t even know yet how impossible a task that will be?
You might be right about that. Thanks for reading, Kimberly.
This makes so much sense Ben, that Marabelle is both daughter and the narrator of the story!
But I feel sad for her, she carries a deep melancholy in her narrative now; that she felt inadequate compared to Kellys work, that the paintings she worked on gained more attention, that days could pass without conversation even when she was tiny, all this must weigh heavily... I wonder how this will roll out in the rest of the story, even though Marabelle intends to remain in the background?