The experience of reading Natasha Stagg’s new, unsparing and emotionally raw coming-of-age novel, “Grand Rapids,” made me realize that I may have an overly nostalgic, too rosy view of the coming-of-age genre.
I suppose this view is colored by my memories of my favorite coming-of-age novels of my youth, such as “Bridge to Terabithia” and “A Separate Peace.” While dark and tragic things happen in those books, my impression, carried forward over time, is that the protagonists emerged from these trials indelibly but appropriately scathed. The challenges of youth are inevitable, but there is also something like a payoff in adulthood once they are weathered.
This is nostalgia speaking.
“Grand Rapids” opens in the early, post-Sept. 11 aughts with 15-year-old Tess living with her aunt, uncle and cousins according to the wishes of her mother, who has recently died of cancer. Tess’s father had already been absent for years, and Aunt Norma and Uncle John are financially stable, fine church folk with sons who will grow up to be pillars of the community.
But Tess is slowly collapsing from grief. She has spent the first part of her life in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and finds Grand Rapids strange and alienating, and so seeks a kind of alien/outcast status for herself. Her best friend is Candy, a magnetic but volatile presence with an older sister and “cool guy” father who almost seems worse than absent. Tess and Candy graduate from Robitussin highs to harder stuff and hang out with boys who are much more like men. At the same time, Tess is doing OK in school, and has a job at a somewhat dispiriting old folks home with an apparent “Cuckoo’s Nest” vibe.
The narration is sharp and specific — Tess’s senses are alive — but also resolutely matter-of-fact in terms of its emotional register. This technique effectively recreates the experience of Tess’s grief as she tries to live in this strange place with her mother’s presence confined to her memories and a diary Tess receives from her aunt at the book’s opening.
The chapters are short and episodic, sometimes long enough to establish a scene or series of events, but sometimes consisting of short reflections, which reveal early on that Tess is telling her story retrospectively from adulthood to a specific person in response to their asking, “Where are you from?” Tess explains her motive for the telling to this unseen, unknown audience, “When I told you where I’m from, you made a face I’ve seen before, and it revolted me. I can see you tidying up my background, my youth, in a phrase, and no matter what it may be — working class, suburban, white trash, middle America — it doesn’t work.”
The adult Tess is insisting that the specifics matter, that our coming of age is more than a tidy parable around growth, and that maybe coming of age is something of a lie.
Over time, the episodes accrue relentlessly moving forward toward a foretold second death — after her mother’s — as we pay witness to a young girl engaging self-destructive behaviors that do not make for pleasant reading but feel true and powerful. We know from the book’s structure that Tess is alive to tell the tale, and at least to some degree living a reasonably successful adult life, but it’s also clear that she is accruing very real physical and emotional scars.
As the reader, we are privy to Tess’s fullest reconsideration of what it means to be from somewhere, to be amongst a particular set of people in a particular period of time and to live to tell the tale.
John Warner is the author of books including “More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI.” You can find him at biblioracle.com.
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “North Woods” by Daniel Mason
2. “Moon Tiger” by Penelope Lively
3. “The History of Love” by Nicole Krauss
4. “I Am Homeless If This is Not My Home” by Lorrie Moore
5. “What We Can Know” by Ian McEwan
— John E., Chicago
I think John E. needs a book that’s at least a little bit “thinky”: “No One Is Talking About This” by Patricia Lockwood.
1. “The Evening of the Holiday” by Shirley Hazzard
2. “Flesh” by David Szalay
3. “Dream Life of Astronauts” by Patrick Ryan
4. “Palaver” by Bryan Washington
5. “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny” by Kiran Desai
— John S., Chicago
I’m hoping to introduce John S. to the Patrick Melrose novels of Edward St. Aubyn, which kick off with “Never Mind.”
1. “The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth” by Zoë Schlanger
2. “Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers” by Caroline Fraser
3. “The Mother Next Door” by Tara Laskowski
4. “Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy” by Mary Roach
5. “The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald” by John U. Bacon
— Mary Beth N., Aurora
I’m going to have to go with some narrative nonfiction here, which takes me to one of my favorites from last year, “Children of Radium” by Joe Dunthorne.
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.
