What I do is search carcasses for something like meaning or hope or redemption. Hoping that in decaying bodies I will find an answer or a reason, that in the digging of holes and dropping in of bodies I will know what death is. That it might become a friend.
--Susan E. Wadds
I bought this book because I know Susan. We were in several workshops together with a fantastic writing teacher named Barbara Turner-Vesselago. I always liked Susan’s writing, so when I ran into her at Bookapalooza I picked up this book. It’s a page turner, clichéd as that sounds. It’s also a painful read, and topical. It’s about a woman in her late thirties named Brett who is grappling with an illness, an inability to commit to a present relationship, the echoes of a predator from childhood and the loss of family members. Oh, she also drives a snow plough and cleans up roadkill with a cryptic and wise indigenous driver. It’s full of indigenous lore, which if you know Susan she comes by honestly as she had an indigenous partner and has a mixed race a son. It’s a lot for one book, and yet she’s so skilled as a writer, the words flow effortlessly, the traffic jam of this woman’s life is completely understandable and it’s sexy and tactile and written in a prose so lush, you want to read the words out loud. It bravely explores the conflicting and inappropriate cornucopia of feelings victims can sometimes feel about their perpetrators. Also how brainwashed they can be.
What the Living Do continues the important public conversation that was started with Alice Munro’s daughter, Andrea Skinner’s reveal this summer, about what it’s like to come forward with allegations of abuse when surrounded by a culture of denial and the long lasting effects of such events. A subject close to my heart. This book should be on everyone’s TBR list. But of course, I am biased.
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