CARRYING THE BODY

A virtually unreadable debut novella by O, The Oprah Magazine editor Raffel (short fiction: In the Year of Long Division, 1995).

The story is basically about an unhappy family: Elise (usually referred to as “the mother”) returns to the childhood home she had run away from years earlier with her lover (referred to as “the lover”). She returns without the lover, however, bringing instead her sickly son James (usually referred to as “the boy”), who is not in very good shape at all. Elise’s own mother (referred to as “Mother”) died some years before, and while her father (“the father”) is still alive, he doesn’t get around much anymore and the place is kind of a dump. Elise’s sister (always called “the aunt”) is still around, and she looks after the boy while Elise pokes around the house looking for something she seems to have left behind. The aunt is a drunk, and at night she settles down with her nipper of gin and tells the boy a meandering version of the “Three Little Pigs” that becomes stranger and more meandering each night. There are long descriptions of the house—a once very grand house, apparently, built by the father—that make it sound very ominous and creepy. There are also long stretches of pointless dialogue (“ ‘Please,’ said the child.” / “ ‘No,’ said the aunt.” / “ ‘Drink?’ said the child. ‘Some?’ ” / “ ‘Not for you,’ the aunt said” / “ ‘Want it,’ the child said.” / “ ‘This isn’t what you think it is.’ ” / “ ‘Juice?’ ” / “ ‘No juice,’ said the aunt. ‘This is gin’ ”) that sound like the cuttings from David Mamet’s floor, while the narration is sonorous and deliberately overwrought (“The place was not the aunt’s. Suppose, for the sake of argument, the place was the father’s”). The ending, which doesn’t really make clear what Elise was looking for or whether she makes peace with her family, doesn’t succeed in making much sense of the proceedings.

Rambling and obscure, this ultimately incoherent story never convinces you of the pertinence (much less importance) of the events it describes.