SIMONE IN PIECES

“Do you think it is possible to write a life of anyone? I doubt it, because people are all over the place.”

Burroway opens her latest with this epigraph from Virginia Woolf, then rises to the challenge, telling the life of a woman who is very much all over the place, employing an approach equally wide-ranging. In chapters spanning the years from 1940 to 2000, visiting locations in Belgium, England, and the U.S., using a whole orchestra of first- and third-person narrators as well as epistolary chapters, Burroway follows the trajectory of Simone Lerrante from orphaned World War II refugee through established American academic to Florida coastal retiree. We first see her through the eyes of one of the crew on the trawler that picks her up offshore in Ostend, Belgium: “Skinny as a rail she was, and her coat too small, though it was posh—velvet collar and that. I wrapped her up, and she says, po-faced, ‘My father arrives not. I arrive alone.’ She says, ‘My fah-zer.’ I knew better than to ask.” Subsequent chapters track her peregrinations from one short-term lodging to the next, gingerly homing in on the tall, slender, intelligent, and traumatized character. Finally we sneak into close third-person narrative, and at long last, first-person, hearing her impressions directly. But as her destiny unfolds and the threads of the story loop in and out, other characters and perspectives never stop grabbing the mic. Incredibly prolific, multigenre author Burroway is possibly best known for her textbook, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, first published in 1982 and still widely in use. The current novel might also be thought of as a guide to writing fiction, putting on display a wide array of techniques for portraying a character and unfolding a story.

As Simone creates collages from fragments of photographs, this novel delivers similar aesthetic surprise and satisfaction.