Reading Room Radio: Come Closer and Crossroads

Sadina shares two novellas that use the horror genre to challenge our understanding of grief and relationships.

Titles: Come Closer by Sara Gran

Crossroads by Laurel Hightower

Reviewed by: Sadina S. 

Created by the Podcast Team at the Harris County Public Library.
www.hcpl.net

Podcast Team Members include: Beth Krippel, John Harbaugh, Mary Mink, Dylan Smith, Sadina Shawver, Alinda Mac, John Schaffer, Jennifer Finch, Katelyn Helberg, Darcy Casavant, Darla Pruitt and Nancy Hu 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Harris County Public Library's Reading Room Radio, where your to be red pile gets a little more exciting, one micro podcast at a time. Hello. My name is Sadina Schauver, and I am an assistant branch manager at the Barbara Busch Branch Library of the Harris County Public Library System. March is International Women's Month, and in honor of that, I thought it would be nice to read a couple of novellas that highlight the beautiful yet sometimes horrific aspects of womanhood. The first one is Crossroads by Laurel Hightower, and the second one is Come Closer by Sarah Grant. First, I would like to talk about why I wanted to speak on these two books. A lot of my interest is in horror and the social-emotional development that can help expand your understanding of your internal dialogue, your external relationships. It may sound a little funny to some people. I definitely get some looks when speaking about horror and championing it to caregivers especially, but I do truly believe that engaging with horror in a safe space like a book or even a kind of adrenaline rush like in a movie is beneficial to human development. With the first book, Crossroads, by Laurel Hightower, there is a lot of intertwining of horror and grief, which for anyone that has lost someone significantly in their life, maybe a mother, a father, a primary caregiver, a child, as in the instance with this book, someone who they were very close to, even a friend that was more than a friend in a way that supported you. Those losses are particularly difficult to cope with. It isn't until you see her actions and motivations from another point of view that you realize that this is not good, that this is something that is a mental health crisis, that this is an open wound that has not been addressed by those around her. She doesn't have the best support system. Her internal ideation that her experience as a mother is just inherently different than the experience of her ex-partner exacerbates her grief. There are lots of excuses for the decisions she makes. There are rituals that she participates in, people she separates herself from due to trauma, all in the name of grief. There are two lines in this short story that really highlight this sort of horrific occurrence in motherhood, the loss of a child, and one is from Chris, the main character herself, and it says that parenting came with sacrifice, though. And in this manner, she is attempting to forgive the choices she is making, despite understanding that they are extreme and from the outside unhealthy. At the end of the book, there's also a dismissive statement that it's a mom thing. As if the only people that could understand why someone would hold on to the baby teeth of their child or the hair from their first haircut or the umbilical cord or these sort of body gore in any other circumstance trinkets, that for mothers it's excusable because that relationship between a mother and a child is so distinct and separate from all other experiences in life that it is not something to be judged from those outside of that relationship. The true horror of this book is not necessarily the loss of a child. It is the blurred lines between is this a mental health crisis from uncounseled grief and a lack of a support system, or as it tries to create this environment of demons, tulpas, mimics, an attachment, maybe even a war between an entity that is influencing her through her vulnerability and her grief, and the actual spirit or manifestation of her child who is trying to keep her from sacrificing things on his behalf. There is a push and pull in this story between Chris and what she feels is her obligation to her child, even in death, and the potential background of her child's desire not to see her to suffer on his behalf. Only people that have had significant loss can understand that true horror, that moment of the cycle of grief, bargaining, where despite all reasoning, you truly believe that if you could just have one more moment, one more conversation, one more day, one more second, that all sacrifices would make it worth it. But this story juxtapositions that with how do our sacrifices deteriorate those around us or those that we seek to reconnect with? That's the true horror because in the moment it feels justifiable. In moments of significant grief, this book asks, what is truly haunting you? Luckily, and in comparison to Crossroads, Come Closer by Sarah Grant is a little more uplifting in a way. There is still an issue of a haunting, a potential mental health crisis. There is a story of possession or obsession or repression. The book was originally published in 2003, and this timestamp in particular really forms the main character, Amanda's personality, her struggles with how she may want to act versus how she assumes she's influenced by another. There are moments during the early stages that Amanda acknowledges that some of the thoughts and impulses are ones she herself would naturally have had, but she feels expected to suppress as a woman chasing a career in a marriage to have this American dream lifestyle that this demon she feels possesses her is rebuking. The demon itself sort of lays out the path that Amanda is going to follow. The demon's goal, it seems, is to take all stability from her, to create chaos, but is it truly chaos if Amanda may have been suppressing these urges to begin with? It speaks a lot to the expectations of womanhood in society. People can say that there is equality for women and men as much as they want, but there is truly still expectations that haunt us every day. At work, a man would be ambitious, but a woman would be aggressive. A man is keeping up with the office ins and outs, but a woman is a gossip. The double standards are still here. Women should be grateful and quiet and not too ambitious and partnered with someone who is stable, who can keep them happy, who can keep them in line. But this American dream, this illusion of perfection is not everything it's cracked up to be. Without giving away too much, I have in my family and relationships, friendships, a number of people who married their high school sweethearts, and I'm not really sure they're particularly happy these days, or married someone with a massive age gap because that was sort of what was expected. And the other side of that coin is that now you have an aging partner who needs to be cared for, and you are expected to give everything up for them because they gave you stability in your youth. There's no space made for women to grow on their own and to fulfill their needs or their dreams in their own time. There are goals. Do you have a home yet? Are you married that weigh on women's expectations and not everybody wants them? That just is not good enough for society. And while Amanda's story and come closer may be horrific in the impulse controls that she allows the demon to take over, it's hyperbolic and examples of the way that women day to day have thoughts and feelings that they are told are not appropriate for the home or the workplace, and that they should be grateful and to stamp those things down. So in the end, the horrific aspect of come closer is Amanda truly possessed? Is there truly a supernatural force that is moving her hand and influencing her wishes? Or is Amanda cracked? Is she in her own room of yellow wallpaper? Is she finally saying, This is not what I want? This is something I never wanted. And having a crisis that to the outside no one sees or empathizes with.