Reviewed by Stephen P. Smith
This debut novel from Nichole Bernier is a delight. Does that sound cliche? Perhaps, but as a man reading a novel that the author described as being "about women's friendships, motherhood and marriage" I have to say that I enjoyed it very much.
Let me take a step back, though, because my interest was piqued in this novel not by the above description, but rather the structure and plot device of the book: a woman has died in an accident and willed her lifetime's worth of personal journals to her best friend, instructing her to "read them from the beginning and then decide what to do with them".
As a journaler myself, I have kept an on-again, off-again series of journals since I was in my twenties, I was very curious to see how this would play out. The question, "What would someone think if they read through my journals after I was dead?" lingered in my mind, "What would it be like to read my best friends' journals, or my wife's? Would I discover that they were not the people that I thought they were? Did I really know them at all?"
Tantalizing questions, no?
Seeing that the author herself was going to be in town for a reading and book-signing I picked up a copy in advance of her visit and started reading. I was not disappointed. The title character, Elizabeth, has died in a plane crash, leaving a locked trunk of her journals to her best friend, Kate. Kate picks up the trunk from Elizabeth's widower on her way to a seven-week family vacation on an island off the New England coast. We soon learn that Elizabeth began her journaling practice at the suggestion of her doctor after something rather traumatic happens (don't worry, I will be careful not to spoil anything for you!). She keeps at it, weekly and monthly throughout her life, in high school, college, on her trip to Italy to study painting, marriage and children and on and on until the day before she dies.
Elizabeth chronicles her life and loves, her work and play. It is a glimpse into the secret life of a woman that has made difficult choices, an examination of a life lived quite deliberately. Fascinating.
After the readings, Bernier took some questions and gave us some background on the why and how of the writing of the story. The initial germ of the story was an inspiration about "a woman looking back at her life as the plane she is on is going down." Bernier wrote an entry in her own personal journal about what the woman would be thinking about, her life and work and relationships. This idea grew into the question of "what will people remember?"
While the first draft of the book was slowly gaining shape (it took her two years to complete the first version!) Bernier decided that she needed to know more about this woman, Elizabeth. She took four months and wrote out the story of Elizabeth's life in thousands of pages of journal entries. This fictional journal became the backbone of the novel. In the first draft the book was laid out in sections, with one being simply Elizabeth's journal entries from a particular notebook, followed by Kate's reaction to learning this information and how it affected that part of her vacation. Through revisions and rewrites and guidance from fellow authors and her editors the book evolved into a more linear narrative of Kate's own journey as she learned more about her friend interspersed with chronological references to the journal entries. The use of the journal as a plot device in this way was brilliant and, as I said, fascinating.
I asked Bernier if she has saved that complete fictional journal, and had she considered publishing it as a stand-alone work. She was surprised by the question, and said that it hadn't occurred to her that anyone might be interested. She didn't know the exact status of the rights to that material, but told me that she would look into it. In return, I told her that I would ask the CreateWriteNow community if they would be interested in getting their hands on this fictional journal (I certainly would, especially after reading the book). If you are interested, please leave a Comment and let her know!
Sitting here now, writing this, it occurs to me that this might be a very interesting niche of fiction-writing: a purely fictional journal, not always interesting, sometimes containing nuggets of wisdom, history, or excitement buried in the day-to-day details of a normal (or abnormal) life. "Flowers for Algernon" comes to mind as another example of a book that uses a journal as a plot device, but it, too, contains long narrative portions. If anyone knows of a fictional journal published as a book in its own right, please leave a Comment. (The journals of Lewis & Clark don't count, not fiction, intended to be used as a resource...)
Sorry, to get back on track, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was very interesting to me to see the sorts of things that another person, no matter that she's not real, chose to record for posterity. I believe that it has had an impact on what I will choose to record in the future, in my own journaling practice. For example, I rarely write anything about current events in my journal, I put that stuff on Facebook. I do record my reactions to various events or happenings, especially if they tend to be angry or NSFW. I tend to write a lot in an exploratory style, looking at myself or my work from different angles or points of view - "what if I did this? what if I tried it this way or that way?" kinds of stuff. And of course this June and July are full of "quitting smoking sucks and I don't like it"-types of entries. Which I imagine will be interesting for someone, someday.
Thank you so much for your attention, I will leave you with this:
What would your friends think if you passed away suddenly and they read through your Journals or Morning Page notebooks?
Is your authentic self revealed within the pages of your Journal, and is that self different from the one that is revealed to the world?
Why is that?
Is there a way to bring the two together in a way that is honest, productive and beneficial for you and those you love?
Discuss.
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