You Never Get it Back
You Never Get It Back by Cara Blue Adams is a stunning collection of interwoven short stories that was recommended to me by my friend Bethany. She texted, “I think you’d like this.” She was correct. Readers initially meet Kate as she reunites with her college friend Esme, but throughout different stories we zig zag back to Kate’s childhood in Vermont, forward to her time as a researcher in Tucson, and back and forth and so on to other locations and milestones. I’d like to think this collection is partly an exploration of place and landscape and how people relate to different ones — but maybe that’s just my own longing.
You Never Get It Back feels different than a lot of contemporary American fiction. It strikes the right note between “plot-driven” (I mean, of course it is, there’s too much moving around involved) and “character-driven.” Yet despite being exquisitely described and often really on-the-nose, the people and the places aren’t meticulously exclusive. What I mean is that there’s just enough open-endedness to allow any reader — from anywhere — inside. There’s a lot about this collection that reminded me of Scorpionfish by Natalie Bakopoulus, which is also very rooted in place…albeit mostly Greece. And a bit of Carol Shields, who set so much of her fiction in Winnipeg. I’m not sure we’re all suited to just live wherever — in fact, I know that definitively to be untrue — but this is the kind of fiction that allows you to forget that for a blink so that you can situate yourself with the characters. Some memorable lines from the penultimate story: “He was so practical. She was always drifting off into too theoretical realms. He rolled up his sleeves and waded into the water and collected a sample right here on earth, the place they did, after all, live.”
Sigh, so good.
originally published on instagram