Fear and bravery and fairy tales

Lora Senf's The Clackity

A small voice in my head said, One more step. Then another. And then another after that. That’s all. That’s all you have to do for now.

—The Clackity, by Lora Senf

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Hi, friends,

Like most of you, I’ve been in a state of despair and fury in the hours and days since the fall of Roe v. Wade. I expected it—it’s been in the works since we were kids, and it’s been a done deal since the balance of power shifted on the Supreme Court—but knowing something is coming isn’t the same as the day actually arriving.

I’m writing this on Monday—the second day of my weekend—and real talk: I’m actively dreading going back to work tomorrow. My bandwidth for dealing with the general public has been pretty low since the early days of the pandemic, and this… well, this is not going to help. Librarians and bartenders have a lot in common, in that people have a real tendency to use us both as therapists. Which can be truly exhausting, and, after years and years of it, if you don’t find a way of balancing it, eventually soul-crushing.

But enough of me using you as MY therapist.

Here’s what I keep telling myself: Try to allow yourself time to grieve if you need it. To go outside and look at something green if you can. To step away from the firehose of bad news, even if only for a few minutes. To be a good friend to yourself and to check in *with* your friends. To find your small, good things as you navigate your day.

If you’re looking for ways to help—in those moments when you’ve got your own heart and brain (somewhat) centered—here are a couple of good places to start:

• A Twitter thread and explainer geared largely towards white folks who are pretty new to the reproductive justice space from Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg. When bad things happen, a lot of us get so desperate to help that we forget to look to the folks who have already been doing the work for years. The wheel does not have to be reinvented, and trying to do so will do more harm than good. Lots of links and accounts to follow towards the end.

• Advice on what to do if you are pregnant and do not want to be, have low cash reserves, and are in a state where abortion is now—or is about to become—illegal.

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"You probably need to eat something," the baker said. "I hope you'll eat some of my hot rolls. You have to eat and keep going. Eating is a small, good thing in a time like this," he said.

—A Small, Good Thing, by Raymond Carver

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Book cover: The Clackity, by Lora Senf

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The Clackity, by Lora Senf

Four years ago, when Evelyn Von Rathe was eight years old, her house burned down and her parents disappeared. Since then, she’s lived with her Aunt Desdemona in Blight Harbor, the seventh most haunted town in America (per capita).

Her Aunt Desdemona is a ghost expert—she even has an advice column in the local newspaper—and she’s good at what she does. But things happen.

Now, she’s caught in another world. In an attempt to rescue her, Evie makes a deal with a terrifying creature called The Clackity: If she goes into that other world, travels through the seven houses there, and lures the ghost of the town’s most notorious serial killer out and into the clutches of The Clackity, he’ll help her save Aunt Des.

On her side—beyond her bravery, determination, empathy, and cleverness—she has: the contents of her backpack, a Bird on her shoulder—literally, a magical bird living like a tattoo on her skin—and the bits and bobs of lore that she’s learned from fairy tales and the local librarian and, of course, from her aunt.

Absolutely a strong pick for fans of Small Spaces, as The Clackity is easily as terrifying as the Smiling Man. Senf’s prose is often musical—I found myself stopping to re-read sentences aloud, purely for the pleasure of the mouth-feel of them:

From somewhere deep in the shadows, a hand reached out. My brain told me the hand was too far away from the face to belong to the same creature, but it had to. Because the thing smiled wider still and gave me a little wave. It had too many joints in its long fingers, and they made a click click click sound when they bent.

The super-dark and sometimes grotesque—my jam, ymmv!—fairy tale elements made me think a bit of Coraline. The emotional honesty and bravery of our heroine—who is still grieving the loss of her parents, who struggles with panic attacks, and who considers giving up more than once—gave me the same almost-too-full-heart feeling as characters in books by authors like Anne Ursu and Kelly Barnhill. In comparison to what she’s up against, Evie is very very small and often, very very scared, but she ultimately keeps forging ahead because it’s what needs to be done—and, as the book goes on, she starts getting very very angry.

She’s definitely a heroine I needed in my life at this particular moment.

Although we don’t see much of it, there are some details about the town’s world-building that make me EXTREMELY curious to see more of it, and based on the open threads left at the end, I’d imagine that there’s a sequel coming.

I’m already looking forward to reading it.

Amazon | Bookshop

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At last Maud was beginning to recover from the intrusion. Because that was exactly what it was: an intrusion into her calm, peaceful world, where she set the pace and rhythm of her day.

“No,” she said again, just because it felt good to say no to this person.

—An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good: Stories, by Helene Tursten
Translated by Marlaine Delargy

Amazon | Bookshop

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I’ll be back on Thursday with more Christopher Pike.

Love to you all, and be safe,
Leila