annethology
  • Home
    • About Annethology
    • About me >
      • A little more about me
    • About my books
    • Author talks
    • Contact me
    • Forthcoming events
    • World Mental Health Day
    • Privacy
    • Sign up for my newsletter
  • Sugar and Snails
    • Acknowledgements
    • Blog tour, Q&A's and feature articles >
      • Birthday blog tour
      • S&S on tour 2022
    • Early endorsements
    • Events >
      • Launch photos
      • Launch party videos
    • in pictures
    • Media
    • If you've read the book
    • Polari
    • Reading group questions
    • Reviews
    • In the media
  • Underneath
    • Endorsements and reviews
    • Launch party and events
    • Pictures
    • Questions for book groups
    • The stories underneath the novel
  • Matilda Windsor series
    • Matilda Windsor >
      • What readers say
      • For book groups
      • Interviews, articles and features
      • Matty on the move
      • Who were you in 1990?
      • Asylum lit
      • Matilda Windsor media
    • Stolen Summers >
      • Stolen Summers reviews
  • Short stories
    • Somebody’s Daughter
    • Becoming Someone (anthology) >
      • Becoming Someone (video readings)
      • Becoming Someone reviews
      • Becoming Someone online book chat
    • Print and downloads
    • Read it online
    • Quick reads
  • Free ebook
  • Annecdotal
    • Annecdotal blog
    • Annecdotal Press
    • Articles >
      • Print journalism
      • Where psychology meets fiction
    • Fictional therapists
    • Reading and reviews >
      • Reviews A to H
      • Reviews I to M
      • Reviews N to Z
      • Nonfiction
      • Themed quotes
      • Reading around the world
  • Shop
    • Inspired Quill (my publisher)
    • Bookshop.org (affiliate link)
    • Amazon UK
    • Amazon US
    • books2read

About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

TELL ME MORE

Creation myths: Returning home in my reading and writing

4/10/2015

17 Comments

 
Picture
Many of us are fascinated by where we came from: the parents and places that made us who we are. While it seems we need to leave home, either physically or geographically, to become ourselves, at some point we’re drawn back to reconcile ourselves to the gap between the reality of our personal origins and the myths we’ve been sold or created. Ambivalence about home is such a core feature of my own reading and writing, it’s a struggle to condense it into the ninety-nine words Charli Mills has requested this week on the theme of returning to a place of origin. Join me on a tour of my literary bookshelves while I contemplate my own take on the prompt.

Stories of migration often seem incomplete without revisiting the place of one’s roots. In The Spice Box Letters, the discovery of her deceased grandmother’s letters written in Armenian sends Katerina to Cyprus to learn about her heritage. A political scandal has Baruch Kotler seeking refuge in the Crimea of childhood holidays in The Betrayers. A vacation at her parents’ retirement villa in Haiti turns into a nightmare for Miri in An Untamed State as she confronts, not only the lawlessness of her parents’ homeland, but the limits of her father’s love.
It’s the prospect of the sale of the farm where they spent their idyllic summer holidays that forces Bernie and Nancy to review their memories of Northern Ireland during The Troubles in The Insect Rosary. Similarly, Roseleen Madigan’s announcement that she’s decided to sell the family home summons her children to another part of rural Ireland for one last Christmas in The Green Road. We meet another matriarch in Land Where I Flee, as Chitralekha Nepauney’s Westernised grandchildren return to their Himalayan hometown to mark her landmark eighty-fourth birthday. For Rachel Caine in The Wolf Border, it’s not family that calls her home, but a reforming landowner’s tempting job offer.

There’s often an alliance between the pull of the other and the push within the characters themselves in these homecomings. Even those who profess themselves unable to refuse the demands of a powerful parent, grandparent or aristocrat must have some reason of their own to return. I suspect it’s more than a sense of filial duty that drives Jonathan Maguire to give up his university studies and return home to care for his “special” brother in The Insect Farm. For Elaine in The Lives of Women, the need to reconnect with her sixteen-year-old self is as conscious, albeit confused, as her responsibility to her disabled father. For Sydney in He Wants, there’s no apparent pull back to his hometown; sometimes we go home because there’s nowhere else to go.

My own novel, Sugar and Snails, is about a middle-aged woman’s turbulent adolescence and its ramifications. Having kept her past a secret for thirty years, she’s afraid to go back either in her thoughts or in person, either to Cairo where things came to a crisis or to the mining town where she grew up. Diana left home at fifteen to go to boarding school and, although she has been back since, her family don’t feature prominently in her life. So I knew that a scene in which she visits her parents (ostensibly in order to pick up some documentation) would be an excellent vehicle for exploring the tensions between past and present. In one of my novel’s many incarnations, I made this my opening scene. Now that the novel kicks off with an incident of self-harm, it’s been pushed right back to chapter 27 where, instead of raising questions about Diana’s character, it further elaborates on what’s made her who she is.

Although Diana isn’t particularly insightful, she does at least accept her parents’ limitations. Steve, the narrator of my next novel, Underneath, is even less attuned to his roots. For most of his twenties and thirties, he’s lived abroad, distancing himself from his family of origin. As in a couple of other novels on my homecoming shelf, he’s called back from his travels when his mother’s house is put up for sale. Unable to bridge the gap between his unacknowledged loneliness and his idealised version of homecoming derived from a childhood game with his friend, Jaswinder, he goes to pieces when things go awry with the adult home he’s tried to create.

While I’m drawn to fiction that explores the painful nature of a home that was never a secure base, this review of that theme in my reading and writing has made me want to arrange my ninety-nine words into something more playful:

The key’s under the geranium pot: recklessness in a vulnerable widow; perfect for a son making a surprise visit home. Buzzing with the caffeine that fuelled my overnight drive. Buzzing with the promise of making Mum’s day.
Her snoring filters through her bedroom door. More grunting, rather; a doctor really ought to check that out. A cry, a whimper of pain; why hadn’t she mentioned she was unwell?
Balancing her breakfast tray, I open the door. Two wrinkled bodies disentangle themselves from the bedclothes. Two grey heads rise in horror.
“Oops,” I say, “better go and get another cup.”


Thanks for reading. Are there any homecoming stories you’d recommend?


Addendum: January 2017

Since a blog bestows on me the virtual superpower of time travel, I’ve decided to add another 99-word story, prompted by Charli, relating to the theme of this post. But how the world has changed in those fifteen months since I wrote about creation myths in fiction. The woman I was then would not recognise half the references that have shaped this flash. I can only hope I don’t have to come back in another year or so with even gloomier references.
Picture
Creation comedy, starring Trump, Bill Gates and Freud.

In the beginning, says God, was the Word …
In the beginning, says Bill, was Microsoft.
Ahem, Wordperfect was created long before your Word.
In the beginning, says Donald, is and was the phallus, source of power and pride. And who needs words when 140 characters can express the deepest truths.
Or lies, says Meryl (the overrated actress), and the women in their pussy-hats raise a defiant cheer. Besides, the Creator must be female; it’s She who bears the child.
As a penis substitute, says Sigmund. Born of envy.
Yours or ours? says Anna, as she confiscates his pipe.

Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
17 Comments
geoff laptop link
4/10/2015 11:23:41 pm

Now that is such a perfect piece of flash (I think the term is apposite in this case!) You do humour very well indeed. I'm not sure I can think of home comings in literature other than it feels like a common theme. And it does feature in my latest book when Maurice returns to his late mother's cottage. Looking forward to seeing how Underneath progresses, too.

Reply
Annecdotist
5/10/2015 01:08:21 pm

Thanks, Geoff, for that flashy feedback and reminder of those scenes in My Father and Other Liars. Underneath will be a little while but I'll keep you informed.

Reply
sarah link
5/10/2015 01:22:39 am

Hahaha! Brilliant! I didn't expect such a "playful" 99 words from you, my friend. Looks like we were on completely different wavelengths this week. I went somber and you went funny girl. ;-) BTW, another fab review and sneak peek at your next book.

Reply
Annecdotist
5/10/2015 01:10:09 pm

Ha, had to say, I surprised myself with the humour, but perhaps I'd got the seriousness out of my system after mentions of so many novels. I'm sure the darkness isn't too far away, though and I expect it will be back for the next flash!

Reply
Norah Colvin link
5/10/2015 12:21:31 pm

Haha! Hilarious! Who would have thought. Surely his mother is too old ... It was rather reckless of her leaving the key under the geranium pot. I have an inkling it will be there no more, and that perhaps the son will call before just dropping in! Great flash, and nice to see some humour coming through. You said playful, and certainly this visit had positive undertones - the son was happy to return and showed concern for his 'aging' mother. I'm thinking that his next visit may not feel just the same!
I enjoyed reading your list of homecoming books, as well as mention of the scene in your own book "Sugar and Snails", and a quick glimpse at "Underneath". As always an enjoyable read. Thanks for sharing.

Reply
Annecdotist
5/10/2015 01:12:39 pm

Too old for sex? I hope not! Though I'm not sure what their respective ages were in my head – she might have been anything from 40 to 94.
Thanks, as ever, for reading and sharing your thoughts.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
6/10/2015 11:14:36 am

Yes. Too old for sex. Not in my (older) opinion, but possibly in that of the younger son!

Charli Mills
7/10/2015 07:11:03 am

Ha! That's playful, indeed! I like the fun you had with the narrator puzzling over the "sounds." Mum evidently is not one to be home snoozing. :-) The return home is a prevalent theme and a great vehicle for many different types of tension -- between others and within the self. Interesting how it manifests in your own novel, too.

Reply
Annecdotist
7/10/2015 08:33:56 am

Thanks, Charli. Once I got started on this theme, hardly knew how to stop! Thanks for another great prompt.

Reply
Roger link
13/10/2015 12:26:15 am

Gave me a great chuckle!

Reply
Charli Mills
31/1/2017 04:49:29 am

Clever idea to time travel to a previous post. We create so many posts that any way we can recycle the writing or linkback takes advantage of accumulative work. Your flash is brilliant and expresses the debates of existence...and worth. I love the last exchange on penis envy!

Reply
Annecdotist
31/1/2017 11:50:37 am

Yes, it felt weird thing to do at first, but I wouldn't say no to doing it again.
And, oh, yes, penis envy I totally get the concept when used metaphorically, but I still recall my confusion on going to my first ever psychology conference when a speaker (female) spoke of this on the literal level.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
11/4/2017 10:26:30 am

Looks like I missed your Creation comedy in January, so thanks for linking back to it. Hilarious! If only it wasn't so true. Well done.

Reply
Annecdotist
11/4/2017 12:23:07 pm

Thanks, Norah.

Reply
Jeanne link
11/4/2017 07:26:22 pm

Brilliant on both counts! You DO do humor well. Loved the turnaround at the end of that first flash. And great condensation and synthesis of a few of the male-dominated memes of our times.

As for your post, the theme of coming home seems always near the top of my consciousness. I just finished Sugar and Snails, by the way, and commend you on a poignant and powerful working of that theme. There is much more to say on it (among other things, halfway through you had me going back to the beginning wondering how I could have missed the main conflict!) but I felt deeply the double sword that home can be while reading it. Di is such a memorable character....as are the others...
In my adolescence I read (and reread a dozen times at least) a story by Pearl S. Buck. I have long thought the title was "Homecoming." But it may be "Coming Home." I keep looking for it. About a mother and her two sons, one who takes after her in physical beauty but is callous like her dead husband; the other who is truly like her, gentle, intelligent, but whose sandy looks remind of the husband, and thus repels her. The reckoning between this son and the mother comes with the other son's return home on leave. Beautiful story.
Thanks Anne, for a thought-provoking little mind trip today.

Reply
Annecdotist
13/4/2017 11:41:20 am

Thank you, Jeanne – a thoughtful comment as ever.
I’m glad you enjoyed Sugar and Snails – I think your reaction to the secret is fairly typical, we make certain assumptions about what/who people are (and we have to, otherwise life would be far too complicated).
I like your description of that Pearl S Buck story, which I haven’t come across before. I get the impression it’s a fascinating exploration of it means to be ‘like’ another person, as well as what it means to like them can be drawn to them. I’ll look out for it.

Reply
Garage Door Repair Park Ridge IL link
23/10/2017 08:33:54 pm

Hi! This is my first visit to your blog! We are a team of volunteers and new initiatives in the same niche. Blog gave us useful information to work. You have done an amazing job!

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    Free ebook: click the image to claim yours.
    Picture
    OUT NOW: The poignant prequel to Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home
    Picture
    Find a review
    Picture
    Fictional therapists
    Picture
    Picture
    About Anne Goodwin
    Picture
    My published books
    entertaining fiction about identity, mental health and social justice
    Picture
    My latest novel, published May 2021
    Picture
    My debut novel shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize
    Picture
    Picture
    My second novel published May 2017.
    Picture
    Short stories on the theme of identity published 2018
    Anne Goodwin's books on Goodreads
    Sugar and Snails Sugar and Snails
    reviews: 32
    ratings: 52 (avg rating 4.21)

    Underneath Underneath
    reviews: 24
    ratings: 60 (avg rating 3.17)

    Becoming Someone Becoming Someone
    reviews: 8
    ratings: 9 (avg rating 4.56)

    GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Issue 4 GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Issue 4
    reviews: 4
    ratings: 9 (avg rating 4.44)

    The Best of Fiction on the Web The Best of Fiction on the Web
    reviews: 3
    ratings: 3 (avg rating 4.67)

    2022 Reading Challenge

    2022 Reading Challenge
    Anne has read 2 books toward their goal of 100 books.
    hide
    2 of 100 (2%)
    view books
    Picture
    Annecdotal is where real life brushes up against the fictional.  
    Picture
    Annecdotist is the blogging persona of Anne Goodwin: 
    reader, writer,

    slug-slayer, tramper of moors, 
    recovering psychologist, 
    struggling soprano, 
    author of three fiction books.

    LATEST POSTS HERE
    I don't post to a schedule, but average  around ten reviews a month (see here for an alphabetical list), 
    some linked to a weekly flash fiction, plus posts on my WIPs and published books.  

    Your comments are welcome any time any where.

    Get new posts direct to your inbox ...

    Enter your email address:

    or click here …

    RSS Feed


    Picture

    Tweets by @Annecdotist
    Picture
    New short story, “My Dirty Weekend”
    Picture
    Let’s keep in touch – subscribe to my newsletter
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    Popular posts

    • Compassion: something we all need
    • Do spoilers spoil?
    • How to create a convincing fictional therapist
    • Instructions for a novel
    • Looking at difference, embracing diversity
    • Never let me go: the dilemma of lending books
    • On loving, hating and writers’ block
      On Pop, Pirates and Plagiarism
    • READIN' for HER reviews
    • Relishing the cuts
    • The fast first draft
    • The tragedy of obedience
    • Writers and therapy: a love-hate relationship?

    Categories/Tags

    All
    Animals
    Annecdotist Hosts
    Annecdotist On Tour
    Articles
    Attachment Theory
    Author Interviews
    Becoming Someone
    Being A Writer
    Blogging
    Bodies
    Body
    Bookbirthday
    Books For Writers
    Bookshops
    CB Book Group
    Character
    Childhood
    Christmas
    Classics
    Climate Crisis
    Coming Of Age
    Counsellors Cafe
    Creative Writing Industry
    Creativity
    Cumbria
    Debut Novels
    Disability
    Editing
    Emotion
    Ethics
    Ethis
    Family
    Feedback And Critiques
    Fictional Psychologists & Therapists
    Food
    Friendship
    Futuristic
    Gender
    Genre
    Getting Published
    Giveaways
    Good Enough
    Grammar
    Gratitude
    Group/organisational Dynamics
    Hero’s Journey
    History
    Humour
    Identity
    Illness
    Independent Presses
    Institutions
    International Commemorative Day
    Jane Eyre
    Kidney Disease
    Language
    LGBTQ
    Libraries
    Live Events
    Lyrics For The Loved Ones
    Marketing
    Matilda Windsor
    Memoir
    Memory
    Mental Health
    Microfiction
    Motivation
    Music
    MW Prequel
    Names
    Narrative Voice
    Nature / Gardening
    Networking
    Newcastle
    Nonfiction
    Nottingham
    Novels
    Pandemic
    Peak District
    Perfect Match
    Poetry
    Point Of View
    Politics
    Politics Current Affairs
    Presentation
    Privacy
    Prizes
    Psychoanalytic Theory
    Psychology
    Psycholoists Write
    Psychotherapy
    Race
    Racism
    Rants
    Reading
    Real Vs Imaginary
    Religion
    Repetitive Strain Injury
    Research
    Reviewing
    Romance
    Satire
    Second Novels
    Settings
    Sex
    Shakespeare
    Short Stories General
    Short Stories My Published
    Short Stories Others'
    Siblings
    Snowflake
    Somebody's Daughter
    Stolen Summers
    Storytelling
    Structure
    Sugar And Snails
    Technology
    The
    The Guestlist
    Therapy
    TikTok
    TNTB
    Toiletday
    Tourism
    Toxic Positivity
    Transfiction
    Translation
    Trauma
    Unconscious
    Unconscious, The
    Underneath
    Voice Recognition Software
    War
    WaSBihC
    Weather
    Work
    Writing Process
    Writing Technique

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013

    Picture
    BLOGGING COMMUNITIES
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
Photos used under Creative Commons from havens.michael34, romana klee, mrsdkrebs, Kyle Taylor, Dream It. Do It., adam & lucy, dluders, Joybot, Hammer51012, jorgempf, Sherif Salama, eyspahn, raniel diaz, E. E. Piphanies, scaredofbabies, Nomadic Lass, paulternate, Tony Fischer Photography, archer10 (Dennis), slightly everything, impbox, jonwick04, country_boy_shane, dok1, Out.of.Focus, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Midwest Region, Elvert Barnes, guillenperez, Richard Perry, jamesnaruke, Juan Carlos Arniz Sanz, El Tuerto, kona99, maveric2003, !anaughty!, Patrick Denker, David Davies, hamilcar_south, idleformat, Dave Goodman, Sharon Mollerus, photosteve101, La Citta Vita, A Girl With Tea, striatic, carlosfpardo, Damork, Elvert Barnes, UNE Photos, jurvetson, quinn.anya, BChristensen93, Joelk75, ashesmonroe, albertogp123, >littleyiye<, mudgalbharat, Swami Stream, Dicemanic, lovelihood, anyjazz65, Tjeerd, albastrica mititica, jimmiehomeschoolmom