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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

The aftermath of terror

12/3/2014

16 Comments

 
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My recent post about the challenge of representing the reality of terror in fiction attracted some interesting feedback. I’m not alone in shying away from graphic details, it seems. In fact, my main interest in fictional terror is in its potential long-term impact, which is often more subtle. Like a plucked string, terror keeps on vibrating even when the original trauma has passed.

The enduring effects of the narrator’s imprisonment and torture are eloquently described in In the Orchard, the Swallows:

They took everything from me. My health, my family. They took from me the person I might have been, and returned in its place half a man, a shadow. Even now I am not sure I will feel lasting pleasure again. My capacity for it has been damaged. The suffering has retreated, but it leaves behind it an absence, a joylessness. If you are able, imagine breathing, and nothing stirring within. Yes, I feel relief that I am free, and it is a deep relief at that, but there is no joy. My pleasures have gone from me, like petals pulled from a flower head, or lost to a winter frost.  Peter Hobbs (p 109)

Life continues, but in an almost zombified state, the illusion of safety destroyed.

In Pat Barker’s Regeneration, the trauma of the trenches continues for the hospitalised soldiers in the form of hallucinations and nightmares and in hysterical symptoms such as mutism, paralysis and bodily contortions. What was then termed shellshock, we now label post-traumatic stress disorder, a diagnosis that grants sufferers more sympathetic understanding and access to treatment. Yet psychiatric diagnosis is always a dual-edged sword and perhaps runs the risk of pathologising an extreme, but normal, reaction to an abnormal situation.

Certainly PTSD must lose its meaning when it afflicts an entire country, as in Aminatta Forna’s novel, The Memory of Love. Novelists don’t need psychiatric terminology to appreciate that trauma has repercussions for both individuals and communities. Recovery takes time and, in some cases, could be an unreasonable aspiration, despite the popular appeal of the concept of closure:

Closure is an extraordinarily compelling fantasy … the fiction that we can love, lose, suffer and then do something to permanently end our sorrow. We want to believe we can reach closure because grief can surprise and disorder us – even years after our loss. (Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life, p209)

But some lives do manage to adjust to a new normality. AM Homes’ May We Be Forgiven starts with what seems unbearable betrayal and violence within the family but, over the course of a year, settles down to an accommodation. My short story, Habeas Corpus, although it kicks off with my protagonist shitting his pants in terror, is mostly concerned with his struggle to re-establish his connection with himself once the crisis is over:

He'd marked off his five weeks and a day in clusters of lines scraped on the stone wall with the edge of a spoon.  Now the hours and days went by unchecked.  His parents went to the supermarket and came home to watch TV.  He lay on his back upstairs staring at the ceiling he'd painted as a boy.  At night when his parents slept, he watched old soaps in the front room, or sat outside shivering among the raspberry canes, a cigarette burning itself out in his hand.

In another of my short stories, Elementary Mechanics, Vashila’s nightmare scenario is twenty-odd years and thousands of miles away, yet it still has the potential to knock her off balance, leaving her husband to pick up the pieces:

He takes a tissue from a lilac box on his daughter's desk to dry her eyes.  Balls of cotton wool in pastel colours from the ceramic bowl in the ensuite to dab the blood from her ear lobes.  He eases the silver hooks through the tiny holes to remove the sparkly earrings she says her mother tried to yank from her ears.  He runs her a bubble bath and promises to make her a soft boiled egg with soldiers.

In the master bedroom, his wife is sleeping.  He takes the book from her hands and draws the quilt around her shoulders.

In this story, there’s a hint of a parent’s trauma affecting the next generation, a topic I hope to explore further in a later post. In the meantime, what are your thoughts on the exploration of terror at one stage removed? Do you share my interest in the question of how a person gets his/her life back after the worst has happened?

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.
16 Comments
Norah Colvin link
16/3/2014 04:37:07 am

Hi Anne,
I love the excerpts you have included in this post. The ability of one to recover (or not, and how) from trauma is very interesting; and I think dependent upon the situation and, possibly more, on the resilience of the person. I'm not sure if trauma can ever be left completely behind, but perhaps some find ways of coping easier than others. I will be back to read your stories in full and will comment then.

Reply
Annecdotist
17/3/2014 04:09:04 am

Thanks, Norah, and I agree there are so many factors influencing an individual's ability to bounce back from trauma. I'm a little uneasy about the concept of resilience as something we might have more or less of, as I think there may be different types of resilience, and sometimes just staying alive is quite an achievement, but probably like beauty and other qualities of the self, we can use the concept in different ways.

Reply
SandraDanby link
17/3/2014 12:21:36 am

Anne, I've just found your blog via Chalk the Sun. Am enjoying your posts! SD

Reply
Annecdotist
17/3/2014 04:10:53 am

Very pleased to make your acquaintance, Sandra. I love it when new people find me (and tell me so) and will also check out your website. Look forward to interacting.

Reply
Lynn Moorhouse
20/3/2014 01:29:30 am

Your blog on the suffering of people as a result of a trauma is one of the most impressive I’ve read, Anne. As I was reading, it I felt that you could have been with me, for decades, observing my own struggles with PTSD. You have described my experience in the most eloquent way: “Like a plucked string, terror keeps on vibrating even when the original trauma has passed.”

As you now know, my husband, two young sons and I survived the world’s first 747 crash in which 59 died. No such thing as a diagnosis of PTSD then. At the time tranquillisers were handed out like sweets! I do agree with you, though that “psychiatric diagnosis is always a dual-edged sword and perhaps runs the risk of pathologising an extreme, but normal, reaction to an abnormal situation.”

I also agree that “Certainly PTSD must lose its meaning when it afflicts an entire country”. I visited New York with the BBC a few weeks after 9/11 and spoke to a number of people about their experiences. You write: “Life continues, but in an almost zombified state, the illusion of safety destroyed.” And that is what it was like for the people I met. It was a searing experience for me and I still haven’t, after all these years, been able to write at any length about it.

You are right when you say “recovery takes time and, in some cases, could be an unreasonable aspiration, despite the popular appeal of the concept of closure”. I have never like the word “closure”.

The literary references in your blog, and your own beautifully written short stories, have given me a lot to think about. Thank you.


Reply
Annecdotist
20/3/2014 06:57:20 am

Thanks so much, Lynn, this is praise indeed! I'm so glad that my take on the subject seemed authentic from your own experience (and don't feel so bad now that my comments on your own blog post weren't terribly articulate – as you say, it can be hard to find the words) and feel really touched by your comment. This was also a boost to my confidence as a writer, reminding me that it's okay to explore these uncomfortable themes in fiction.
Other readers – you can read more about Lynn's experience here:
http://lynnstime.wordpress.com/about/riding-a-tiger/

Reply
Lisa Reiter link
1/7/2014 04:57:03 am

I have much catching up to do and regrettably 10 minutes just now! I echo Lynn's appreciation of your analysis here Anne. I also echo the dislike of the word closure.
For me, perhaps more than others suffering PTSD after a single event, the trauma is never quite 'post' - I live with the daily threat (and medical expectation) of the return of my nightmare. I can't go into details here but it isn't over.
I do get on with my life rather well at times but never with the freedom of unfettered joy.
If we had a few clones to run double blind trials with, I know I am an intense, on-edge version of another self. I am not ever carefree although I remember what that was like and miss it constantly.
I describe it in my memoir as being a bonsai version of myself, cruelly pruned and twisted to a recognisable but stunted version of the person I might have been.

Reply
Annecdotist
2/7/2014 07:06:29 am

Thank you for giving my blog those ten minutes, Lisa, with such a moving comment. I do like your image of the bonsai tree, growing but stunted.
I think trauma that has been properly processed is less likely to be passed on to future generations; the problem is how we can know when and whether we've done enough processing! But always difficult to be living on borrowed time, especially for an engaged parent to contemplate not being around to support one's children.

Norah Colvin link
21/3/2014 12:23:32 am

Hi Anne,
I have just been back and read your two powerful stories "Habeas Corpus" and "Elementary Mechanics". They were both compelling reading and brilliant writing. I thoroughly enjoyed (if I can use that word) reading them. The characterizations and stories seemed authentic and true; and painted the picture clearly, as if we were there, travelling along with them.
Will these themes feature in your novel?
I look forward to following up on Lynn's experiences.

Reply
Annecdotist
21/3/2014 07:18:29 am

Thank you, Norah. I really appreciate your taking the time to come back and read the stories and very glad they worked for you. I feel lucky having you as a reader!
Are my novels about terror? Strangely – or maybe not so strangely – I find it hard to say for sure what my fiction is about but, yes, I suppose terror does come into it. Underneath has the more obviously scary stuff in it and Sugar and Snails is more about shame, with the fear more subtle (I think). You can let me know when you get to hear them as audiobooks some time in the hypothetical future!
Do read Lynn's piece when you have time. I found it fascinating that we were both approaching the same theme in our blogs at the same time but from different angles.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
22/3/2014 05:53:41 am

I like these tasks you set for me. I will have to come back and read the previews of your novels before I comment again - and read Lynn's story. I am in awe of the breadth and depth of your knowledge. You have so much to offer to readers.

Reply
Annecdotist
23/3/2014 10:36:06 am

Thanks, Norah, just glad when the words and ideas seem to connect for people – and I'm very good at covering up the enormous holes in my knowledge!

Reply
beryl kingston link
4/8/2014 08:48:25 am

Very very interesting Anne and written with admirable compassion. Terror is something I know rather too much about and what you have written is very recognisable. Like Lynn I don't think the word 'closure' is helpful. Extreme terror changes you, especially if it goes on for a long time.

Reply
Annecdotist
4/8/2014 10:20:07 am

Thanks for reading and commenting, Beryl, and so glad it made sense to you.

Reply
Caroline link
8/9/2014 04:46:15 am

I came to this post via your comments on my post about hard to read books. I think I must face up to some of these books, and In the Orchard, The Swallows by Peter Hobbs might be the first.
Thanks Anne, alwasy interesting blogposts.
Carline

Reply
Annecdotist
8/9/2014 05:20:31 am

Thanks for reading, Caroline. I do think In The Orchard would be a good choice as the violence is almost redeemed by the poetic writing.
But if that doesn't suit, I'll be posting one or two other atrocity-based reviews in the next few weeks!

Reply



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