Fresh starts and What I Read in September
September always brings that back to school, fresh start feeling which I love. The summer has stretched on just a bit longer and I’m trying to make the most of these last light evenings while also embracing the change of seasons. I’m looking forward to autumn walks, hot chocolates and jumpers. Life has been hectic recently, so I’ve tried to set aside time to take stock. I always like to look back at what I set out to achieve at the start of the year and see how far I’ve come and how far I’ve got left to go, setting a few achievable goals and focussing on making a fresh start.
Damnation Spring – Ash Davidson
I picked this up on a whim after seeing it recommended on Goodreads and being drawn in by the cover. I’m not sure what I expected but it wasn’t a beautiful, sprawling novel about a logging community in the heart of California’s redwood forests. Rich comes from a generation of tree-fellers and wants a better future for his family, he sees buying his own land as the way out the family desperately needs. But this comes at a cost larger than the huge debts Rich racks up to achieve his dream. His wife, Colleen, is increasingly concerned by the damage the industry is causing to the environment and her fears are fuelled by Daniel Bywater, a scientist and member of the Yurok tribe, who is investigating toxins in the residents’ drinking water caused by the chemicals sprayed to clear forests. There are links to the illnesses is the community: birth defects, cancers, unexplained nosebleeds. Colleen’s own miscarriages and grief drive her to find answers but those answers put her family and communities livelihoods at risk.
This is a winding, complicated narrative and you become wrapped up in its branches.
Misc
I saw Past Lives at the cinema and it was perfect. It’s a gut wrenching and beautiful following childhood best friends Na-young, who later goes by Nora, and Hae-sung as they grow together and apart. The film, Canadian-Korean filmmaker Celine Song’s debut, opens with a shot of three adults in a bar. Two are Korean, one is white. A narrative voice speculates who they are to each other, why the dynamic looks so uncomfortable, a game that is so familiar and sets the scene perfectly.
As we dive back into the past we’re given the answer, Na-young and Hae-sung are childhood crushes, playing together in the park, walking home together and bickering over their grades. Life seems simple and sweet, until Na-young and her family move to North America. They lead very different lives, Na-young, who changes her name to Nora, is studying literature and working in New York while Hae-sung is completing his military service in Seoul. They reconnect over Facebook, exchanging messages with the frantic speed and excitement of a crush reborn, and then switch to long Skype calls that build into a relationship. When it becomes clear that neither is willing to sacrifice their studies, their schedules and the lives they have built for themselves to visit each other Nora ends things.
Years later, freshly out of a relationship, Hae-sung visits New York and arranges to meet Nora and her husband, Arthur. Their connection is instant, they are the same as when they were children but also so different. Nora is struck by him being ‘So Korean,’ and tells her husband ‘I feel so not Korean when I’m with him. But also more Korean.’ Throughout the film they talk about in-yun, the idea that a connection can transcend lives, that two people can be made for each other. The audience is swept along by their exploration of their past and expects the classic romantic film love triangle scenario to play out but, ultimately, is left longing. A moment that is so perfectly summed up in a pause between Nora and Hae-sung as they wait for his uber to the airport. I could feel the cinema holding their breath, screaming for them to realise their feelings. But that’s not how life goes, the taxi comes and some ‘what-ifs’ never get answered.
