By A.M. Larks
Creatures, the first novel by Crissy Van Meter, is like free diving in an ocean of relationships, where one holds their breathe and plunges under surface, diving down deeper and deeper until the lungs burn and ache and require a quick return to the surface.
Set on a fictional island off the coast of Southern California (not unlike Catalina), the reader meets long-time local, Evie, three days before her beach wedding when a whale has died and is stuck in the bay. Her fiancé is out at sea, her estranged mother has miraculously appeared for the event, and a nasty storm is rolling in, possibly killing, possibly delaying said husband-to-be. These events set off a series of reflections in Evie, normally reticent, all while she concocts a plan to remove the stinky carcass before her big day.
Time dissipates through the coming pages where each section is arranged loosely by said three-day structure and subchapters are further delineated by weather event or season. Each of these chapters begins a deep dive into Evie’s relationships with her fiancé, her mother and father, her friends, and her island. The subchapters only further the descent. Together they read as the convergence of past, present, and future, which gives the reader a sensation not unlike that of being under water where one’s sense of direction is muddled. Like in any safe dive, there are guideposts to help safely abate this disorientation, like chapter titles and headings, as well as character details. However, this type of novel, like the act of free diving, will not appeal to every taste nor is it to be undertaken lightly.
Further disrupting any semblance of a linear narrative are Evie’s observational notes. The conceit is underrealized and is used as simply a foil for stream-of-consciousness journal entries.
Despite, these difficulties, Creatures is an alluring novel due to the main character’s penchant for not overthinking, leaving the reader to experience everything with Evie as though it were the first time. The threat of implosion looms as the reader is walloped with reveal after reveal, creating an inherent tension in the narrative, ultimately leaving the reader wondering if Evie will let her past dictate her future.
There are any number of surprising and refreshing turns in Creatures that hook the reader. An achievement unto itself, Creatures is a breath of fresh air in both form and content.
A.M. Larks’s writing has appeared in Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors, NiftyLit, Scoundrel Time, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, Five on the Fifth, Charge Magazine, and the ZYZZYVA and Ploughshares blogs. She has served as a judge for the Loud Karma Productions’ Emerging Female and Nonbinary Playwriting Award and has performed her stories at Lit Up at Town Hall Theatre in Lafayette, CA. She is the managing editor and blog editor at Kelp Journal. She is the former fiction editor at Please See Me, the former blog editor at The Coachella Review, as well as the former photography editor at Kelp Journal. A.M. Larks earned an MFA in creative writing from UC Riverside at Palm Desert, a JD, and a BA in English literature.
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