Author: Claire Fullerton

Claire Fullerton is the multiple, award-winning author of four novels and one novella. She is a contributor to multiple anthologies and enjoyed her time reviewing books for the New York Journal of Books. A Shakespeare enthusiast, Claire is currently studying Shakespeare for the stage. Look into Claire on Goodreads.

The Man from Derry

His name was Eoghan, and I never did catch his last name. A solid year spent with the desultory coming and going of this enigmatic man through the door of The Galway Music Center, and I came to accept him as Kieran’s friend from Derry. Kieran rarely explained himself, much less anyone attendant, and because he was the head of The Center, the rest of us were not in the habit of asking. They talked alike, Kieran and Eoghan, but half of the time I couldn’t discern what they were saying. In each other’s company, neither enunciated; they’d slip into a flat, guttural diction that lacked the singing high notes of the west of Ireland’s accent, and I confess it took too much effort to attune my ear to their patois. On Kieran’s lips, the name Eoghan was levelled to the convenience of “Own.” I figured it was a linguistic vortex from there, so I settled with gathering the essence.

Eoghan was older than the rest of us by a good 10 years, but this wasn’t what gave him his arresting gravitas. He had a way of standing that meant business: feet planted, weight centered, eyes with an unambiguous stare. And although I’m an innocuous little thing in stature, no threat to anybody in any conceivable way, the day I met Eoghan, he took his time looking me over. There was a nerve-wracking tenor to his streetwise swagger that seemed crouched and coiled between fight and flight. Kieran once hinted that Eoghan had, and I quote, “Northern Irish connections,” but I paid it no heed because Eoghan’s blue eyes settled the score between his tough-guy countenance and his poetic mind. His eyes were the color of liquid innocence, round and clear and all-knowing; the kind of eyes that saw between layers; the kind of eyes you knew you could trust.

And so it evolved that on a windswept, December’s Saturday, I took the bus into Galway and followed the directions Eoghan had given me to Scoil Lan-Ghaeilge. It was there I found him in the back of the room, wearing a Santa Claus costume and speaking to a passel of fresh-faced children in the Irish language, while a pack of smiling mothers stood by, cameras in hand. It was a scene so incongruous to everything I knew of Eoghan that I had to study it for a moment because he’d never bothered to tell me he taught the Irish language in his spare time. It turned out this was just the beginning of Eoghan’s love for all things Irish. He took a warrior’s pride in his country and possessed a knowledge so deep in its history you would have thought he’d been personally involved at every turn of Ireland’s storied past. Which is why he took it upon himself to invite me to the gentle fields of Oughterard, on the shores of Lough Corrib. He hadn’t divulged our destination; he simply told me to get in his blue Honda Civic, then sped out of Galway on the Headford Road. Twenty six cork-screw miles and 45 minutes later, Eoghan stopped the car on an uneven dirt road. A cattle grate lay before a rusted gate with a padlock, and climbing over it, we stood at the mouth of an unkempt field.

In my mind’s eye, I can still see it: the unfathomable immensity of winter-torn acreage, its wooded grassland beaten to a faded ochre beneath an overcast sky.  The earth was sodden beneath my boots as we trudged through the unmarked expanse. Blackbirds and hawks swooped above watching; they sailed in a majestic current with the rights of jurisdiction, and I knew myself to be an interloper in this dreary landscape, where the wind pitched and rolled with a chill that touched bone. Eoghan roved forward in his loose, ambling stride. He held his head with fierce intention, his eyes on the horizon between earth and sky. It was there beyond the rise that I saw it. It rose out of the earth and spread ominously, a thunderous ancient castle, in parts without a roof. A grey stone wall stacked around the manse declaring its prominence. At one time it must have been impressive, but now shrubbery defaced the castle walls, and tangled ivy and moss ravaged through the windows. But still, she upheld her imperious grandeur. There was something queenly in her stately elegance; safe in her desolation, and validating to the soul as we walked her interior then circled her venerable grounds. You simply cannot walk grounds such as this with any amount of Irish blood in your veins without it speaking to you. Something longing and haunting descends like the call of atavistic memory. Something turns in your blood that is probably DNA. I don’t think you can be Irish without Ireland’s history being part of your personal story. I started to say something to Eoghan about this, but from the way he was looking at me, he already knew. And the thing about that day was I half expected Eoghan to hold forth in erudite commentary, but he didn’t. There are some moments so sacred they require no words, and to share them with someone creates an unnamable intimacy best not disturbed. In that moment, I knew something, though I couldn’t tell you what I knew; I just knew. I was there and experienced something ineffably integral to being of Irish descent, and from the manner of his quietude, I thought Eoghan did, too. I suspected it was why he’d brought me here, to this place without a name. It was Eoghan’s way of sharing his homeland, and I am warmed to this day by the gesture. I took the above photograph as we walked towards the castle. It’s unfortunately small and lacks the impact the structure made, but I keep it in a standing frame just the same. It doesn’t capture much of what I saw that day, yet every time I look at it, it brings to mind the most important memory: a peacock proud Irishman in love with his country, that swashbuckling Derry man named Eoghan, whom I’ll never forget.

Claire Fullerton is the author of A Portal in Time and the 2016, Readers’ Favorite award winner for cultural fiction, Dancing to an Irish Reel.

http://www.clairefullerton.com

 

Temple Secrets by Susan Gabriel Book Review

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I’m going to try to come near stringing the adequate words together that describe how much I loved this book. I’ll cut to the chase and say it was so good, I didn’t want it to end. Temple Secrets is the kind of well crafted book that, once closed, causes you to wonder what to do next with your life. Author Susan Gabriel created a story chock-full of Southern characters and never once condescended to anything campy, rather, she infused every character with soul as they walked the wire of a story so unique as to be plausible, of character nuance so defined, you understood the underlying motivation behind every thought and deed in this electrifyingly unusual gem of common history experienced individually by players so intertwined, their lives are domino effects wrought from the hands of each other. And oh, the tone of this book: it is bluntly in your face without being offensive. Susan Gabriel writes in a direct, brass tacks voice that is howlingly funny, for all its taboo subjects, and I relished every line. The premise of Temple Secrets is this: In blue-blooded, aristocratic Savannah, where the mansions are gothic and imposing as they retain the character of days gone by, supercilious eccentric, Iris Temple, is on her last leg. For decades, she has ruled the roost of everything and everyone around her. She is one of Savannah’s inflexible old guard and proud of it to the point that she wields her power position in society like a sword. Hers is a personality so full of controlling disdain that she is feared not only by her family and staff, but by the denizens of Savannah, whose tether she keeps tight by her family’s book of secrets, which details intimate, damaging facts best not publically revealed. Iris is estranged from her full-grown daughter, looks down on her mulatto half-sister, who lives with her, and is catered to beyond reason by a handful of staff, who prefer not to stir the waters of Iris’ own self-image. It is a dynamic changer, when Iris is incapacitated by a stroke, and suffice it to say the ghosts of her past come out to haunt, literally and figuratively, which wouldn’t happen in most places, but it can and does in Savannah. In chapters detailing the individual character’s connection to Iris, the story morphs into an incestuous web you didn’t see coming. And at the heart of this story is the Temple Book of Secrets; someone has taken it upon themselves to publish part of its content, but the mystery is nobody knows who or why. It’s hard to write more at this point, without needing a spoiler alert, and I don’t want to deprive the reader of the joy to be found in this bounding story, so I will summarize by saying this novel is so engaging, so thrilling and unique that I stand beside many clamoring for a sequel!

The World Made Straight by Ron Rash

44179   There’s a good reason the Atlanta Journal Constitution called Ron Rash “one of the major writers of our time.” To me, he is this and more. Ron Rash writes in a gritty, mountain vernacular that can’t be faked; one has to come from it and know it as their own voice of consciousness in order to wield it as plausibly as he. Rash’s language, therefore, is its own reasoning; it speaks of a clear-cut, hard-edged, uncompromising way of living in the world devoid of the illusion of optimism. One wonders, as they read Rash, if it is the jaded wrappings of cynicism or the unvarnished truth behind his tightly crafted novels. This is a writer who delivers the dark notes of beaten humanity in such a way that there is hope. In The World Made Straight, Travis Shelton comes from nothing, on the cusp of manhood in an unforgiving North Carolina mountain community, where drug-dealing is a viable livelihood, in this hardscrabble region with few opportunities outside of one’s own wits. It is the glimmer of something more that drives him to prove himself to his rough-hewed, hard-nosed father. Travis seeks to better himself after one fight too many; he leaves the tobacco fields on his family’s land and presents himself at the trailer of a local named Leonard, who is both drug-dealer and mentor, in that he is the only one in Travis’ sphere who, at one time, amounted to anything, though fate made it short-lived. Under Leonard’s influence, Travis pursues his high school GED, while shouldering the fall-out of the one false move he made, when he riled the shackles of local heavy-weight, Carlton Toomey, when he trespassed on his land. These are mountain characters who play by their own lawless rules, in a landscape where it’s every man for himself. In a climate still stinging from the horrors of the Civil War, the characters are born beneath the shadow of the ties that atavistically bind them, albeit through a sense of random tribal placement that haunts this story in an unfolding mystery, the impact of which the characters are not completely aware, until the looming puzzle work fits. It is a small world, in The World Made Straight, but it is universal in implication. Self-worth, justice, revenge, and hope against all odds flavors this story, which ends in notes of satisfaction and just deserves.

Eulogy for Shadow

The mornings without her are the worst, in that slip of time between the dream state and the metal glare of remembering Shadow’s not there—that she won’t be eye-level to the bed as she has been for years, drawing me impatiently from my slumber, anxious to start her day.
The world was a big, joyous place, according to Shadow, and I couldn’t help but see it through her eyes. Every morning she’d squeal and clamor as if time were wasting. There were scents outside with clues in the yard, and sticks and pine cones shaken to the ground that couldn’t wait another minute. Oh, get up, get up, she’d insist; the world awaits with endless possibilities!
I am listless in her absence. I do not want to rise from this bed. There is no comfort in this house, yet I cannot bear to walk outside where she used to play. I cannot put my shoes on without remembering how the act sent her into spinning rapture, and there is too much space around me without her underfoot.
I never knew silence could affect me physically, that it could start with a ringing in my ears then land so heavily on my heart. If I rise now, every gesture in the rhythm of my day will lack her, and every movement without purpose in this world now grown flat. I roll to my right and see her toys strewn around her fleece covered bed. I should get up and put her bear and her balls away, find some place to put that pine cone, but I can’t bring myself to disrupt her last arrangement. I want to leave everything as Shadow placed it because I still marvel at the single-mindedness with which she marked her place in the world.
I think I will lie here until her spirit comes wet-nosed to soothe me. I lack the strength to rise to a world that exists without her, and there will be no joy if her spirit does not come. I need to lie here until I remember what joy is; I’ve been too long following her lead and have forgotten how to find it on my own.
I am frozen in this bed with the thought of taking my heart back from Shadow. The prospect seems something I am incapable of, and right now I would rather lie in this pain forever than place one foot to a floor where she does not lay. She was ceaseless, constant, beautiful, unending. She came lovingly, unquestioning, every time I called her name.
Hear now, Shadow, my voice as I call you, “Here pretty girl; baby come home.”

Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League

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I cannot recall the last time I read a book set in the South wherein the personality and cadence of the dialogue was pitch-perfect. Jonathan Odell goes way deeper than Southern parlance in “Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League;” he delves right into the middle of Mississippi’s idiomatic speech, much of which is expressed by suggestion. The vernacular in this book tells half the story, and because of its spot-on attitude, we know more of the characters than any well-written descriptive paragraph could ever depict.
Set in the small Delta town of Delphi, it is the 1950’s, and segregation, prejudice and class division are an issue. After Hazel Ishee, who comes from little, meets the charismatic Floyd Graham in the Rexall Drug Store in Tupelo, they marry and move to Delphi because Floyd has big dreams of starting his own car dealership. Amidst a town set in its ways and customs, they begin a life together in which Hazel knows she does not fit in. As a loner in Delphi, her ways blossom into an eccentricity the entire town talks about, then the cruel hand of fate steps in to exacerbate her isolation, which doesn’t begin to mend until Floyd hires Vida as the family’s maid. Vida has an agenda in accepting the position, which has to do with her history with the local sheriff, who lives next door. As Hazel and Vida’s relationship evolves from one of mutual suspicion to friendship, the division between the races is explored and bridged, and the reader comes to learn that no one person exists in this small town without effecting its whole. This is a fast paced, thrilling book that takes a heavy era in time and infuses it with quirky humor. The characters are well drawn and representative of certain sects of society without being campy. It is a story of people who seek to be more than they are, only to realize they have been enough all along. 

http://www.clairefullerton.com

Book Review “The First Time She Drowned” by Kerry Kletter

Claire Fullerton’s Reviews > The First Time She Drowned

The First Time She Drowned by Kerry Kletter
The First Time She Drowned
by Kerry Kletter (Goodreads Author)

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Claire Fullerton‘s review

Jul 18, 2016  ·  edit
 
Read from July 14 to 17, 2016

 

The First Time She Drowned is crowned with one of the better book titles I’ve come across in recent memory. It opens with a poetically metered prologue that sets the book’s searching tone, and progressively leads the reader through a story that could have been maudlin in the hands of a lesser writer. Author Kerry Kletter deftly gives voice to eighteen year old narrator Cassie O’Malley, in language both startlingly honest and languidly circumspect. This is a modern day, relevant story of the damage exacted in dysfunctional families, where there is so much hidden agenda that the only way to the light is to unearth the source. In layered chapters of past and present, Cassie O’Malley is the bearer of the cross in a family dynamic that victimizes her, lands her against her will in a mental hospital then springs her upon her acceptance to college, where she immediately discovers she is ill prepared to meet its predictable challenges: classes, new friends, and the simple logistics of just fitting in. At the core of this story is a mother-daughter dynamic built on the shaky ground of mistrust. Cassie carries
scars like an emotional latch-key kid, wrought from the hands of a mother so self-serving and narcissistic; she thinks the emotional and
physical neglect is her own fault. It is a long road to recovery in this well-crafted tale of a search for truth, and Kletter gives us a protagonist
we desperately want to see triumph. We understand Cassie’s interior life because the author leaves nothing unattended. Kletter dives down to the bone marrow of that which shapes an inchoate psyche and leaves an imprint, then leads the way through to an ending that shines with emotional intelligence. I read this gripping book as close to non-stop as I’ve ever read anything. It is a riveting read written with such maturity, I find it hard to grasp that it is Kletter’s debut novel. Read this book, tell your friends, and stand in line with me for Kerry Kletter’s next book!

Art for Art’s Sake?

Lately, I’ve been given cause to seriously consider my writing career and to ask myself why I’m truly engaged in the pursuit. Though I am an optimist by nature, it does occur to me that as a universal rule, one can only work with a situation successfully as long as it works with them.  When it comes to most things in life, there is an art to meeting things half-way, to staying in the middle, to watching the dynamic of cause and effect in one’s life, to not over-extending oneself, nor taking things personally. It’s helpful for a writer to keep this in mind when it comes to the experience of rejection. This is not to say that it’s a bad thing to be goal oriented, only that there is folly in putting a time frame on the long range goal. Many writers want to see measurable progress according to their time-table, but this is where we’re best shown that we are not in control. I think the adage of showing up, doing the work, and being unattached to outcome is the aim, but how to seriously achieve this stance of nonattachment; this acceptance of our lack of control? Artists tend to be emotionally involved in their creations. We want to see the fruits of our labors manifest, elsewise, what’s it all for? But I’m going to take this to a soul level and say the soul only wants to create; it wants the experience of creation as its reality, and if one considers art from this premise, then it is enough to create. So the fundamental question for any artist to ask themselves is do you want the glory of the experience, or do you want to reap a reward? The world will tell you success looks a certain way at a particular end and therein lies your validation, but what attitude are we to assume until that fateful day? What price happiness, and how are we to manage within an arena whose premise is to contribute then relinquish control? The thing is, we have no control, and  assuming we do sets us up for all kinds of false premises, wherein frustration, self-doubt, victimization, and all the rest are given license. As a writer, I think art for art’s sake is the answer because we can’t control our reception. We may or may not gain riches and recognition, but if we engage the artistic flow as a way of being in the world and are in the right relationship with its unpredictability,  then I think we can say we’re living a successful life.  It’s not necessary to be the choreographer of the show, it’s only necessary that we are wise enough to dance.

Author’s note: This post is in response to Jason Howell’s  question of the week on his blog, Howlarium, of which I am an avid fan:

Q: How often are you able to create a desired result for yourself by sheer force of will, or by arranging circumstances? Do you ever feel as though the reason you aren’t far enough along is that you haven’t pushed yourself hard enough, even though you’ve worked very hard? In your writing life or otherwise—is control really all it’s cracked up to be? 

Check into Howlarium @ http://www.howlarium.com/

Poetry Challenge: Dreaming Trees

Only Heaven Knows

 

Blue and Black, Sorrow and twilight

Moonlight treads, wary of sunlight

And tomorrow is no promise

Heaven knows only heaven knows

 

Secrets resound, swaying, growing

Upon us like destiny’s path

And we dream we are all-knowing

Heaven knows only heaven knows

 

Up in the steel gray dawn of light

Asleep in visions’ dark of night

And in between, we do not know

Heaven knows only heaven knows

 

What is it we dream we have learned

At the frail hands of each other?

Life and love, longing and laughter

Heaven knows only heaven knows.

 

This week’s poetry challenge on Jane Dougherty’s blog. Thank you to Jane Dougherty!

 

 

 

The Journey

I’m partial to the west coast of Ireland for its myriad wonders, which appear in small towns that are hidden like gemstones in neat grids of logic separated by rambling, idle roads. There are worlds within worlds in these Irish small towns: history and lineage and myth and folklore; meaning so resonate and full of discovery the very act of rounding a corner can haunt a person to the bone marrow. I’m a firm believer that the way to the soul of a place is best found on foot; it’s easier to raise your antennae to the uncanny when your feet are grounded, and this is just what I was thinking as I navigated the sidewalk in Kinvara, down to the docks on the water’s edge. There across the bay, deep on the horizon, County Galway stretched in all its heavenly promise. The next day, we’d be driving our rented car the forty five minutes it takes to get to Galway City, but for now there was the lure of County Clare in the opposite direction. My friend and I had decided to make a day of it; we’d make our way slowly to the Cliffs of Moher, for no other reason than it seemed the thing to do, and we’d park the car and explore wherever the fancy struck, along the forty nine kilometer route it takes to get to what seems the edge of the known world.

In the town of Kinvara, life teemed around us in all its natural rhythm: pub doors opened to the early fall sunlight, children roamed the streets in navy blue school uniforms, in pairs and in packs. A man ahead walked two border collies off-leash; they tacked side to side, noses sniffing, rounding back to me for a pet. Up from the docks, as the sidewalk rode the incline, art galleries and shops with T-shirts in their glass fronts reading “I’m a Galway Hooker” beckoned in praise of the town’s claim to fame. In the village center café, two men played vocal one-upmanship in guttural accents that dripped soggy with Guinness. We’d parked the car earlier, across from Dunghaire Castle; we’d already gone a few rounds with our cameras as we stood in the driveway of the accessible fortress, rising from a knoll abutted by water so tranquil it took calisthenics to consider who thought what, when positioning it just so.

Through the burren, we might have been on the other side of the moon, for all its otherworldly weariness. Though I’d read much of what has been written of the area, I’d never seen it, and its gray desperation felt so inhospitable as to be hospitable, so repellant as to be attractive, so world without end, amen. In the carpark of Poulnabrone dolmen, a disheveled man stood bearded behind a card table selling his jewelry. Were it not for the distraction of the couple behind us, my friend and I would probably still be standing there listening to this proud Irishman wax erudite rhapsody on the dolmen’s history and why we had to have one of his handmade commemorative pieces for ourselves. Up the windswept tor, we took turns standing in front of the dolmen while the other took a picture, until the couple behind us snapped us together, freezing us in a time where I can still feel the wind in my hair, the rock beneath my feet, the magic in the air.

Down from the burren, on the road to Doolin, an unmarked tower called my name, and I mean this literally. Were my mother alive, God rest her, she’d tell you she named me after her mother, Claire Crossan, whose family hailed from County Clare. But what she wouldn’t tell you is why she nick-named me Doona, and my thought has always been she thought Claire was too unwieldy, until I reached a certain age. When pressed, which I did repeatedly, my mother only confessed to making up a baby rhyme with the name Doona, which somehow became my moniker. But my mother was a dyed in the wool American Southerner, which is a breed of cat not in the habit of explaining themselves, ever. So you can imagine the enlightenment and sense of inevitability that descended in a road-side shop later, after we’d stopped the car and traipsed the hillside, coastal property of that crowned tower, which loomed sentry behind a walled enclosure overlooking Doolin Point. There on an aluminum stand beside the cash register, postcards of Doonagore Castle rested at eye-level. My friend took one in hand and said, “You’re not going to believe this.” We turned over the uncanniness, all the way to Lisdoonvarna then into Doolin, where the road flowed to a gray-stone bridge over water, and signs on hand-painted easels announced which traditional musicians would be playing that night, in one of the pastel colored thatched pubs that stand sandwiched together like ducks in a row set in an Irish Disneyland. Walking down the street, there wasn’t a soul who didn’t make eye-contact and extend a “hi-ya,” for such is the way of it on Ireland’s western shore. One aproned woman swept the sidewalk in front of a restaurant and called out, “If you’re on your way to the Cliffs of Moher, you’d be wanting to get a move on. The wind’s rising now; you’ll be wanting to beat it.” “Forewarned is forearmed,” I said to my friend. We got back in the car and went on our way, but it wasn’t without its obstruction. On the side of the road, in front of a cream colored house, an elderly, yellow retriever lumbered perilously close to the traffic. It took a few blinks for me to register that it wore a long linked chain, tethered to a post too close to the road. I pulled the car in the resident driveway, assessed the problem and knocked on the house door. When no joy came, I called the dog to me and wrapped its leash around the front door, spied a water bowl on the front porch, found a yard hose, and filled the bowl with water.

It was late in the afternoon, by the time we reached the Cliffs of Moher. We climbed the steep, paved road from the carpark to the visitor’s center, took an obligatory circle around inside then out to O’Brien’s Tower, from which we gazed south and stood in awe-struck wonder, for nothing prepares you for the sheer scale of size, nor the towering majesty of this world’s natural wonder.

“I’m never getting over this,” my friend said. ‘I can’t believe I’m standing here.”

“I can’t either,” I said, “though it occurs to me today has been just as much about the journey as it has been the end.”

For more Irish Stories: http://www.clairefullerton.com
“Dancing Companion.”
 

An Irish Lagnaippe

In Louisiana, they use the phonetically pleasing word lagniappe to denote a little something extra. Typically, a lagniappe is a small gift given with a purchase to a customer, by way of compliment or for good measure as a way of saying thank you. I’ve been so enamored with this word that it’s found its way into my psyche and influenced my behavior, where it prompts me to go the extra mile, when in deep gratitude. And deep gratitude I have for those generous souls who have posted reviews, written me, and recommended my second novel, Dancing to an Irish Reel. Some have done as I suspected; they’ve written me to ask how much of the book is true, for I made no secret in sharing that I actually lived on the western coast of Ireland, where the book is set, and most readers know that writers pull from their own life to one degree or another.

I’m a fan of the first person essay. I consider it the art of brevity whose aspiration is to create a whole world around a case in point. I could wax loquacious on how the pursuit thrills me, how the challenge ignites the deep-seated, smoldering embers of why I write in the first place, which is to say I experience life as a witness and write to decipher its nuances in a manner that seeks to compare notes.

Sometimes life itself will hand you a lagniappe when you’re not looking. This was the case for me when I came across the Irish on-line community, The Wild Geese. There lies a compatible fraternity of like-minded souls, who can never get enough of their favorite subject, which is themselves. Proudly, I say, I am one of them; I am one of the island folk by lineage, and I flew into formation the second I found the flock. I brought much of who I am to this union: a writer, a shanachie, a child of Eire. I started writing the stories behind the stories that were my inspiration in the crafting of Dancing to an Irish Reel and as time stretched on, I realized I’d created my own lagniappe to give to those who read my book.

 

On my website http://www.clairefullerton.com/, there are three tabs on the homepage titled “Dancing Companion,” where a collection of my first person Irish essays can be found along with attended photographs.

 

Please accept them as my lagniappe!