I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying by Matthew Salesses (A Review by Jonathan Crowl)

138 pgs/$13.95

Most humans I know can’t regrow a lost limb, but the same adaptive limitations don’t extend to our minds and souls. Shattered hearts, broken spirits can be stitched and rebuilt given the proper conditions, and, of course, time. Such regeneration plays out among the nameless central figures of Matthew Salesses’ I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying, a novel told in flash fictions. Each of the 115 titled chapters reveals a moment in the shaping of a thrown-together family, its members straddling borders between their respective pasts and futures. The stripped-down structure of this story confronts readers with deep-set, trembling emotions so often expressed erratically on the surface. It is a novel that manages, in few words, to devastate with its honesty and fearlessness.

At the center of the story is a Korean man living recklessly. He employs no self-restraint in taking on multiple lovers at once. His job is an obligation endured, and with little effort. He maintains friendships with people on the constant prowl for trouble. None of this changes when his life is disrupted by a five-year-old boy, half-Korean, their physical likeness irrefutable. The boy attaches to him after watching his mother slowly die in a hospital bed. With no other family claiming the boy, the man assumes a pseudo-guardianship, an interim solution as he troubleshoots his predicament. Death hangs over them like a cloud: An object of obsession for the boy, who craves obituaries and stories of gruesome death; an ongoing process for the man whose known life shrinks further into oblivion with each day the boy remains in his care. Early on in the book, he takes the boy to the beach, watching him play in the surf and reflecting on a life no longer carefree: “I hated to be reminded that I was on vacation, not life. … I wanted my wants to have nothing to do with anyone else’s. Now, as if in another life, a boy owned me.” This apprehension to fully embrace fatherhood is not overlooked by the boy, who the man admits is “a genius at context.”

If only that were the end of the complexities. With a boy freshly under wing, the man is also racked by a serious case of lady troubles. A one-night stand from his past has died, and in doing so disrupted his current juggling act. He becomes particularly divided over two women, the Korean “wifely woman” and the “white girl,” the latter representing the life he is maybe, driftingly, leaving for domestication and the company of the wifely woman, if only he can kick his carnal habit. For further complication, there is also an “Asian girl” and an ethics-eschewing therapist. The man yearns to be good enough for the wifely woman but often fails himself, turning to the white girl at every passing impulse. Each setback pulls him farther away from the person he aspires to be, from proving himself strong enough to take up the burden he created years ago with a woman he hardly remembers.

Division is a common theme in this novel. Each character wrestles with the stalled advancement of their lives and a brokenness of being too severe, it sometimes seems, to overcome. Even the resilient young boy falls victim to the crushing weight of circumstance. He has wandered through his orphaned existence neither released nor embraced, the uncertain months rolling by without any indication that there will be someone to love him in the end. The man and wifely woman, trying with great difficulty to make their relationship work in part for the sake of the child, are in constant unrest; the boy expresses his complicated emotions through the mutilated body of the family cat. Not just a skilled craftsman of powerful moments, Salesses — adopted from Korea at age two and now a father himself — understands the tumult that can accompany an uprooted child, especially when anchored in uncertain soil.

As the story wears on, the man, his son, and the wifely woman all strive to find a balance among the shifting proportions of their lives. Each of them, in their own way, are testing themselves against the challenge to become better versions of themselves. They are, as we all are, survivors of the wreckages of life, moving onward into new iterations, because there is no going back. When the book ends, a year after the young boy had first appeared, the pair is back on the beach, this time with the wifely woman in tow. The man watches as the other two wade into the water. Although desperate for a moment’s rest, he can’t take his eyes off the boy. Is this vacation or life? Maybe it’s both. Maybe all good things require sacrifice.

Jonathan Crowl is a writer living in Portland, Oregon. His book reviews have appeared in newspapers and at Bookslut. He runs the Twitter news feed @LitMagNews.