[REVIEW] The Story I Tell Myself About Myself by Sarah Layden

(Sonder Press, 2018)

REVIEW BY DHEEPA R. MATURI

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A woman without skin. A man with a womb. A person who is also a house. Sarah Layden’s flash fiction collection, The Story I Tell Myself About Myself, evokes ghosts of Sherwood Anderson’s well-known “grotesques” in Winesburg, Ohio. Layden’s characters, too, are flawed and broken, grappling with isolation and desperation, attempting to endure their pain. And like Anderson’s, Layden’s characters are deeply worth the time and effort to understand them.

During a time in which public discourse consists of simplistic labeling, which in turn generates quick classification and easy hatred, Layden insists we resist the impulse to evaluate and judge others quickly. Layden’s cleverly crafted and complex morsels of flash fiction soundly reject the notion of monolithic identity. Rather, she illustrates how identity is an accumulation and amalgam of the perceptions of others, our perceptions of ourselves, and of course, the (many) stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. I found myself reading each story and examining each character multiple times, watching Layden expose all of those layers with subtle and precise scalpel cuts.

But Layden does more than expose these layers. Through her cuts, the heartbreak and loss of each character’s experience, emerge and emanate. In bringing these to light, she guides the reader from witnessing the unpalatable messiness, unappealing imperfections, and sheer strangeness of people — toward empathy. Like Anderson, Layden makes us relate to the characters, feel for them, look under their layers for what they are: fellow human beings experiencing the human struggle to live well.

In short, by revealing the complexity of identity, Layden brings the the reader closer to the truth of human life. Just as she destabilizes the notion of a monolithic identity — and for the same reason — Layden disrupts her story settings, carving out spaces and imbuing them with power to reveal truth. An elevator consultation with a gypsy, (“The Rest of Your Life”), a church service a character does not normally attended (“What Mary Did”), even the silences within a telephone conversation (“Hang Up”) — all tear the characters out of their regular lives. At the same time, they provide the characters a glimpse of truth and readers a more accurate view of those characters’ foibles and self-deceptions.

To the same end, Layden even disrupts the structures within which her stories are constructed. A fill-in-the-blank tale (“Fulfilled”) shows us the potential for variability within her story based upon the respondent. Another story (“Collision Physics for the Math-Averse”) parses a crash into its physical components while simultaneously presenting mirror image realities. A story told in a numbered sequence (“Marv’s 11 Steps”) shows the human need to superimpose order upon the wild disorder of life.

Layden’s skillful destabilization of identity, of setting, of structure make the reader searingly conscious of the fragility of each, and thus able to perceive the truth underneath more clearly. Often, Layden’s skillful storytelling made me lose my bearings, left me a bit raw. Like the woman who removes her protective suit (“The Woman With No Skin”) in order to absorb fully the realities around her and despite the painful bombarding that results, I felt the need to understand life and truth through Layden’s eyes.

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Dheepa R. Maturi, an essayist and poet, is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago. Her work has appeared in The Fourth River, Tiferet, Entropy, the Brevity nonfiction blog, The Offbeat, Tweetspeak, Wanderlust, Defenestration, Here Comes Everyone, Wild Musette, The Indianapolis Review, Dear America: Reflections on Race, and elsewhere. She lives with her family in Indianapolis. www.DheepaRMaturi.com