Four Way Books

72 pgs/$15.95

“We are the girls. Everything in the world points to us”

Farrah Field’s book Wolf and Pilot just out from Four Way is a freaky narrative-ish collection telling of many things, but particularly of four young sisters running away from home. They don’t go far, interacting with the mother they have run from, entering homes and spaces otherwise closed (strange bedrooms, underground). The beauty here is in the uncertainty- the girls are gone, home, perhaps mere specters. It is their absolute agency and mobility that troubles any certainty. This ultimately adds to the power of book, keeping the reader searching for the next hard kernel of information, which she gets often enough to follow Field’s compelling narrative. Wolf and Pilot has seven players: there is the detective (Henry), the teacher, the mother/witch (Helen), and the four runaway daughters (Elsianne, Matilda, Emaline and Aubrie). Periodically there are stray characters who try to make their way into the story, but can’t quite puncture it. This is demonstrated in “Bedtime Stories,” when a girl (Abigail) rings the doorbell and Helen answers it:

“A clitoris could be pinned down
like a dissected frog the witch said.
Abigail said what are you talking about and went away the only

friend we ever had.” Continue reading →