Reviews
The Long Rowing Unto Morning
Reviewed by Catherine Spangler
The Long Rowing
Unto Morning
by Norman Lock
Ravenna Press,
2910 E. 57th Ave., Ste 10B-310,
Spokane, WA 99223
www.ravennapress.com
ISBN: 0-9776162-5-8
2006, paper, 128 pages, $12.95
Read Norman Lock’s bio and you will be struck by his versatility as a writer. His oeuvre includes acclaimed plays, radio dramas, short stories, essays, reviews, poetry screenplays and books, each with an intriguing title exemplifying the scope of his creative vision. While Lock may write on a variety of subjects in an array of mediums, every work seems to be as studied and intelligent as if it were his specialty. One of his recently published books, The Long Rowing Unto Morning, is the consuming narrative of an individual named Jane. It is the best of Lock as a writer of fiction: innovative, and intense.
Jane does not live in the world as others do. Lock portrays her solitary existence with a fiercely attentive hand, as if he were an invisible observer recording every move. Jane is cloistered, dispossessed, a sensitive being with a child-like vision of the everyday — what her father calls “seeing signs,” what doctors might call autistic. After Jane’s parents die she is left completely alone. Her narrative takes place after many years of working as a night janitor in a building she knows nothing about, in a city where it always seems to be raining. She is old now, preoccupied with death and her excruciating loneliness.
Lock conveys Jane’s extraordinary isolation in the language she uses. It has been so long since she has really spoken to another person that her words are uttered as if she were learning them all over again. They repeat themselves, quivering on turns of phrase, and then halt suddenly. It is one reason why The Long Rowing Unto Morning is so difficult and worthwhile to read. Jane’s way of seeing the world and describing it in simple, novel terms, offers relief from such a hard and miserable existence. It is a voice unlike any other.
To escape the harsh reality of the everyday, Jane retreats into her memories. It is through these ruptures in time (when she unabashedly remembers her parents, an encounter with a boy, her childhood) that Lock speaks candidly about the emptiness of modern life. At the root of this discussion is a concept of permeability that causes Jane to carry the pain of loss “inside me now,” so that her body is porous, susceptible to all the agony of the world. Lock is interested in one of the most important questions we can encounter: what it means to be in the world. His metaphors of inaccessibility and containment are powerful and often devastating forces throughout the novel. In a particularly wrenching moment, Jane stands in her empty apartment, listening to a woman crying on the other side of the wall. She imagines the woman curled up like a baby trapped inside of the walls, unable to reach her.
By mere description alone, the storyline may seem arduous in its bleakness. Yet what is difficult to convey, and thus speaks to the writer’s powers of invention, is the absolute attention it commands. Lock contrives an atmosphere of extreme claustrophobia as we listen to Jane’s thoughts and invade her deepest memories. One of the rare appearances of a world outside of the one described in Jane’s mind is the mention of her father being persecuted as a German spy during WWII for his suspicious owning of carrier pigeons. Jane’s subsequent removal from school marks the beginning of her removal from society all together. Lock provides intrusions of an alternate world such as this to give context to the one we are so engrossed with.
The Long Rowing Unto Morning showcases Norman Lock’s remarkable ability to draw out the nuances of a stark situation. Though at times it may feel like a mingling of agendas — one moment we soar with the beauty of Jane’s observations, the next we are crushed by her inevitable sorrow — there is a trajectory to the story that brings us ever closer to the central figure. Lock has created a character that sees the world in a beautiful way and yet fails to really be in it. In this devastating way we come to know and care for Jane, and perhaps recognize a small part of her struggle in our own.
lives in Seattle, Washington, and works various odd jobs. One of them is providing editorial assistance at Raven Chronicles. In her spare time she enjoys reading and biking, and is currently working on several pieces of short fiction.