WILD DARK SHORE

Richly imagined, finely crafted: this is a book that reminds us about how to connect even when the next nearest town is thousands of miles away.

This is not the blog I expected to post this month. I had the first of a two part series set to go when something extraordinary got in the way. Take my advice and make every effort to insure this thing gets in your way, too.

It’s a novel called “Wild Dark Shore” by Charlotte McConaghy. Yes, a novel; a whole book. I realize that most people have long since stopped reading those things, but may I suggest that you consider re-discovering the concept? Turn off your electronics, find a quiet space, and clear your afternoon. 

This is a fast read—it’s impossible to put down—but that doesn’t mean it’s lightweight. Place and character emerge vividly in deceptively economical prose, an efficiency that condenses emotion like savory soup reduced on a stove. In fact, for a pot-boiler like this, McConaghy’s economy of language adds urgency without losing a morsel of vital substance. 

Beyond a low-key and entirely reasonable posture about climate and biosphere sustainability, the book almost entirely stays away from politics, a welcome tonic in these ferociously partisan times. No doubt some readers will ascribe certain political overtones in places, but one would have to work hard to do so. This is a tale with other things in mind.

The story takes place on a remote island as far from anywhere as possible. An unexpected family of caretakers has the daunting responsibility of keeping a scientific research station operational until a Navy ship can meet them in a couple of months and begin decommissioning the place. When a shipwreck strands a mysterious, perilously injured castaway, the backstories of each character suddenly veer towards a collision that’s simultaneously impossible to predict as much as it’s inevitable once encountered. 

There are gestures of science fiction here, but this story definitively takes place in the real world. The externalities finds stable footing in the world of science, and as a robust skeleton for more delicate interior considerations, that stability adds mass and relevance. The natural world, and those people dedicated to understanding its intricacies, serves as a narrative backdrop. Through the eyes of the book’s short cast of characters we are reminded that there are dramatic and profound alternatives to the exceedingly complex lives most of us live in the industrialized world. 

Everyone in the book radiates competence regardless of age. There are no complainers here either, no matter how hard the going may get with regard to daunting physical requirements or profound emotional demands. We experience a rough hewn noble beauty in both their physical and emotional struggles. As a direct result we encounter a depth of feeling about each of them that saturates the reader as much as the endlessly lashing rain and surf constantly washing the island.

For such a richly imagined story, McConaghy makes the astute choice not to describe much about how everyone looks. We get spare hints about physical features, including one unexpectedly moving haircut portrayed in a brief scene, but there are scant details to describe clothing, faces, or physical characteristics. The magic trick here is that readers will have no trouble conjuring intensely vivid images of each character. These are not bedraggled ne’re-do-wells at the edge of the world. Rugged? Sure, and weary in some key respects due to the realities of their lives. But throughout the story, we experience each of them as surprisingly beautiful in ways that are profoundly more important than less well realized, camera-ready characters supplied by central casting. Even when covered in mud, grime, or worse, a sensuality radiates from each person that invites us to listen to our own breath, to feel our own pulse, to long for the indefatigable strength and perseverance that describes each of their lives.

McConaghy embraces a romantic view of bodies throughout the story, with all of the many implications that may invest. She reminds us that dumb vanity for what can only be the impermanent transience of our bodies should not supersede more important pursuits.  She says so explicitly in several places like a mantra: “It’s just a body.” This ineluctable truism electrifies. It’s blunt, yet irrefutable.  It’s a truism that so many of us have willfully sidelined in our lives, placing undo emphasis on our appearance rather than on our substance. But McConaghy does not make these assertions lightly, and she’s no puritan either—quite the opposite. Bodies are not just utilitarian. In McConaghy’s depiction, bodies are intensely sensual manifestations as much as they are also engines for action. They are inherently beautiful and not something to take for granted. In the story everyone expresses an intense physicality. Everyone’s in motion. Everyone’s involved in the willful acting of living a dynamic life. When a particular character dives into the ocean, we experience her as an intensely sensual creature, even without distinct descriptions of her movements or her appearance. We experience her own physicality as an inevitability of her actions, and the vividness of that action demands we conjure the details about what it all looks and feels like.

Bodies are fragile and strong. They can be injured and they can heal. They enable problem-solving and they require protection. And, of course, they are the wellspring of exquisite pleasures. McConaghy reminds us that we can not escape our own physical shells, no matter what abnegations or ambitions we may pursue.

It is the same with our fragile Earth: there is no Planet-B. Full of finely balanced, yet marvelous wonders, Earth’s residents are all just brief tenants, profoundly impermanent no matter how bold they may assert their own self interests. As any landlord will tell, some tenants take care of properties and some do not. In relating to the natural world as well as each other, we make choices about which aspects of our lives to emphasize.

For anyone who has even momentarily wondered about life on the edge, life far away from the ordinary, life apart from the grind of the modern world, this is a book that will transport you. It is lusty for life, daring in so many ways, humane and warm in so many others. Even though most people would not wish to be in the circumstances these characters face, it’s impossible not to feel profound respect for how they braved the unexpected. In so many ways, this story reminds us that nothing matters as much as how we chose to confront uncertainties. After all, uncertainty is the only certain thing in life, with the exception of our own mortality. We can always count on tomorrow not going according to plan. But how we choose to stay connected to each other in the face of uncertainty means all the difference in the world.

@michaelstarobin

facebook.com/1auglobalmedia

Next month I’ll post the first in a two-part series about developing creative work in a time when many people have forgotten why it matters at all. Mark your calendars: it’s live on Monday November 3.