Rain on the windshield thick as pudding, the spruce trees slapped ultra-clean and straight with every swing of the wipers. Or else a red sun is going down on the barrens and the boulders are casting big shadows that shrink back as we drive by.
I have been driving back and forth from St. John's to Conception Bay North a lot this summer. When I'm lucky, my daughter, Eva Crocker, has a few days off work and she's in the car with me and she's reading short stories aloud.
All summer I have been marvelling at the pleasure of having my daughter read to me. I read to Eva, throughout her childhood, and suddenly the ritual has reversed. There's an intimacy in sharing literature this way that makes me think all stories should be read aloud, by close friends, by daughters or lovers or cousins or spouses, by grandmothers and in-laws.
Everybody should get in a car and load up with coffee and hit the highway with somebody they love and a book of stories. Eva's voice goes scratchy after the first hour and I say, Keep going, keep going.
She's read me a truly fantastic story called Summer of the Flesh Eater, by Zsuzsi Gartner. The story appeared in Walrus magazine in September, 2009. Gartner's story is hilarious. The language wild and unexpected at every turn, extremely wicked, gleeful satire. Eva read that one through a hammering rainstorm and we hydroplaned on the slick glassy surface. We pulled up to a red light just at the foot of downtown St. John's when Eva finished the last sentence. We were weak with laughter. The city looked brand-new and we felt lucky to be alive.
Eva has become addicted to back issues of Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concerns and lately she's been picking her favourite stories from there. Last week, on the drive out she read me Sea Oaks, by George Saunders. The energy in that story, the sheer velocity of the tale: raunchy, absurd, warped and hilarious.
And Zadie Smith's The Girl with Bangs is fantastic. Character-driven, full of romance, sexy and compellingly tender.
I'm driving into town to pick Eva up today. She's reading Lorrie Moore.
Lisa Moore's most recent novel, February, is long-listed for the Dublin IMPAC Prize.
