My Mortal Enemy Book

Oh Mother, oh Father! I sorta get you now, thanks to My Mortal Enemy. such a short little piece but such a powerful punch. I'd give this 5 stars for personal impact, but the impact was so painful and intense, I could never consider this a favorite.

once upon a time, Myra and Oswald eloped. they were, and are, the love of each other's life. such are the things of happily ever afters! but such is not reality; it is certainly not the reality I've experienced.

their lives are witnessed by a niece - initially impressionable, later a grown woman full of empathy and a desire to see life as it actually is - or as it could be, as it should be, if things could be perfect and people could be flawless. Cather does a superb job in characterizing this woman at two points in her life, and an equally excellent job at revealing all the different sides of both Myra and Oswald - how they appear to others, how they appear to each other, how they understand and misunderstand themselves. Cather's characterization is rich and deeply felt and real; it should also go without saying, given the author, that the prose itself is sublime. the ending is stark, sad, and beautiful.

can a vibrant, kindly, idiosyncratic, independent woman also be a cold-hearted, viciously critical bitch? can a sensitive, brave, strong, loving man also be a thoughtlessly straying rake who carelessly seeks comfort elsewhere? can all the disappointments in life that often have nothing to do with a shared love somehow accumulate enough so that those disappointments tarnish that love - make that love something strained, something that tastes both sweet and bitter? yes, yes and yes. I've seen it; I've experienced it firsthand. maybe I've had a block to understanding this, to understanding how my parents have acted, how I have acted, how people can be so full of love for each other yet also be the cause of so much needless pain. maybe it is something I've refused to understand because the understanding - the demystification - is too painful, so painful it becomes something to ignore and avoid. the wonderful painful thing about top tier literary fiction is that it forces the reader to look inside themselves as well - and to look at people through a different lens, one that is otherwise kept in a drawer somewhere, buried and unacknowledged. thanks, Willa Cather and My Mortal Enemy, for forcing me to look through that lens. for forcing me to understand my own parents and how their lives together have created something both glorious and completely awful. for forcing me to recognize how their lives have impacted what I have done in my own life - or what I have chosen not to do.

so yeah, thanks are definitely in order... but for some reason I am not feeling a whole lot of gratitude.





12 of 16 in Sixteen Short Novels.