The Woman in the Library
Oddly enough a library book from a library recommendation “algorithm,” based on previous habits. Maybe. Might be random selection, but either way? Starts with what appears to be a murder in the library, but not any library, the archetype for grand shrines to the holy grounds that a public library might be, the Boston Public Library.
Quickly devolved into some kind of fictive version of itself with a story twinned into a story, and the question of what is real, and then what is fiction.
Me? I make stuff up all the time. Question doesn’t apply to me.
Early, and I was guessing, close to thirty — or more — years back, a teacher was lamenting the nature of fiction, and how then-popular meta-fiction was an area that nascent authors had to be careful in and around. I studiously avoided using that in my own work until I got to a point where the question of the craft itself, the tools and techniques, that became as important, if not more of the focus, than the work itself. Not going down that road. But in the back of my mind, there’s always that critique, “Avoid writing about writing.”
Starts, set, in the Boston Public Library. And Spenser’s Copely Square.
One is to tempt the Fate and Furies by writing about the past.
“I request pineapple and jalapeños on the vegetarian.” (pizza, page 149.)
Wrong, wrong on so many levels, clearly fiction.
- Clicking through on one of my own links, testing material, I stumbled across a San Pedro Creek link, and in the text itself? “Writing about writing, in my mind, is dangerous at best.” Think that should point to here. Statement stands on its own.
Murder mystery with a writer’s twist.
Points for successfully combining fiction with reality making it feel more real. More points for layers wrapped in an enigma. Good to the last page.
The Woman in the Library
