The Secret Of Cartwheels by Patricia Henley, 1992
The magic trick:
Refraining from having the narrator comment much about the events of the story
Stunningly good story today from an author I wasn’t familiar with previously.
It tells the story of a girl’s memories of the six months she spent away from her (probably alcoholic) mother and in a children’s home with her two younger sisters.
The story follows many established techniques of this kind of thing – the first-person narration clearly an adult looking back, mixing the knowledge of now with the naivete of the child in the memories.
I think the story works particularly well because it stays very disciplined in the way it characterizes the events of the narrative. The events are extreme and emotional and difficult. But the storytelling is very measured, mostly letting the situations speak for themselves.
And that’s quite a trick on Henley’s part.
The selection:
One moment we were in the dark, the car, the winter mountain air; the next, all three of us were ushered into the blinding white room, which was like a hospital room, with white metal cupboards, white metal cots, and everything amazingly clean and shiny under the fluorescent lights, cleaner even than Grandma Swanson’s house.
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