{"id":610,"date":"2022-03-04T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-04T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/wordpress\/greenblotter\/?p=610"},"modified":"2022-03-04T21:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-03-04T21:00:00","slug":"lost-in-transit-review-of-leigh-chadwicks-the-story-of-a-marriage-cease-cows-february-17-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/2022\/03\/04\/lost-in-transit-review-of-leigh-chadwicks-the-story-of-a-marriage-cease-cows-february-17-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201clost in transit\u201d: Review of Leigh Chadwick\u2019s \u201cThe Story of a Marriage\u201d (Cease, Cows, February 17, 2022)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

reviewed by Isaac Fox<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n

Leigh Chadwick\u2019s micro-fiction \u201cThe Story of a Marriage\u201d is shorter than this review. In only 217 words, Chadwick distills a long-term relationship into a rich allegory with a surprising emotional punch.<\/span><\/p>\n

The story\u2019s events take place entirely on a couch, with the narrator at one end and their husband at the other. The two write each other love letters and exchange them via carrier pigeon. The pigeon gets lost in the space between them, so the first letter takes a week to arrive.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although the couple\u2019s messages are fairly standard, tropey love-letter sentiments, they\u2019re phrased so awkwardly that they seem alien. \u201cIt is the best day when our lips spend the afternoon touching<\/em>,\u201d the narrator writes to their husband. These characters\u2019 oddities contrast sharply with the many fictional romances that act as crowd-pleasers or even role-playing opportunities. Most readers probably won\u2019t find this relationship cute or sexy, but the people in it do (at least for a while), and doesn\u2019t it belong to them?<\/span><\/p>\n

Chadwick tells this strange story in deceptively simple language. It\u2019s one paragraph long, mostly consisting of simple sentences, and the tone is extremely matter of fact. Even (maybe especially) when events stray furthest from day-to-day reality, the language plods right along, half-bored, but too indifferent for the boredom to be anything urgent. While delivering one letter, the pigeon flies into a wall. The narrator \u201cask[s] the pigeon if it\u2019s okay, but the pigeon doesn\u2019t say anything because the pigeon is dead, and you can\u2019t say anything when you\u2019re dead.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

By sculpting such a humdrum voice into such surreal sentences, Chadwick presents a marriage as something both mundane and magical, something that feels entirely bland and entirely impossible.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cease, Cows<\/em> (https:\/\/ceasecows.com\/<\/a>) publishes strange and surreal flash fiction and poetry, usually every other week. Leigh Chadwick\u2019s This is How We Learn to Pray<\/em>, which is a hybrid poetry collection\/coloring book, is available here: https:\/\/elj-editions.com\/this-is-how-we-learn-to-pray\/<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

Isaac Fox is a student at Lebanon Valley College, where he majors in English and creative writing. He spends his free time reading and writing things that aren\u2019t assigned, shooting pictures, and playing the clarinet. His fiction and photography have appeared in\u00a0Rune Bear<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Heart of Flesh\u00a0<\/em>magazines, as well as\u00a0Green Blotter<\/em>\u2019s 2021 issue. You can find him on Twitter at\u00a0@IsaacFo80415188<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

reviewed by Isaac Fox Leigh Chadwick\u2019s micro-fiction \u201cThe Story of a Marriage\u201d is shorter than this review. In only 217 words, Chadwick distills a long-term relationship into a rich allegory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3,4,5,8],"class_list":["post-610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-isaac-fox","tag-literary-magazine-review","tag-micro-review","tag-review","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}