The Fifth Woman

There's a particularly surreal quality to the lives of those in mourning. Along with pain and sorrow is the muscle memory of sleeping beside someone, seeing them in the morning, living in a shared world with the person who died. The Fifth Woman by Nona Caspers inhabits that surreal quality, showing how it informs, and is informed by, a felt grief. Spread out into 23 connected short stories, the book plots the shaky, sometimes strange, road to recovery.
 
After the death of her lover, Michelle, the narrator leaves their apartment in San Francisco for a smaller, cheaper one in a rundown building. Still grieving and unsure of how to recalibrate her life, she begins to curl into herself, dreaming or creating spaces where the magical occurs. There is a dog that exists only in shadow. The weather bursts through her walls and leaves her adrift in the snow while still indoors. Her ceiling opens wide, revealing the floor above and eventually, the sky. Each strange occurrence underscores how life without Michelle has become unmoored, all the while beginning to build towards a path to acceptance (though never real peace, that much is clear).
 
The Fifth Woman is strange and sad, perfectly encapsulating the oddest aspects of grief through its images and events. But it doesn't wallow, nor does it attempt to pull the reader down into its sorrow. Instead, Caspers wants to open a window into the moments after a loved one has been lost, bringing out the essential, real humanity as she bends the rules of reality itself. --Noah Cruickshank, adult engagement manager, the Field Museum, Chicago, Ill.
Powered by: Xtenit