“The girl stomped in the field, ripping wildflowers off their roots with both fists, muttering: Stupid! Nearly twelve and still I got to deal with grownups too dumb to see I can do for myself! Did fine with a crazy mama and no daddy, and I don’t need him!”
Meet Zoë from Clay Carmichael’s Wild Things (Front Street, $18.95, ages 10 and up). Zoe’s new to living with her Uncle Henry and has been saved by her mother’s death from grown-ups who “never stuck”, the worries of stretching money at the grocery store, as well as constants like vacuuming and toilet scrubbing.
Clay Carmichael’s Wild Things is not a harsh problem novel, but a glorious story of redemption written with extraordinary voice, poetic sensibility, bright spots of humor and wit, vivid characters, and even a little bit of mystery. Readers are welcomed into the story’s distinctiveness by a third-person voice rooted firmly in the personna of a wild cat. This feline vantage point is based on Carmichael’s real-life cat Mr. C’mere. His third person views and images are scattered throughout the novel.
“Third person is perfect for the cat. He’s a detached, aloof, watchful narrator and third person gave the story a more sculptural, truer-to-life dimension,” Carmichael explains. Originally she wrote the entire story in third person, but halfway through the second draft realized “Zoë should tell her own side of the story. She’s a character who tells you what she thinks. She has an opinion about everything.” Zoe’s first person voice drives the story and changes every other character’s perception of the world.
After her mother’s death, Zoe doesn’t indulge in self-pity. Carmichael explains “ too many stories endlessly detail the damage. I wanted to show what was possible for a child or a cat who's been brought up so badly, she believes that nothing and no one can be counted on or trusted.”
Zoe starts her narrative, “I’d hoped for better, Henry’s being a heart doctor. A job like that, you’d think he might actually have a heart.”
“My editor wanted to use the word ‘spunky’ to describe Zoe in the jacket copy, but Zoë really is fierce. Because she’s been through so much and is so distrustful, she's not, to me, entirely likable. Which is, ironically, something I really like about her—perhaps what I like most.” Carmichael sees that it’s a “decided advantage to be fierce, tough and somewhat unlikable, because those qualities keep harmful people at a distance. Unfortunately, they keep nice people at a distance, too.”
Zoe’s guardedness is apparent with her Uncle Henry, the doctor turned sculptor who takes her in after her mother’s death. Henry sculpts for a living, but his life seems devoted to the emotional well-being of his niece. He lets her explore his North Carolina woods and his library, dabble in his art studio, buy the expensive brand of cereal in the grocery store, and share the warm relationships he’s built with the extraordinary cast of characters Carmichael has created.
Characters are just a part of Carmichael’s magic. Crucial to the book’s power is how she uses the image of wildness, weaving it in and out of the story, but never letting it intrude. It provides a sense of setting in “ the feral cat’s world, the skittish deer, and the north woods”. And of course there’s the “untamed, undomesticated, temperamentally unrestrained, unruly and emotional” Zoe. Wildness describes how Zoe and Henry are “passionate, creative people who deviate from the usual ways of living or doing things.” Then there’s wildness in the way they take “raw creative force, which is tempered and tamed of course, in the making art.”
Art is something Carmichael knows much about. Though this is her first novel, she’s written three emotional poignant picture books with the same hero, starting with “Bear at the Beach”. Comparing these two creative processes, Carmichael sees “Picture books are a lot easier, mainly, because they're shorter and when you're the illustrator, as I am for my books, if the writing's not going well one day you can draw,and vice versa. Picture books are about getting to the essence of something, boiling a story down, or, when it's not going well, about claustropobia.” Carmichael compares writing novels to working “large in a multi-layered, multi-dimensional space.” She’s quick to point out that she’s learned “every word still counts every bit as much. But writing a novel is more like being an archaeologist or a geologist. You discover, draft by draft, more about the characters and their lives and revise the story, depending on what you find. Discovery's a daily adventure, full of surprises, echoes and connections unseen before.”
Carmichael lets readers savor Wild Things, lingering on her expressive words, dawdling in the beauties of the natural world she describes, and reacting to the many wise remarks of Zoe. Carmichael lets you take time as you meander with Zoe. You almost have the sense that she’s provided resting benches from which you can view the more intense moments. Carmichael has discovered what she loves best are “emotional depth, resonance, complexity and writing a story truly. A lot of people forget how intense emotions are in childhood and adolescence, and how many fewer tools children have to deal with everyday life. I haven't forgotten for a moment.”