Jill McCorkle

“I think that those who forget being children have likely lost their souls; it’s just that simple.”

If this quote from page 261 of Jill McCorkle’s Hieroglyphics is true, the four main characters of her new novel remain firmly attached to their souls. One of the four, Harvey, actually still is a child, and Shelley, Frank, and Lil seem to live almost as much in the past as they do in the present.

Frank and Lil, after spending most of their adult lives in Boston, have retired to North show more Carolina where Frank has become preoccupied with getting inside his boyhood home for one final look at the place he so vividly remembers. He particularly wonders whether the old Mason jar full of boyhood trinkets he left behind all those years ago might still be hidden away where he saw it last. Lil, his wife, has equally vivid childhood memories of her own, especially the ones so eerily similar to her husband’s. Shelley, whose own childhood was more troubled than she wants to admit even to herself, and her son Harvey are renting Frank’s old family home – and Shelley has no intention of letting Frank inside the rundown old place for a last look.

Hieroglyphics is not the kind of book that hits the ground running and maintains a quick pace for the next 300 pages. That kind of book is easy for the reader to get into. Instead, McCorkle sets her hook here in a very gradual manner by building the depth of her main characters layer by layer until the reader learns to see them as the real flesh and bone people they are. By the end of Hieroglyphics, it is obvious that all four have something in common. Each, even six-year-old Harvey, is emotionally scarred by something that happened to one, or both, of their parents.

Memories, though, are funny things, especially those held by older people involving their childhood experiences. Frank and Lil have vivid memories of those days, but they do not stop to think that the memories, even hazy as they are becoming, were originally filtered through the eyes of a child. Shelley has a past she so badly wants to keep hidden that she creates an alternate family history for her two sons. And little Harvey becomes the near-perfect reflection of all of his mother’s insecurities and fears.

Bottom Line: Hieroglyphics is a literary novel for readers who enjoy memorably complex characters who are doing the best they can simply to get from one day to the next. Bit-by-bit, as their inner lives are revealed, it all starts to make sense – and it becomes impossible not to root for each of them to get past what has so emotionally scarred them. This one demands a little patience, but that patience is well-rewarded in the end.

(Review Copy provided by Publisher, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill) show less

This group of stories is primarily set in a nursing home, many framed through the recollections of aging narrators. The themes are similar to previous collections of McCorkle stories: women are still wishing for the perfect love or caught in bad relationships; dysfunctional families all, they are still looking for acceptance and comfort. The creatures from the title are cats, dogs, goats, woodpeckers whose behaviors often remind of us human equivalents. There is a certain nostalgia and show more bitterness that comingle in these stories. In "Hominids," an outspoken feminist narrator is married to the usual cave man type. She is expected to put up with sexist talk at parties as though the childishness and piggishness of grown American men ought to be tolerated with a smile. Boys will be boys after all. Even her women friends are uneasy with her calling a pig a pig. But the narrator expresses her dismay with the kind of perfect wit McCorkle is known for. I am of the age where men's stupidities no longer amuse me. And the narrator seems to reside in a similar canyon, ready to hike out and off to some lone mountain. She says, "I'm thinking I will have myself a restaurant known as Peckers, and as my model I will use Hooters, where one of Bill's buddies likes to go on Friday night. I will have a woodpecker instead of an owl and waiters instead of waitresses. They will wear uniforms that are, shall we say, a bit revealing below the belt and as manager my job will be saying who looks good in the outfit and who doesn't. Sorry, that's business. It's not harassment if you say right up front that Peckers is all about peckers. The Pecker Burger, the Pecker Shake, the foot-long Pekerdog, the Pecker who serves you. There will be lots of cute puns about wood, redheaded, etc. I think it will be a huge success." Oh, I want to say those things! Her husband and even her girl friends see her feminist sarcasm as an unwanted intrusion into the expected social propriety of the male-female world, i.e. women just need to suck it up and laugh and smile, flirt and carry on as though being polite in public makes up for a universe of outrageous male behavior, as though the creatures with whom we reside are merely animal after all, merely creatures of habit. Ah, the perversity of politeness. I love McCorkle. She always gives me permission to laugh. show less

Lil and Frank move south from their Boston home to be closer to their grown daughter, Becca - and they are also close to the site of the train crash that killed Frank's father when Frank was a boy. Shelley and her young son Harvey live in the house where Frank finished growing up, with his mother and younger brother and stepfather; Shelley works as a court transcriptionist, and Harvey is troubled by the details of the cases she hears and tales from his older brother. Frank wants to see show more inside his old house and find out whether the small cache of treasures he left there remain, but Shelley - who survived a violent upbringing - is wary and won't let him in. Lil, meanwhile, sifts through years of notes-to-self and newspaper clippings and memories as she writes to her daughter and son.

Each of the adults in the story - Lil, Frank, and Shelley - were formed by the traumatic death of a parent (Lil's mother died in the infamous Cocoanut Grove fire) - and their personalities formed in response, seeking stability and safety.

Quotes

We are all haunted by something - something we did or didn't do - and the passing years either add to the weight or diminish it. (Lil, 9)

...even though people are rarely appreciate for the right thing at the right time. (Lil, 33)

It seems, since the very beginning of time, people have been preparing for the end. (Lil, 111)

The knowledge and experience of tragedy groaned and heaved like an old furnace in the basement - and ultimately, sent waves of warmth that radiated and lit the good parts. (Frank, 131)

..and so she actively seeks ways to distract herself so she won't feel afraid, something she learned to do a long time ago... (Shelley, 155)

Shelley has always been hopeful, which is surprising, given her life; she is so hopeful, in fact, that a lot of people might think it's stupid....Perhaps this optimism is what sees her through. (193)

...there is nothing cheaper and more superficial than someone unauthorized stealing and using another's pet name. (Lil, 200)

People say hearts get broken all the time. They say people die all the time. But what does that help? What does that even do, other than attempt to diminish the emotions at hand....I suspect...that there have been times in my attempt to make you feel better you might have felt I was slighting your pain. (Lil, 202)

He wonders where my memory has gone, and I keep saying it's not that it has gone but simply that I have run out of space. I have filled every nook and cranny with things I wish I could now box up and store elsewhere... (Lil, 258)

It is possible that there can be one thing in your life that you never stop working on. (Lil, 260)

People don't get stolen. People leave. They make choices, and choices have consequences. (Lil, 269)

As parents, we pack your bags and strap them to your little backs before you are even old enough to carry them, and then you have to spend the rest of your life unpacking and figuring it all out. (Lil, 270)

I suppose some of us have to see the edge before we understand how good it all is, and then if lucky, you still have time on the other side. (Lil, 274) show less

I read Jill McCorkle because to read her is to be connected to life. The real stuff, the plodding and sorting and trying to make sense, and the random buried jewels revelatory and epiphanic in their universal wisdom.