IRIS login | Reed College home Volume 95, No. 3: September 2016
In this haunting novel, Vivian and Audra are two teenage sisters growing up in a comfortable, two-parent Portland home. They play a game to remind them of their sibling connection, exchanging the word “Klickitat” when things are unraveling, “to help us feel better, to know that we were always sisters, always together,” Vivian explains. At first, it might not be obvious what troubles lurk, but the signs are there: their mother spends her free time watching visualizers on the computer screen, their father disappears to the basement to listen in on distant conversations with his ham radio, and Vivian keeps a life jacket in the closet, which she must put on and pull tight when she feels a fit of agitation coming over her—or else hold onto her older sister, Audra. When 17-year-old Audra, balking at the adult society she is at the precipice of joining, runs away with a young man she has recently met, Vivian must either run away, too, or risk losing her surest connection.
Klickitat is Rock’s first young adult novel, though his 2009 novel, My Abandonment, was nominated for an Alex Award, which recognizes adult books with young adult appeal. The two stories are interconnected in intriguing ways. Klickitat occupies the same fictional setting, and My Abandonment’s heroine, Caroline, a girl who is discovered to be living with her father in Portland’s Forest Park, fascinates Vivian and Audra, who seek to find her. The links complicate and add intelligent thematic dimensionality.
Throughout, clean, uncomplicated prose belies an uneasy, portentous atmosphere: craft qualities that are not unlike the scissors that Vivian meditates on when she finds mysterious writing in her notebook. “One single bolt or screw holds the blades of a scissors together, into one tool that can cut paper or leather or steel or meat. If you take that screw or break that bolt, the scissors become two things. Two knives.” Something common and simple becomes suddenly dangerous, as do connections and distances in this story. The nimble slipping of a screw, a chilling twist in the plot, and what happens next are all the more affecting for Rock’s lucid and straightforward approach.
LATEST COMMENTS
steve-jobs-1976 I knew Steve Jobs when he was on the second floor of Quincy. (Fall...
Utnapishtim - 2 weeks ago
Prof. Mason Drukman [political science 1964–70] This is gold, pure gold. God bless, Prof. Drukman.
puredog - 1 month ago
virginia-davis-1965 Such a good friend & compatriot in the day of Satyricon...
czarchasm - 4 months ago
John Peara Baba 1990 John died of a broken heart from losing his mom and then his...
kodachrome - 7 months ago
Carol Sawyer 1962 Who wrote this obit? I'm writing something about Carol Sawyer...
MsLaurie Pepper - 8 months ago
William W. Wissman MAT 1969 ...and THREE sisters. Sabra, the oldest, Mary, the middle, and...
riclf - 10 months ago