Critique #122 — Kit Marr
Kevin Andrew Murphy March 7th, 2007
The air of my childhood was heavy with scents: that was how I, going about the city on my mother’s hip, first distinguished one place from another. My mother’s rooms smelled of warm flesh and perfume – of cloves and cinnamon and the sweetness of vanilla, of dust and roses, of the frail white jasmine on the windowsills and the sewage in the streets below – and most of all of my mother. My mother’s scent was with me everywhere I went: the spice of her sweat and skin, the rose-and-tar smell of her tobacco, and through it all and above it all the myrrh and sandal of her perfumed hair. Even when I was old enough to go out alone that scent clung to me, through all the high and narrow ways of the city: rose and tar and sweat and myrrh and sandal, hanging about me as I walked through the many-windowed city, the
pale-walled city above the plain of stone, the plain of dust.
That is how my mother talked, and when I remember her the way of it comes into my own speech and I hear her voice upon my lips and taste her words upon my tongue. She spoke poetry, she spoke song, she spoke the language of the blood and the heart and the flesh and not the language of the mind.
My main problem with this is that we have a baby or young child being able to distinguish specific smells by name. And not just one smell, either, but a huge slew of smells all in one room. First, how would a child know what all the smells where? Even if this is an adult looking back, I can only see them remembering one or two smells that persisted in use until they were old enough to know or ask what they were. Any smells unique only to babyhood would likely remain unidentified. Second, you have all of these smells as distinguishable from each other instead of having them blend into one big mingled smell like they would in real life. If anything, I’d think that a stench like the sewage (since it is strong enough to be smelled in the room) would be remembered over the others or that one strong smell would be remembered. So my advice is to drastically cut back on the number of smells in that room.
I’ll accept that she has the tobacco smell on her, maybe even the perfume, but her mother’s sweat smell, too? What did she do, roll on her mother before leaving the house? Doesn’t our POV have her own skin smell that would be stronger, in any case?
Okay, so is it a plain of stone or a plain of dust? And are you sure…
…is really how her mother talked? I assume you mean that she talked like the words after “…as I walked…”, but that’s not clear from the grammar. Perhaps you can just say “my mother’s scent clung to me” instead of repeating everything and then “the way my mother talked” would be more clear.
Sorry, but I wouldn’t bother to keep reading. Your POV has nothing unique about her–even her scent is of her mother–and we learn nothing interesting about her or about why she’s thinking so much about her mother. It’s very poetical, but not very interesting to me. I’d suggest cutting most of those scents out so that there are only a few strong scents left. Then you can get on to the interesting part of the story more quickly.
I actually thought this was pretty good.
The language flowed well and I was drawn in. I agree there are a couple of areas that could be tidied up (I’d remove “going about the city on my mother’s hip” from the first sentence - it will read better). I’d also shorten the last sentence of the first para which is repetetive.
It’s years since I read ‘Perfume’ by Patrick Suskind, but it reminded me strongly of that, which you could take either way…
We could debate whether your mother’s sweat smells more than your own, but in general I think other people smell more than oneself (easy for me to say).
I’d probably turn the page, but I’d want a something strong in the next paragraph or two to keep me going further.
The one thing I do agree with Debbie White on is that it is very poetic. But that’s about all.
The use of olfactory memory in your prose is incredibly evocative, and for me at least encourages me to want to learn more about your protagonist and precisely why their mother was such a big influence.
(In response to Debbie White’s critique, I would like to highlight the fact that olfactory memory, by it’s very nature, does not suggest the young child knows the words for the smells, but that the older protagonist is remembering the smells and now knows the words for them. It happens to us all, you go into a shop and smell something and it makes you think of an old relative or a situation, even if you didn’t know the ‘name’ when you were little.
Similarly, her point about the protagonist having no scent of her own and merely smelling of her mothers’ sweat makes little sense given that young children’s sweat does not smell like an adults’ and as my partner has noted, my children have a similar scent to me anyway, so at that young age the protagonist would be closer to their mother’s scent anyway.)
I found your prose particularly engaging, whilst it made me inquisitive about this character and definitely wanting to read me, it also made me reflect on my own childhood and relationship with my mother, and my daughter’s potential memories of me. Which is, after all, an important aspect of any writing I choose to read - I like it to be thought provoking.
The only thing I would be wary of is your:
Given all the listing of the olfactory memories, I would personally have preferred the sentence to finish after “pale-walled city” as the last few words felt a little redundant.
I, too, really enjoyed the sensuality of the language you’re using. It seems a very promising start!
The thing to be careful of with this is that the underlying meaning and flow still must make sense:
- The first sentence sets up the reader to expect a list of places, demarcated by their scents; instead, the paragraph is hijacked by discussion of the mother.
- The sentence “My mother’s rooms smelled of warm flesh and perfume [...] and most of all of my mother” seems awkwardly worded. Of course her mother’s rooms smell of her mother, and whose warm flesh and perfume is it if not her mothers?
- The last few sentences of the first paragraph undo the meaning of the first part: it seems that all places had the same scent, that of the mother, and thus the leading concept of distinguishing place by scent is nullified. You may want to either pay off that concept earlier, if you do list more places after these initial 13 lines, or just get rid of it and start more directly with the mother here in the first paragraph.
- “…the language of the blood and the heart and the flesh and not the language of the mind.” I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here, because I don’t see how scents are specifically related to only the heart or only the mind. Is the dichotomy you’re trying to establish the irrational vs. the rational, the raw, unprocessed sensations of the world vs. the considered, mentally-constructed meanings of things, or something else entirely?
The air of my childhood was heavy with scents:
I did like that a lot!
Whoops. Sorry about the quotes being in wrong place. Am learning how this software works!
I enjoyed reading this evocative prose, and I very much like the description of the world through scent and the narrator’s emotional connection to her mother.
I would certainly turn the page - but, as Stephen Fahey said, I would be waiting for “something strong” coming very soon.
I think you’ve gotten some very useful comments above.
I like this one, ’cause I notice smells a lot too and frame my world around them. I personally focus more on the smell of people over the smell of rooms, however. In my experience, any room in which a certain person spends a lot of time (someone’s bedroom, or the classroom of a certain teacher) tends to actually smell like that person rather than having its own different smells. (The sewage outside excepted, of course.) Why would the perfume in her room be such a different smell from her own perfume? Did her mom spray cloves and cinnamon and stuff in the room? I would think that the room would smell mostly of tobacco and myrrh and sandal.
Also, the “that is how my mother talked,” threw me off a bit. I want more of a sense that that’s how the narrator talks. You might want to put in something about the narrator adopting the same manner of speech. Otherwise I’d be expecting the beginning of the passage to differ in style from the rest of it, ’cause it’s just how her mother talks.
I’d keep reading, though.
Hey Kit, I am currently reading Vicki Pettersson’s The Scent of Shadows. You might want to get a copy to see how she deals with scents (her superhero woman has superhero smelling ability). This is a first novel for her and it is really good writing. Just remember, no whining or feeling like you have to be just like this author. She’s good. But you can be just as good. At least that is what I am telling myself as my mouth drops open at her narrative skills.
– Hi, just a fly by visit from guest reviewer –
My first impression was that the POV character is blind although being able to go out on his/her own muddied the possibility of that. The focus on senses excluding sight made me feel like sight wasn’t an option. A child who notices smell so intensely might be deprived of the sense of sight and thus more dependant on other senses.
The piece definately has me intrigued, I’d turn the page wanting to know more about this character but as other reviewers have mentioned there needs to be a reason coming up soon about why we’re here and being wandered down memory lane. The imagery is inviting but it won’t hold readers too long without a solid plot hook.
– *flitters away into the web again* –