By Catriona Ward
I
felt a bit cheated by Looking Glass Sound. I was interested in the book because it was influenced by Stephen King's mysteries set in Maine, but the the
meta-fictional nonlinear narrative complexity sidelined me out of a good
story. I didn't want to constantly wonder what/who was real and
what/who wasn't nor marvel at the writerliness of it all. Why spend time on
something that swallowed up my time with overly-complicated authorial
wanking?
So I'm going to cheat myself and use AI to help provide an overview:
Looking Glass Sound is a complex, meta-fictional psychological thriller that explores the blurring lines between memory, reality, and authorship. Narrated by Wilder Harlow, it focuses on a fateful summer in Maine involving an unlikely friendship between three teenagers, a serial killer (the Dagger Man), stolen narratives, and the haunting, constantly questioning what is real versus what is constructed.Layered Narrative: The book is designed like a nesting doll, where stories are told and retold, with small differences revealing how memory and stories are altered.
Plot Outline: Wilder is an awkward teen spending the summer at his belated uncle's house in coastal Maine during the 1980s. He befriends a local boy named Nat and a red-haired British girl named Harper. For some years now, the town has been haunted by two mysteries: missing women and "The Dagger Man" who breaks into homes during the night to photograph sleeping children with a dagger by their throat and leaving behind a Polaroid, as if to say, I could've easily have killed them while you were asleep.
Meta-Fiction: The story deals with a writer (Wilder) whose work is stolen and published by another, leading to a blurred reality where he is haunted by the fictional versions of his friends, not the real people.
Key Themes: The nature of storytelling, the obsession of writing, trauma, and the vulnerability of adolescence.
The Title: Refers to the deceptive nature of stories and reality, much like a mirror image or sound echoing, distorted, off the water.
This
WeirdLit reddit thread was very helpful in breaking down the structure of the
novel. If I ever want to remember what the hell I had read, I should
read this thread.
Back
to the plot outline. The novel began as a kind of coming-of-age story
with a murder mystery as a backdrop, and with Maine as the setting, it
was meant to intentionally invoke 1980s Stephen King. The kids stumble
upon the bodies trapped in oil drums underwater and the murderer was
revealed about one-quarter into the novel. Nat dies, Harper moves back
to England and Wilder becomes haunted by the events of that summer. In
college he works out his trauma by writing about that summer, but his
story is stolen by his best friend, Skye aka Pierce Montague.
We begin to read excerpts from both the stolen story and Wilder’s version, following Wilder years down the road as he returns to the coast to finally write his book. But Wilder is haunted by, he eventually discovers, the characters from the stolen book— not the real people, but the fictional versions as written by the two writers. The books and reality blur and, the deeper you go, the more you start to wonder what’s real and what’s not. Ward takes you on a twisty-turny journey to reveal how stories capture people— trapping them forever. The mystery of the dagger man is but a thread in the larger narrative— the killer’s identity being revealed and re-revealed over and over again. In the end, everything you thought to be true isn’t, touching on how point of view radically alters reality.
By
the time I figured out what was going on with Looking Glass Sound, I began to lose interest in it. Wilder becomes haunted by the
characters from Skye's stolen novel. The ghostly drowned woman that
Wilder kept seeing, Rebecca, just kept dragging on and on. Even though
Skye/Pierce was supposed to be dead, Wilder found him in a hole when he
tried to kill himself with hemlock. Skye had been trapped there for
weeks, feeding on raw crab and cave water!! Skye and Wilder got back
together as old men - one blind and the other missing a hand! I kept
going, what the hell am I reading? Then a supposedly "new" character
Pearl was introduced about 3/4 into the narrative. By the time it got to
Pearl and Harper meeting at Fairview, I just didn't care that much
anymore. I think the novel had made clear that Pearl and Harper were fictional, with the added meta-ness that other characters were made-up by the
characters in the novel. Even if Pearl and Harper were the "real" first-level versions and not meta-authorized creations like Skye/Pierce, I had given up being
invested in ANY of the characters. Which was ironic since the friendship
between Pearl and Harper felt more constructed than the meta-fabricated
characters. It even felt like Ward was getting tired of her own story,
as it was more an overly complex exercise than actual storytelling.
So it turned out Wilder and Nat were half brothers? Harper really did
mercy kill Nat? Gracie is the daughter of Nat and Harper? Whoop-dee-doo.
The reveals came too late! I felt bad because I had been quite invested
in Wilder, but his "true" character had died shortly after his story
was stolen by Skye/Pearl. The older Wilder was actually a fictional
recreation by Pearl. He was never able to get any revenge on or justice
from Pearl. Harper was the tragic figure who lost the ones she loved
and the only one who could right some wrongs. In the end she had her
daughter Gracie and they manage to get some kind of reckoning from
Pearl.
Back to the reddit thread:
"But why would that be the case, and why has Ward chosen to write such a confusing book? The theme of narrative ownership and true crime has come up a lot in recent years: The Plot ( Jean Hanff Korelitz) concerns a professor who steals one of his grad students' novel ideas, a decision that comes to enrich and destroy him. In I Have Some Questions for You (Rebecca Makkai) boarding school students re-open the murder case of their teacher's long-ago roommate, while a true-crime podcaster does the same. Trust Exercise (Susan Choi) is a layered puzzle-box of a novel that is about a high school drama class, truth-telling, and feeling your way around in the dark. And then there's the real-life controversies that have rocked the world of letters: a plagiarism allegation lobbed at My Dark Vanessa; the real story behind "Cat Person;" and who could forget the saga of the Bad Art Friend?Writers are all thieves of a kind, but personal testimony was recently a very powerful kind of currency—subject to counterfeit—and the true crime boom still goes on. We're in the midst of two simultaneous national conversations about authorship (who gets to tell what kind of story) and trauma. Authors are grappling with it in real time."
So
I get what Ward was trying to do with Looking Glass Sound. But did
it capture the zeitgeist? It probably did - I can see how many would
consider it brilliant. However, the meta-fiction genre isn't my jam - I
want to lose myself in a narrative, not get confused by it. I did
enjoy parts of it, especially the first act as it had some great fiction
writing; lots of lovely passages about the sea, air and land. The meta
parts reminded me so much of House of Leaves and David Mitchell's work.
Talented writers often have the ambition of tackling meta-fiction, but
there's always the danger of being burdened by textual slog as the
human interest parts of the story get buried under the ambitions of the
author to create narrative feats of complexity.
I acquired this hardcover from https://bookoutlet.ca for only $8 and will be including it in my trade pile when I visit Encore Books on my birthday!
