Marie Conlan presents her familial history as a series of three girls, woven into the foundation of her anti-memoir debut. Each girl is seemingly plucked from a fairy tale or history, and Conlan manages to forge her own reconciliation with her grief. Say Mother Say Hand is an explosively stunning narrative that defies ordinary convention, and pushes the boundary line.
The world often exists as both a stumbling block to be encountered and avoided, but Conlan manages to leap across it and through a void. She unpacks her personal emotions and experiences, while also shifting through the chaotic lives of her mother and grandmother. Both women are foreign creatures, despite the intimate connection she shares with each. Grief is an inheritance that Conlan unwinds, seeking out her own independence and connections.
Nothing traditional can be found within Conlan’s inventive writing. Poetry cannot even be used as a final label, as it flows so deeply in various directions. There is a long standing personal quality with her prose, making it easy to liken it to a series of fluid diary entries. One piece extends itself into the realm as visual poetry, as the structure of the body is completed with a smattering of squares, breaking words down to their most basic approach. The journey from girlhood to life as an adult is played with through what appears to be a spiralling narrative, shifting to compliment each topic.
A hospital bed is a connector to a concentration camp, dotted with orange wombs, palms, internet search results, children, and strung out fairy tales. The structuring of time is completely removed from Say Mother Say Hand. This, however, is not always ideal, as it is a chaotic landscape of nameless family members, a confusion of setting, and consistent shift in perspective. For a reader looking to puzzle their way through a book, this would be the ideal piece. It provides an opportunity to nail down loose ends, while finding closure with both the beginning and ending. Despite this, I found that absence of any real tangible flow of time to be a disruption, separating the smooth motion of her writing.
Conlan’s existence is because of her mother, and her mother’s mother. That is the foundation of Say Mother Say Hand. Different women exist in different situations, and each one experienced elements of life. Our personal histories are often beyond any real control, but, as Conlan says, if you pay a man, he can unwind your DNA and create a framework of who you might have been a century before. Or, you could simply unwind an orange ball of yarn, and tie a knot around your finger.
There are so many symbols layered within Say Mother Say Hand, that it creates an uneasy murkiness. The colour orange glides in and out, along with scattered mentions of acorns, blue butterflies, seeds, and other symbolism. It perhaps would have been better to have limit the reoccurrences to a select few pieces of metaphors and symbolism, as that massive collection of pieces cluttered so much of the narrative. Especially, when time is such an elusive subject, darting backwards and forwards with little regard.
What creates a family? Medical records, a dull form of a nuclear family? Or is it a series of women shaping life through their wombs and hands? Conlan is timeless, and so are each of the bodies that come before. They stumble out of body bags and old photo albums, ready to appear without a solution nor shred of evidence. Instead, their bones simply linger as a final statement, lost in the aftermath of this testament.
4.5 Stars.
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Rachel Elizabeth Small 