Alone in the Classroom

odd book - at first you think it's about the narrator's aunt but three-quarters the way through, the plot switches it's focus back to the narrator. the whole story feels told from a distance - pieces of it coming out in dribs and drabs, never really knowing how one character feels about another, numerous time shifts between the near present and distant pasts.

this author is accomplished, and i've read and enjoyed her before so i can know - with confidence - that it is a deliberate choice to write the book so opaquely. to mirror our own lives of uncertainty? to reflect the true way we receive information about our ancestors?

the book starts with a murder, is driven forward by secondary characters, and ends with a deep desire for the narrator to know her parents. was that the point? in the second last chapter she writes: ...when i finally returned to the material of my mother's life, i came at it sideways, through the story of parley burns...

and the parts, buried in the secondary story, where the narrator connects with her mother were the most moving. yet that story seemed secondary to the murder until the very end, and the book shifts focus. at least for me. and maybe that's the point: the most fantastic story you'll know - and want to know deeply - is the story of yourself