| Most authors can put together a compelling plot, tell engaging stories and interest us in their characters. They can evoke a place, a time or an emotion. But few authors can actually evoke the senses, making us feel, see, smell, hear and taste the worlds in which their characters live.
Lisa Moore is one of the rare few whose engagement with the senses escapes the page, forcing the reader to become more than a passive cypher for the text.
Open, Moore’s Giller-nominated second book of short stories, is meant to be actively read. She trusts our instincts and expects us to bring our own experiences to her work.
"A book is only 50 per cent written by the writer and the rest of it is created by the reader," she says during a recent interview. "The reader is doing all the imaginary work. So if I write down that a character’s eyes are blue it would be the reader’s job to imagine how blue."
And it’s in these moments of reader imagination that Moore’s textual cues conjure the senses.
One such moment comes in the story "Natural Parents," in which a mother and her child get caught in the middle of a holdup: "Sirens so far away they could be out in the Atlantic. Policemen. Someone shouts, Don’t move. But I am at the door, and then a punch in the guts by a force so powerful it knocks the breath out of my lungs. I am drilled open by a pillar of granite. I am knocked off my feet and I’m driven across the tiles until my head smacks the beer cooler at the far end of the store. Cans and boxes, everything flies in my face. I’m drowning."
Even taken out of context, this fragment summons sight, sound and touch. Moore’s imagery is as sparing as it is descriptive, forcing us to fill in the blanks – to add our imaginations to the mix. The overbearing brightness of a late night convenience store, the distant, approaching wail of sirens, and the visceral pounding of the surprise attack on the narrator’s body are as much a product of the reader’s imagination as they are of the writer’s words.
Moore’s literary mastery of the senses is likely a result of the importance she places on being alive – not the actual biology of life, but rather the importance she places on being present and alive in the world.
"Because I believe that we experience emotions through the senses, you have to really be present to see and feel and touch and really experience those things. That’s what I think being alive is, really taking in where you are when you’re in a place," she explains.
And this belief is inextricably bound to Moore’s belief in the significance of love and what truly loving another person means.
"I think it’s dangerous to be in love, because what being in love means is that you’re willing to accept the other person no matter how much they change and no matter how much you change.
"But how can you love someone who’s always changing? You don’t know what they’re going to be next. It’s a constant being in the present if you’re going to be in love with them, because you have to love who they are now. We all change everyday. And that’s a scary business."
But it’s a scary business that Moore bravely engages in all her stories. Open is a book about love, about being present and alive, about the senses and about how all of these things intertwine to enrich one another. Moore’s stories are never maudlin, her characters are never caricatures and her images are never boring. If a reader is open to Moore’s challenge – the challenge to provide his or her own imagination – 10 new worlds, 10 sensuous stories will be the reward.
And that 50 per cent of the writing process is a small price to pay for some of the finest literature of the year. |
