Sometimes authors face a chasm between the critical and the consensus.
Last year Johanna Skibsrud won the Scotiabank Giller Prize for her debut novel, The Sentimentalists. Critics praised the book for its poetic language and complex themes, though many readers disagreed. Some found the work overwritten, and the storytelling murky, refusing to finish the book once they had started. Intentionally or not, Skibsrud averts these worries in her new release, This Will Be Difficult to Explain and Other Stories. The collection is stripped down and surprising, sometimes foreign, but utterly human.
The stories cover a lot of ground: middle of nowhere South Dakota; Hiroshima; Paris. Skibsrud takes us all over the world, visiting men and women with different backgrounds, places in life, and desires. But the tales all have one thing in common—each details a seemingly ordinary sequence of events that turns out to be a crucial moment in the protagonist’s life. In one story, “Signac’s Boats,” an expatriate muses over pointillism. “Again and again she marvelled over the manner in which the small points of colour maintained themselves independently of the image they conveyed, while at the same time they gave themselves up to it entirely.” This is how Skibsrud’s stories work. Each one is a telling slice of life. In 20 pages or so, we know these people.
The main connecting threads between tales are the desire for more complete relationships and the exploration of limits. There is an interesting contrast at play between the stories. Characters either crave unadulterated freedom or the security of boundaries.
The standout stories sketch out men who still have a lot of growing up to do. “The Limit” tells the story of an absentee dad trying to reconnect with his teenage daughter, interspersed with his childhood memories of a buffalo hunt. “Clarence” follows a gangly teen sent to interview an ancient town patriarch. His best efforts are thwarted when his subject dies during their conversation.
Johanna Skibsrud’s writing isn’t perfect, but perhaps it isn’t meant to be. The language twists with each story to suit the way the protagonist sees the world, incorporating run-on sentences and the use of passive voice. This Will Be Difficult takes the flawed pattern of human thought for its inspiration, rather than strict rules of ideal writing. That isn’t to say the writing is difficult. It’s clear, bare bones even. The collection is mostly free of metaphors and figurative language—sentences don’t strike you with the beauty of language but the beauty of ideas.
At its best, This Will Be Difficult to Explain uses a poignant moment to explore a character and his or her unique outlook on life. These stories are memorable and thought-provoking. Unfortunately, not all the stories fit this model. “This Will Be Difficult to Explain,” the story which forms the collection’s title, is intriguing but vague. The stark imagery of a few scenes is striking, but the characters are easily forgotten. At the other end, two or three of the stories tell too much, not allowing readers to interpret for themselves.
Maybe this over- and undersharing makes sense though—sometimes we over analyze things, and sometimes our thoughts are fragmented. In any case, This Will be Difficult to Explain is an interesting and rewarding read. Skibsrud seems to have reined in the poetic and mannered writing of The Sentimentalists in order to provide us with thoughtful stories and beautiful musings on life. That’s something both the critics and the popular consensus can agree on.
