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New York Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A Writer With a Divine Touch Captures Life in a Christian Commune
RUTH, by Kate Riley There are inklings of greatness in Kate Riley's first novel, 'Ruth.' It claims a place on that high modern shelf next to the offbeat books of Ottessa Moshfegh, Sheila Heti, Elif Batuman and Nell Zink — those possessors of wrinkled comic sensibilities rooted in pain. It isn't easy of access and won't be to everyone's taste. Riley makes an 'elite product,' as the English writer Angela Carter said of her own fiction. If 'Ruth' fails to find its readership now, I suspect it will become an underground classic of American folk wit, one that happens to be about growing up in a religious cult. 'Ruth' is defiantly strange, and so is Ruth, the protagonist, whom we follow from youth (she is born in 1963) into late middle age. She grows up in a series of linked Christian communes, which resemble Amish settlements. Lives are led mostly off the grid: Property is shared, underwear is homemade and sports and dancing are discouraged for fear of body worship. Distant is the secular world of 'printed T-shirts and cohabitation before marriage.' Romantic love is suspect because it can pry members from strictly communal bonds. There is a loose, ambient sense of near-totalitarian surveillance. Riley herself lived for several years in a similar commune, the book's press materials inform us, but 'Ruth' doesn't read like warmed-over autobiography. It's a delicate aesthetic performance, dexterous in its strangled wordplay. Riley seems to have a few extra wires in her brain. She treats everything in Ruth's life both at face value and as comic grist as we follow it across decades. From the time she's born, Ruth feels like an outsider. Her 'inner imp,' as Riley terms it, is always threatening to pop out. She's restless; she makes inappropriate jokes; she intuits the wrong lessons from her limited reading. (About Tolstoy: 'For a follower of Christ, he seemed to care awfully about the downy lips of Russian princesses.') She is a green-headed fly among moths. What gives this novel its soul is that she longs for religious feeling; she is broken by what fails to open between herself and God. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Times
30-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
This intense tale of a destructive love affair is a masterpiece
According to the novelist Angela Carter, the feminist press Virago — of which she was a leading light — was fuelled in part by 'the desire that no daughter of mine should ever be in the position to write By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, exquisite prose though it might contain. 'By Grand Central Station I Tore Off His Balls' would be more like it.' The man whose balls needed to be torn off was the poet George Barker, a heavy-drinking roué who fathered 15 children by four women. This tomcattery, however, did not diminish Elizabeth Smart's love for him. It seemed that nothing could, for hers was a frenzied love, sparked in the late Thirties when she chanced upon Barker's poetry in a bookshop on Charing Cross Road and declared herself smitten. Until her death in 1986 she kept every memento of their relationship stored under her bed, as their four children would eventually discover. The intense, destructive romance between Smart, a budding writer from an affluent Canadian family, and Barker, a fêted but impecunious poet from Essex, inspired her best-known work. By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, a slim volume of poetic prose, garnered little attention when it was published in 1945, but gained a cult following after it was reissued in 1966, its lyricism later influencing musicians such as Morrissey. After Smart's fateful encounter with Barker's poetry she struck up a correspondence with him. Although Barker was married and teaching in Japan, she paid to fly him and his wife to visit her in California where she had joined a writers' colony. The book's opening is based on this episode and what follows is a chaotic, rhapsodic account of the early years of their affair, which would play out across continents and last for decades. I use 'account' loosely for the story is fictionalised and deliberately threadbare — the mere outline of a love triangle between nameless characters — and the prose is a maelstrom of metaphors. As the narrator plucks lines from TS Eliot and draws on classical mythology, pining like Dido for Aeneas, we are left to piece together the events that have occurred. Along the way we deduce liaisons, pregnancy, exasperated parents (hers), broken promises (his), bitterness and rows. At one stage the lovers are arrested for — we presume — being an unmarried couple intent on having sex and crossing a US state border. This is where the biblical language comes into its own (the book's title, of course, is taken from Psalm 137, but with the rivers of Babylon replaced by Grand Central Station, where the final chapter is set). During the interrogation the policeman's questions are spliced with verses from the Song of Solomon: 'What relation is this man to you? (My beloved is mine and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies) … Were you intending to commit fornication in Arizona? (He shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.)' • What we're reading this week — by the Times books team The hard truth is that it is difficult to sympathise with the narrator or her beloved. Smart's moral compass is often as out of kilter as Barker's. In the clutches of her infatuation she makes questionable choices (understatement!) and is so beholden to her volatile, self-centred lover that 'neither the shabby streets nor the cooped-up hotel ever became for me, as they were always for him, symbols of wretchedness and no cash'. So a light read this is not. Every page is driven by torment. As the author and critic Brigid Brophy put it, 'The entire book is a wound.' Yet Smart's ability to capture the pain and ecstasy of love is nothing short of extraordinary. Her narrator, knowing the spectacular hurt that lies ahead, declares that she is 'mortally pierced with the seeds of love' and the cooing mourning-doves 'are the hangmen pronouncing my sentence'. After the Second World War, Smart worked as an advertising copywriter to support her family. She joined Queen magazine in the early Sixties, co-wrote cookery books and eventually settled in a remote part of Suffolk to focus on her creative writing. There were several short collections of poetry and, most notably, The Assumption of the Rogues & Rascals (1978) in which she returned to her and Barker's tale, again by way of a nameless female narrator and her faithless lover. • Read more book reviews and interviews — and see what's top of the Sunday Times Bestsellers List I suspect that Carter was more approving of that later book title yet it was By Grand Central Station that she hailed as 'a masterpiece'. If you can brace yourself for a heavy dose of abstraction there are lines of searing beauty that will long stay with you. By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart (HarperCollins £10.99 pp160). To order a copy go to Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Yahoo
Akron Public Schools: Temporary staff member brought gun to Hyre CLC
[Learn more about the Safer Ohio School Tip Line in the player above.] AKRON, Ohio (WJW) — An Akron Public Schools temporary staff member was escorted off school grounds Wednesday, after allegedly bringing a firearm to a middle school, the school district announced. It happened at Hyre Community Learning Center along Wedgewood Drive. 11 indicted on vandalism at CWRU after protest The middle school's resource officer 'swiftly intervened,' and the worker was escorted out of the school, according to the release. No one was injured. 'The safety and security of our students and staff is our absolute priority,' APS spokesperson Stacey Hodoh is quoted in a news release. 'Bringing a firearm onto school grounds is a serious violation of district policy and state law. This individual's decision to risk harm to our children and staff by transporting a gun to school is deeply concerning and unacceptable.' The school district maintains a 'zero-tolerance' policy prohibiting weapons on school grounds; punishments can include immediate termination. 1 dead, officer injured after Miami Township shooting Illegal conveyance of a firearm in a school safety zone is a fifth-degree felony charge under Ohio statute, and can be enhanced to a fourth-degree felony for future offenses. Akron police and the district's safety team are now investigating. 'We are grateful that this situation was resolved quickly and without injury,' APS Chief of Staff Angela Carter is quoted in the release. 'The swift action of our SRO underscores the importance of having law enforcement professionals present in our schools. We are committed to providing a safe learning environment for all of our students and will continue to take all necessary steps to ensure their safety and well-being.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
