November 2009: BITTER HERB by Stephanie A. Myers
A self-conscious narrative evoking the famous biblical scene at Mount Horeb, BITTER HERB opens with a personal introduction: a literary convention that soon exposes itself as a clever fabrication. Calling attention to her own unreliability, the speaker stages a curious series of defining episodes—nebulous memories, manufactured phobias, imaginary facts, conflicting versions—that undermine notions of subjectivity, traditional storytelling strategies, and the very idea of honesty. Ultimately, and despite the recurrent act of self-naming, the speaker’s identity, like that of the Hebrew deity, remains mysterious, unmentionable, and persistently elusive.
