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Across the Page: Elaine Beale, Elizabeth Streb, Anne Laughlin

This month’s “Across the Page” features a variety of good reads: the coming of age story, Another Life Altogether, by Elaine Beale; STREB: How to Become an Extreme Action Hero by MacArthur Fellow Elizabeth Streb; and the thrilling murder mystery, Veritas, by Anne Laughlin.

Another Life Altogether by Elaine Beale (Spiegel & Grau)

The opening line of Elaine Beale’s outstanding debut novel, Another Life Altogether, immediately captures its 13-year-old narrator, the sharp though often misled Jesse Bennett: “The day after my mother was admitted to the mental hospital, I told everyone at school that she had entered a competition on the back of a Cornflake box and won a cruise around the world.”

The lie temporarily accomplishes several things for Jesse: it allows her to avoid the reality of her mother’s mental illness (“even when I was very young, I’d realized that my mother had no sense of perspective”); it gives her a chance to write fantastical and imagined letters “from” her mother; and, perhaps most importantly, it helps impress the beautiful, popular and unattainable Julie Fraser.

The fabrication doesn’t end well, of course. Growing up in Britain’s small town East Yorkshire, the real story of Jesse’s mother’s breakdown was bound to come out. But the humiliation and the loss of Julie’s fleeting interest doesn’t last long as Jesse’s earnest but clueless father moves the family further into the country on the doctor’s suggestion that it might help his wife’s recovery.

As Jesse struggles to take care of her mother, whose mental state continues to deteriorate, she befriends a girl named Tracey who is the dangerous combination of mean and insecure. Jesse ends up falling for Tracey’s older sister, the mysterious and compassionate Amanda: “None of this mattered when Amanda appeared, and those few minutes that I got to spend with her filled me with a heat that, no matter how cold and inhospitable the weather, I carried with me for the rest of the day.”

Like most things in Jesse’s life, there is little hope that anything real will happen with Amanda. But what’s ultimately so engaging about her story is that Beale allows her to make mistake after mistake, including writing Amanda long love letters that she never sends but that end up in the wrong hands, with pure conviction and vulnerability.

It is impossible not to cheer on Jesse – a smart, funny, and thoughtful guide through a chaotic home life, a complicated adolescent friendship, and first love. Highly recommended.

STREB: How to Become an Extreme Action Hero by Elizabeth Streb (Feminist Press)

Known as the Evel Knievel of dance, Elizabeth Streb “intertwines the disciplines of dance, athletics, rodeo, the circus, and Hollywood stunt-work.” In her new memoir, STREB: How to Become an Extreme Action Hero, Streb chronicles her life as a dancer, performance artist and choreographer in prose that mirrors the energy and innovation of her work.

STREB opens with an insightful foreword by Anna Deavere Smith that characterizes Streb as a “rascal – a brilliant rascal.” Peggy Phelan’s introduction describes Streb’s art as invoking “the dream of flight and the poetry of velocity.” But the story really gets going in the first chapter when Streb states, “My adventure in life began with action, and I know it will end with action.”

In a fascinating collection of stories and reflections, Streb explores the connection between the body and mind, dance and art, the physical and the intellectual. Divided into six sections – “In the beginning,” “The Body,” “Space,” “Time,” “Motion,” and “The Real Move”-the book also features dazzling pictures from Streb’s shows.

In her attempt to investigate motion and space, and with references ranging from Kant to Einstein, Streb details how her theories developed and how she was able to apply them to the world of movement. She also captures many of her more famous performances in enthralling detail, including “BlazeAway,” a dance created for her partner Laura Flanders and which ended in Streb catching on fire, and “Artificial Gravity,” which explores “the perfect radius for the human run.”

Streb defines STREB methodology as “inquiring into that which is unquestionably true, unnoticeable, and absurd,” which is also another way of describing this unique memoir/manifesto. A very woman, a very cool read.

Veritas by Anne Laughlin (Bold Strokes Books)

Anne Laughlin’s Veritas is a gripping murder mystery packed with suspense and intrigue. Set on the campus of Grafton College, the novel opens as Dean Beth Ellis meets with the new president of the college-“an occupying force, a foreigner without any respect for the society he’d conquered.” When he asks her to get behind supporting an unpopular professor for tenure, Beth is both confused and angry.

Though Beth is passionate about Grafton and thinks of the faculty and students as family, she knows that she has to abide by the president’s demands. When the fight for tenure ends in murder, however, Beth’s entire perspective of the college – its politics, culture and members – is challenged.

To complicate matters, Beth begins to fall for Chief of Police, Sally Sullivan, who is investigating the murder. Sally used to work for the Chicago homicide division and as she tries to navigate the new territory of a small town police department and community, she hits upon more obstacles than expected, especially when the college experiences a second murder.

Veritas is a quick read, but a fulfilling story. Laughlin’s prose is natural and engaging whether she’s writing about the politics of academia, Beth and Sally’s multilayered romance, or the intricacies of a murder mystery. Named a Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging Writer in 2008, Veritas proves Laughlin worthy of the honor.

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