‘White Hibiscus, A Picture in Words’ by Loribele Spirosky is set on a cruise ship as the world learns about the Covid-19 pandemic. However, here it is not anchored, the memoir unfolds with poetic passages across a timeline from childhood to the present day. A linear narrative emerges through these vignettes.
Spiroski remembers his childhood in the Philippines as familiar with the tastes and flavors of food, enjoyment, and rage in play. As a small person in a big world, you have existential but uncritical observations. glory in general. Back on the boat as his adult self he is an observer. She sketches, rests, rotates and supports her partner, Australian classical pianist and author Simon Tedeschi, in preparation. His musical life and memories of his voice are a good tool that toggles us through time.
Spirovsky writes about memory as we experience it, fragmented and fleeting but also searing, sensitive and precise. As in a dream there are gaps and sometimes it communicates more by evoking time and space than in immaculate retelling. The artist’s hand, known for painting with his fingers, is evident not only in the careful treatment of words but also in their presentation. Does the text ripple down the page like an enchanted wave, or is the form a sign of corruption by being undisturbed?
Its publisher, Appel, affirms the sentiment that the book is “a meditation on how trauma casts stones into the strange waters of our lives, and creates ripples that are as long as the stones’ sinking.” “There are long, long sections.”
Through Spirosky’s nausea, a sense of something is explored in some ways that has been overwhelming since childhood but seems to flow from it later in life. Trauma is conveyed as an ominous shadow. Change the page to a new memory. There is commentary on class, power, family, romance, the effects of war and borders, and abandonment. Connections are preserved, the deep bond between mother and child, the saltiness of romantic love, and the relief of cultural attachment.
Sprosky has a strong grasp of the fictional and the elemental in his retelling. We are presented with a banquet of detail. At the same time the words hit health, like the effects of a droplet on still water.
You can buy the book here.
