{"id":260577,"date":"2026-07-13T17:44:36","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T14:44:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/1kitap1.com\/en\/florida-christine-schutt\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T17:44:36","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T14:44:36","slug":"florida-christine-schutt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1kitap1.com\/en\/florida-christine-schutt\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida – Christine Schutt"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cYou don\u2019t know?\u201d \u201cYou don\u2019t, really?\u201d \u201cAm I to believe such a story?\u201d \u201cYou know who you remind me of, don\u2019t you?\u201d OceanofPDF.com \u201cYOUR NONNA SAID ONE time she accidentally clobbered your momma with a oar when they was on the lake. She knocked Miss Alice out. She said she thought your momma was dead. And I\u2019m not saying this is true now \u2014 okay? but your nonna said the accident might explain the way your momma is.\u201d<\/p>\n

OceanofPDF.com AN OLD STORY WAS that my mother and my uncle Billy were fighting on the second-floor landing when he pushed her down the stairs in an argument. Nonna was watching from the foot of the stairs as her children, who were then no longer children, fought for possession of The Clockmaker, an oil the size of a double bed, a clockmaker at his work in windowlight, all fumy, red-based colors.<\/p>\n

Think of brandy or whiskey, think of whatever was being drunk by Uncle Billy and my mother and that was the painting\u2019s preponderate color \u2014 the color of what made them drunkenly fight this way in front of Nonna. But Nonna liked to watch them fight was what my mother said, and I believed her. I believed Mother when she said the argument with Uncle Billy was about a lot more than money. Of course it was! Nonna\u2019s heart was ridged, rough, dry.<\/p>\n

The answer was simple: She only had room for Uncle Billy. I believed Mother when she told me about her father\u2019s mistress, met on a train, although how would Mother know where he had met her? Still I believed Mother when she said the mistress had walked by Daddy on the train. The mistress was an old-fashioned milk-drinker wearing spiked heels, and Daddy followed her.<\/p>\n

Daddy\u2019s mistress had a heart that wasn\u2019t bitter. \u201cDo you believe everything you are told, Alice?\u201d Uncle Billy had asked me in the desert. \u201cDo you?\u201d Yes, yes, yes, I did. I believed that before Nonna\u2019s tongue thickened, she took her husband out of any story she thought to tell. She talked about her father, instead, and favorite dogs and Uncle Billy\u2019s travels. I believed that when she had talked about my mother, and she had not often talked about my mother, Nonna frenzied helpless gestures.<\/p>\n

Talk, talk that was what Nonna did before her stroke, and after her stroke, too. I believe we talked, Nonna and I, and that she told me about my father. There was a flood \u2014 remember\u2014and Nonna made waves with her hands. My father gone away, yes, yes, yes, I was nodding; yes and the storms across the lake in air: stalk, leaf, stillness. \u201cWhat else, Nonna, what else do you remember? What? Are you awake enough to talk? Do you think I am like my mother?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cQuiet,\u201d Miss O\u2019Boyle was saying, \u201cyour grandmother is asleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Alice Fivey, fatherless since she was seven, is left in the care of her relatives at ten when her love-wearied mother loses custody of her and enters “the San,” submitting to years of psychiatric care. She is moved from place to place, remaining still while others mold her into someone different from her namesake mother. But they do share the same name. Is she then her mother? Alice consoles herself with books, and she herself becomes a storyteller who must build her own home word by word.<\/p>\n

Florida is her story, told in brief scenes of spare beauty as Alice moves ever further from the desolation of her mother’s actions, into adulthood and closer to the meaning of her own experience. In this most elegiac and luminous novel, Christine Schutt gives voice to the feast of memory, the mystery of the mad and missing, and, above all, the life-giving power of language. Christine Schutt I MOTHER MOTHER ARTHUR MOTHER TUCSON ARTHUR MOTHER MOTHER MOTHER ARLETTE\u2019S STORIES MOTHER TUCSON FATHER FATHER ARTHUR ARTHUR MOTHER II THE BIG HOUSE THE BIG HOUSE TUCSON THE BIG HOUSE ANY HOUSE ARLETTE\u2019S STORIES THE BIG HOUSE THE BIG HOUSE MR. EARLY FATHER FATHER ARTHUR III THE BIG HOUSE NONNA SPEAKS FATHER MOTHER WEST SEVENTY-SIX WEST SEVENTY-SIX WEST SEVENTY-SIX MR. EARLY MOTHER IV ARTHUR MOTHER WEST SEVENTY-SIX SHORT IDENTIFICATIONS MOTHER FATHER THE DREAM MOTHER ANY HOUSE TUCSON ANY HOUSE THE DREAM MR. EARLY FLORIDA ABOUT THE AUTHOR OceanofPDF.com Christine Schutt Florida TO SALLY ANN AND TO CHESTER OceanofPDF.com MOTHER SHE WAS ON HER knees and rubbing her back against parts of the house and backing into corners and sliding out from under curtains, rump polishing the floor, and she was saying, \u201cSit with me, Alice.\u201d<\/p>\n

She was saying, \u201cTalk to me. Be a daughter. Tell me what you\u2019ve been doing.\u201d She spoke uninflectedly, as if thinking of something else \u2014 the dishes to do, drawers to line, clotted screens to clean out with a toothpick. Handles missing, silver gone, and a Walter in the next room unwilling to leave! Bitch, bitch, bitch, the sound the broomsticks made against the floor in Mother\u2019s nettled cleaning and talking to herself, asking, \u201cWhat am I doing?<\/p>\n

What does it look like I am doing?\u201d \u201cYou are stupid,\u201d I overheard Walter say to my mother. \u201cYou\u2019d be better off dead.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.<\/em><\/p>\n

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