A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself by Peter Ho Davies

 A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself by Peter Ho Davies

Was a very interesting and heartbreaking book. A simple story really—it’s about life, love, and children—particularly your child and how impossible it is to feel in control. Those of us who are parents are tapping our chest and saying, I feel ya.

It is a small book and a quick read—though I guess it took ages to write. In fact the little I’ve gleaned from a topical search online about Peter Ho Davies and a masterclass I had with him via Zoom a couple of months ago through Story Studio inform me that he is self-deprecating and transparent about feeling guilty about not writing.

Funny, I‘ve been doing much the same. Not writing, and feeling bad about it.

Not true. I have been writing, not just the stuff I meant to get around to. I’ve been busy with these blog posts or what I like to tell folks: the personal essay. Seinfeld would label it writing about nothing. Ho Davies seemingly writes about nothing. There was no plot to the novel A Lie but there was suspense, in the sense that I was deeply involved with how the story would turn out.

Same thing in my own life. I am soon going to be between states and jobs and health care all because I want to be near my daughter and new grandson. Except now they aren’t sure where they are going to end up. Houses and living situations aside they will stay in Michigan—we’re just not sure exactly where. Yet.

Meanwhile, I’ve somehow managed to get a place to live and possibly a job lined up. I’m still studying with Story Studio and continuing to write. Just not the bigger complicated stuff. It’s complicated.

We love our children so much—even the ones who are grown, taller than us, who roll their eyes, who act standoffish, who barely lift their eyes from the screen to acknowledge our presence, Ho Davies gets this in his little novel—dare I write, meta-novel. It is blurbed by Sigrid Nunez who writes predominately in the meta realm. 

Ho Davies has managed to capture effortlessly the fears and heartaches of loving too much, of linking one’s life intrinsically with others, he has managed to tell us this story with all the chaos and unknowing that it involves. We will never know the end of the story because it is life and it is only over when life ends.

Love so hard, so crucial, so fragile, so strong, so enduring, so quickly over. We live with this every day 

During the masterclass with Ho Davies through Story Studio—I took notes. Not sure if he said this or I was riffing but: What I always do is flush the toilet and get going, just start 

Sound advice for those of us who are overwhelmed and not writing—or just not writing what we’re supposed to. Which, I wonder, what that’s all about any way? Perhaps, like Ho Davies, I should just try to write about life, about                                     nothing.