On a recent book review from The Irish Times
“Emily Cooper’s debut Glass (£10), preoccupied with houses, safety and inheritance, has an idiosyncratic beauty:
‘Each house has its own smell, when I leave / and come home again after some time / to my mother’s house, it smells more like / my grandmother’s than when I left. / (A fountain pen slices my leg through a bin bag as I move into my new house)’
Cooper’s original voice, low-key and matter-of-fact, highlights Glass’s dream-like quality. This labyrinth is pared back:
‘I continued walking around and noting the hazards that I would / Recount to my friends later. A hidden step, a nail protruding / From the frame of a window that was glazed with plexiglass, / A nod to safety consciousness… / Feeling my way along a wall in the dark I felt a gap… / …a bend in it… transported me…’
Cooper’s eerie dread of careless builders and her preoccupation with the guardianship of an old house are thrown into sharp relief as we realise how deep that inheritance sinks. Everything connects and unsettles:
‘Perhaps I wouldn’t have gotten that stomach ulcer / And Daddy wouldn’t have confused / His cancer for a matching ulcer.'”
This description of a house being a sense of place reminds me of the ancient Greek notion of ethos as both personal character and sense of place. You need to be comfortable in and understand your place, or your health will be damaged.
My new apartment and neighborhood people seem good. One new new neighbor I met joked: “you can always lock the door and watch TV.” Haha. I guess so if the cable connection is working.