Yum

Aimee Bender is a writer who writes the way I would love to. There's nothing forced, nothing to prove, the prose is not trying too hard or trying at all. If it's clever, it's because there was cleverness in the moment, with no bold black pen strokes on some outline that said "plug in something clever here".

The writing is so true, it feels that writing it must have been effortless. Surely. Someone did not work and toil over this, it simply is, and is wonderful.

I enjoy writing, but I never manage to finish anything for a variety of reasons, mostly quality concerns. I do QA for a living - perhaps as a result, my standards are impossible? Distraction with new, 'better' ideas are also a problem.

There's typically elements of the fantastic in Aimee's work, and these elements are easy to accept because they're never over the top, even when they should be. Unbelievable stuff is happening to ordinary people, and they know it's unbelievable but there it is. It's real, so the people add this new experience to their world view. An important part of what makes the fantastic elements work in Aimee's writing is that the story is not about the unbelievable stuff, it's about the people.

Here's a snippet from 'The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake'(Aimee typically doesn't put dialogue in quotes, that's not an omission on my part - I like it, but I don't know if I could get away with it. Or maybe that's part of my problem - there's nothing to 'get away with' just do it. Also, I love all the commas:

She ran the sponge along the side of the sink, to clear it of leftover debris. She did not face me, but I could feel the vibration of tears, a kind of pain hive, rustling inside her. As she resettled the knives and forks in their dishwasher cup. As she squeezed the sponge dry. After a few minutes, she looked up, to watch out the kitchen window.

Sometimes, she said, mostly to herself, I feel I do not know my children.

I stood next to her, as if just listening in. Close. She said it out the window. To the flower boxes, in front of us, full of pansies and daffodils, bowing in at dusk. Where she had directed all her pleas and questions to her missing son, over the past few years. It was a fleeting statement, one I didn't think she'd hold on to; after all, she had birthed us alone, diapered and fed us, helped us with homework, hugged and kissed us, poured her love into us. That she might not actually know us seemed the humblest thing a mother could admit. She wiped her hands on a dish towel, already moving back into the regular world, where such a thought was ridiculous, nonsensical, but I had heard it, standing there, and it was the first thing she'd said in a very long time that I could take in whole.

I leaned over, and kissed her cheek.

From both of us, I said.

I like the writing because it feels so real. I just finished 'The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake' but I'm planning on re-reading it shortly (and my other Aimee Bender books), trying to absorb that wonderful, effortless realness. It tastes peaceful.

Link to Aimee Bender books @ Powells
Aimee's web site