If you're looking for "I Spys," dating or LTRs, this is your scene.
View ProfilesPublished June 5, 2024 at 10:00 a.m. | Updated June 5, 2024 at 11:20 a.m.
From its very first words, Middlebury writer Carolyn Kuebler's debut novel Liquid, Fragile, Perishable has a decidedly odd stylistic trait. Every paragraph is very short, rarely longer than two lines or a couple of sentences, and a line space firmly intervenes between each segment. Here's an example, from the vantage point of a teenager named Sophie, daydreaming in her French class:
Tra la, tra la ... how does that song go? That blissful month, that lusty month, when everything goes astray.
She can't quite get the words, but the old tunes just show up in her brain like that and she wants to sing.
It's the weather. So amazing today. And hormones, too, probably. It all comes down to hormones when you're in high school.
That's what they tell you in health class anyway.
While the book is in prose, this peculiar measured tempo creates an effect somewhat like verse. Instead of being distracting, this manner of storytelling rapidly becomes familiar and appealing.
As Kuebler presents the perspectives of multiple townsfolk experiencing the same set of events, her stylistic method decelerates the unfolding of each episode and provides breathing room in what otherwise could have been a stiflingly dense narrative. Her fictional Vermont town of Glenville isn't very big, but the novel is crowded with characters and points of view.
A publishing veteran, Kuebler cofounded the influential Rain Taxi Review of Books and has been an associate editor at Publishers Weekly and Library Journal. Since 2014, she has been editor in chief of the quarterly New England Review, which is based at Middlebury College, her alma mater. Her essay "Wildflower Season," which emerged from her frequent walks in Middlebury's Wright Park, won the 2022 John Burroughs Nature Essay Award.
Kuebler approaches her novel's setting as a human and natural ecosystem, and she places Liquid, Fragile, Perishable solidly in a northern New England town. Like Ernest Hebert in his ruggedly magnificent Darby Chronicles novels, Kuebler is fascinated by generational succession in families, the effects of class differences in a small rural community, and the ways longtime residents and relative newcomers interact. Of the various dramas she could have developed, she gradually brings one to the fore. The result is a crisis affecting not only the two families directly involved but the whole town.
With close third-person narration, she allows a number of the personalities residing in Glenville to take turns with their points of view, including Jeanne, the postmistress; Leila, the innkeeper; Sophie, an aspiring folk singer; and Cyrus, who's trying to extricate himself from a family tradition of shady ventures.
Here's a passage from the vantage of solitary Nell, who is determined to rely on no one but herself:
One leg's going numb now, twisted beneath her, while the other one throbs. Maybe if she holds still enough it will stop altogether.
But then the pain radiates through her again, from so many directions at once, like a flash of red and black, like screaming.
She must have shouted when she fell. She must have cried out when the ladder slipped away, with nobody to hear.
Kuebler's carousel-like shifting of perspective — rotating among more than half a dozen primary characters — isn't altogether successful. Early on, as the novel establishes its locale and its characters' circumstances in life, a passage will sometimes slow to a crawl, pulling in history and context. At such moments, the characters don't sound like they are actively doing and thinking so much as dutifully filling in backstory.
Some of these characters come across as "types" who are predictable in their actions and responses, including environmental journalist (and more recent arrival) Jim Calper and neighborhood troublemaker Eli LeBeau. While Kuebler's omniscient narrator shows empathy and insight for some of her characters, she noticeably strains for fresh perceptions into others, as well as fresh language to describe and dramatize their experience.
The novel's structure is reminiscent of TV serial dramas, where several plotlines evolve concurrently. In Liquid, Fragile, Perishable, some of these parallel stories begin with momentum but peter out, failing to hold their own in the novel's riverlike main current.
Crucial as the nexus of the novel's synchronous storylines in Kuebler's imagined community is a beekeeping operation run by an evangelical Christian family. Apicultural scenes enliven the story as townspeople of varied stripes come together at Honey in the Rock. In certain respects, the hive is an analogy for the town of Glenville, its various denizens serving their distinctive, maybe obligatory roles within a collective organism.
The most moving through line in the novel is a series of incidents involving three young women who've known each other since infancy, as many small-town people do. Their present lives are diverging, yet they're still linked, companions on the verge of futures none of them can foresee.
The last third of the book swings into a different mode, briefly becoming something like a thriller before settling back into its accustomed pace: steady, thoughtful and observant. While at times the writing seems to overreach for epic scale, the novel's most memorable episodes are intimate and quotidian.
With her even-handed approach to creating a cast of characters, Kuebler offers a genuinely communal portrait. The fictional Glenville is a town that many Vermonters will recognize — and that readers from very different places will have many reasons to care about.
The door jingles and it's Leila Pierce, heels clicking across the floor. Leila must be the only woman in Glenville to wear shoes with any kind of heel anymore.
Except Jenny Rose LeBeau in her cowboy boots.
Why she didn't ditch the name the moment she escaped that godawful compound on the ridge—that's anyone's guess. Divorced for how many years now?
Divorced and still looking. Always in those cowboy boots and skirts, cowboy boots and short shorts. She won't give those up till she's in orthotics for good.
Jeanne has never had much patience with shoes that make such a racket.
But Leila, she's a classy one. Has to be, if she wants to do business with the out-of-towners who stay at the inn.
The original print version of this article was headlined "North Country Hive | Book review: Liquid, Fragile, Perishable, Carolyn Kuebler"
Comments are closed.
From 2014-2020, Seven Days allowed readers to comment on all stories posted on our website. While we've appreciated the suggestions and insights, right now Seven Days is prioritizing our core mission — producing high-quality, responsible local journalism — over moderating online debates between readers.
To criticize, correct or praise our reporting, please send us a letter to the editor or send us a tip. We’ll check it out and report the results.
Online comments may return when we have better tech tools for managing them. Thanks for reading.