Erosion reminds me of being a literature major, newly graduated trying to figure out how to make a living writing. This narrator Alice finds friendship, adventures that horrify her, and magic. I didn't run into those until much later.
Alice’s summer would have turned out differently if she hadn’t met Jo and Zoe who offered a bedroom in their flat, if they hadn’t introduced her to Asher and the others downstairs, if she hadn’t gone with them to Charlie’s shack and been convinced to dig the skull out of the cliffside.
The older mentor, Charlie seems gender fluid to me but maybe that's because mine was. Obviously, I find the author's vision truthful as in the sense all good fiction is true. It mirrors some core experiences, the same but different. I loved the literary references. This was like a walk down memory lane, only my skulls were deer instead of human.
Lucya Starza knows how to turn ordinary events into tension just this side of desperation. The beach reachable only at low tide hung over me like a sword suspended by a hair. Would it fall? Alice hanging in midair held by a makeshift climbing harness digging at the cliff face. Would she fall? Charlie’s adamant refusal to involve police or archeologists in their dig. Did they know who the skull was? Sometimes the author lets the danger dissipate. Sometimes she doesn’t.
Earth,fire,air,water. All bring the promise of disaster and some of them deliver. All are themes for Alice’s writing, though the paper in the typewriter remains blank. The skull is given a cupboard shrine and a name. Rosemerta.. She joins them to power a homemade Ouija board. Is she a presence or not? Alice thinks so and rescues her twice. But then she wonders if she imagined it. She questions what is real and what is not, but she takes Rosemerta and becomes her guardian perhaps to return the favor.
Alice doesn’t write her novel that summer. She will someday, but her friends are angry she will write about them so she holds off, Maybe she’s afraid of writing for out there because even though they imagine her betrayal, she isn’t doing anything. Charlie speaks true, “Grim things that happen to you can be worth writing about, can’t they?” Charlie is old enough to know the value of grimness.
And when Alice remembers what happened that summer, she realizes, “The mind can easily play tricks and memory is fickle.” It is, if that matters. A story is what we remember it is.
Erosion is a good read in the land of the liminal. Pick it up and see yourself. No, I didn't leave a word out of that sentence. See yourself. Highly recommended.