Freight
Freight (Mel Bosworth, Folded Word 2011, 211 pages)
A Smalldoggies book review by Lavinia Ludlow
Mel Bosworth is the author of the novella Grease Stains, Kismet, and Maternal Wisdom, the chapbook When the Cats Razzed the Chickens, and in September, he released his first full-length novel Freight through Folded Word Press.
Freight is a comprehensive glimpse into an unnamed protagonist’s childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, cleverly narrated through systematically chosen metaphors, epiphanies, and theories. We follow the narrator through different cities, miscellaneous jobs, girlfriends, and interjected flashbacks of his childhood: the games, the skinned knees, the parental coddling, the dirt and grass he’d eaten both voluntarily and involuntarily.
Bosworth often relies on literal and figurative actions such as eating, carrying, losing, and throwing up, to move his plot forward: “When I grow too hungry and there’s nothing to eat, I have to eat myself. Then I get too empty and fall apart. I sit on benches, shaking. I get pushed around by the wind. I put down a lot of alcohol so I don’t have to think about the things I found and carried. I destroy things that are pretty because I don’t want to look at them anymore because they remind me of how ugly I am, which is why no one wants to eat me.”
He also divides chapters into themes such as what the narrator forgets, destroys, and remembers, weaving in his realizations as the story advances: “Death is a cure to a lot of things like cancer and disease and happiness, although I’m not sure anyone would want be cured of happiness. And some might not want to be cured from cancer if that cure means death, because then they aren’t alive anymore and being alive with cancer is something. I could be wrong. My opinions may change with time and that’s okay. That’s why time and opinions keep moving like passengers on a green bus.”
There were occasions when I felt the prose was rushed, repetitive, and felt more or less like an information dump: “…someone grabbed me by the collar and pulled me off the hood. We went to a house party that had a pool. I swam in warm water with girls and boys. We drank from glass bottles. Then I went back to my truck. My friends wanted me to come inside the house with them but I said I had to make a call.” However, Bosworth’s style maintains a rhythmic charm, and I can’t recall a single passage which didn’t end with a punching epiphany: “Lucas’s body was eating itself alive. That’s hard for me to imagine, but I try. It’s like his whole body was a mouth and it was eating itself. Like a collapsing star. Like a black hole. And if someone is a black hole there’s no way they can get away from themselves.”
The uplifting thing about this book is that despite the narrator’s setbacks, heartbreak, loneliness, and isolation, he looks toward the future, optimistic and hungry. He expects more and more out of himself and his interactions with others, still wholly aware that he’ll continue throwing up, carrying others, and enduring universal disappointment and loss.
This full-length novel was a debut for both Mel Bosworth and Folded Word Press. A definite must-read for Fall 2011.
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Purchase Freight from Amazon now.
Find out more information about Freight on Goodreads now.
Learn more about Mel Bosworth at his blog.