The Lies That Save Us: Story of a Child

By ChatGPT

Book Review

Title: Me and Emma

Author: Elizabeth Flock

Publisher: MIRA, 2005

Pages: 300

 

The mind of an eight-year-old child can be a chaotic enigma, especially if the child has been subjected to traumatic experiences. Elizabeth Flock’s protagonist, Caroline – Carrie, for short – is worth a deep study to understand a child’s internal conflicts.

Carrie carries a seething volcano within. Her father, who was a very loving person, was killed by robbers when she was small. The man who becomes her stepfather, Richard, is an abusive alcoholic. Carrie’s mother, an illiterate woman from the rural North Carolina in the USA, is absolutely helpless in her new situation. Poverty and imminent starvation forced her into the new marriage. Carrie is the actual victim, however.

How does Carrie deal with her painful reality? How a little child creates an alternative world in her mind, a world which becomes a psychological though illusory shelter, is what the novel shows us.

Carrie has a sister, the six-year-old Emma. Emma is bolder of the two though Carrie takes care of her with all the affection she is capable of. They both protect each other, in fact. In the words of Carrie who is also the narrator of the novel, “… in most families it’s the younger kids who follow the older ones around. But with us it’s always Emma leading the way.” There is a breathtaking twist awaiting the reader towards the end, however.

That twist at the end may make some readers feel emotionally tricked. Personally, I felt that way. Suddenly, the novel lost all its haunting charm for me. But then, I took a pause and a second thought.

At the surface level, this novel reads like a child’s attempt to describe everyday life. There is a deeper level which I had missed. At that level, the novel becomes an adult reader’s reconstruction of the trauma hidden beneath the surface. When we enter that level, a dramatic irony hits us like a sledgehammer: Carrie does not understand fully what she narrates; we, her listeners, understand it!

Carrie’s perception of reality is fractured, too painfully so. Emma’s presence is not what it seemed. The narrative is a psychological construct rather than a physical reality.

What seemed like resilience becomes denial. What seemed like companionship becomes loneliness. What seemed like narrative clarity becomes unreliable memory. I cannot say more than this lest I land in a pool of spoilers.

An eight-year-old child’s psyche is led by innocent expectations, especially from people who are supposed to be her guardians. When that innocence is buffeted by experiences, what does a child do? Some of them, like Carrie, may simulate normalcy while living in horror. Imagination can become their refuge, though a distortion too at the same time.

Flock’s narrative style is remarkable with its simple sentences that belong to a child. The sensory details catch our attention. The imaginativeness of the metaphors belongs to a child. See how Carrie describes the first time she was called by her abusive stepfather to his bedroom. “You can’t make an angry voice into a pretty one, but that’s what Richard is trying to do… Why is he calling me like I’m a little kitten. ‘Here kitty, kitty,’ he calls. Come on up here, he says…” Then she tells us that it was like a chicken being summoned, “Come on, chicky, chicky…” before its neck would be wrung.

Carrie has an extremely painful childhood. But what she does in this novel is not merely narrate that life; she reconstructs it into something bearable. And the tragedy lies in the gap between what she tells and what actually is. The hard-hitting emotional force of the novel resides in that gap.