Craniotomy, Clones, Grief, and Hope: On Mary South’s "You Will Never Be Forgotten"
Mary South | You Will Never Be Forgotten | FSG Originals | March 2020 | 244 pages
In Mary South’s debut short story collection, You Will Never Be Forgotten, one of the many grieving, distraught and beautifully-flawed characters asks, “Wouldn’t it be fun to cut into a brain, adorn it with gems, and then cover that diadem back up with the patient’s skull?” South’s characters long to do exactly that: replace their pain with sapphires and rubies in the form of cloning, technology, and other unhealthy methods of self-soothing. But their attempts are futile and only delay the process of grieving and healing.
We encounter situations that are entertaining and eccentric yet also manage to be relatable and cutting. A brain surgeon whose husband committed suicide unravels and throws her belongings into a pool. While deleting shootings and misogyny from the web, a content moderator stalks her rapist online and then in person. Infantile men desperate to be loved and nurtured breastfeed from a woman who lost her baby. The corporeal monstrosities created by a mildly deranged architect infatuate a motherless journalist. A woman whose daughter is brutally murdered attempts to mold a clone into the reincarnation of her child.
South’s stories blend sci-fi and speculative fiction, horror, and satire. The harvesting of organs from clones and the trolling, doxing, and blurring of reality and virtual reality brings to mind Black Mirror and Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake series. Like Atwood, South brings to life an unsettling world that may seem distant when expounded but actually exists in the present. And the horror elements, in the form of allusions to ghosts, monsters, and murders, evoke Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. At the same time, the cutting cultural critique of selfies, superficiality, and performative social media reminds one of the popular Netflix show You and Sam Lipsyte’s satire Hark, which follows a fake guru who tries to save the country.
One of this collection’s strengths is its cohesive, circular organization of the stories and how the stories build upon one another. The intimate first-person point-of-view stories that examine grief, loss, vulnerability, motherhood, and love at the beginning morph into more detached third-person pieces in the middle that center around similar themes set against the backdrop of toxic internet culture. Then at the end, the collection circles back to the intimate first-person.
This cohesivity is exemplified by the way the first and last stories speak to one another. The first story is “Keith Prime,” an intimate first-person story about clones: a woman who lost her husband works at a warehouse of incubating, unconscious clones (all named Keith) whose organs will eventually be “scooped out like ice cream from a bucket.” And then the final story is also about clones: in “Not Setsuko,” a woman conditions her second cloned daughter with memories from the life of her deceased first daughter. Eventually, this mother asks her second daughter to tell her a story, which after re-reading, one realizes is a hint toward the first story about the Keith clones.
South’s original form and skilled crafting of unpredictable plots and unfurling sentences are at their peak in “Frequently Asked Questions About Your Craniotomy.” Who would’ve thought that a FAQ page about a surgical opening of the skull would unravel into a deeply personal and vulnerable meditation on living after the loss of a loved one? South isn’t the first one to use the FAQ form—Amy Bonnaffons’s short story “Horse” also uses Q&A to explore a woman’s decision to take tranquilizers to become a horse. But what both of these forms accomplish is to show that personal demons, desires, and secrets color our every action and expression and that our experiences bleed into our lives and professions.
“Frequently Asked Questions About Your Craniotomy” also manages to be absurdly hilarious because the FAQ’s author, a brain surgeon reeling from her husband’s suicide, ironically instills even more fear into the potentially distraught reader about to undergo brain surgery: “Try not to worry. Although, yes, this is brain surgery, you’re more likely to die from the underlying condition itself, such as a malignant tumor or subdural hematoma.” At one point, the speaker even tells the reader to avoid one of her colleagues: “Do not permit a man with essentially the same first and last name to operate on your spine.” Yet, by the end, the protagonist lands in a place of mindful gratitude—she imparts hope to the reader by advising to re-read all of the answers once again, “but very slowly” and to “recite to yourself, ‘I am alive.’”
“Architecture for Monsters” uses a formal technique similar to the FAQ. The speaker is a journalist attempting to write a profile piece on an internationally renowned architect who had inspired her since she was young. The piece starts out detached and informative: “Broken Rib Cage rises above the desert of Abu Dhabi like a satanic cathedral.” Then, in a surprising turn, the writer reveals that the profile isn’t really about the architect; it’s about herself. The journalist’s interest in the architect stems from unresolved issues surrounding the brutal rape and death of her mother: “The interview would have to serve as another bit of paper I crumpled up or tore apart and added to the model of my mother—perhaps, after this piece, that nest would finally be complete, and, just as I had been able to do with her before she was killed, I could curl up inside of it and be nurtured.”
In “The Age of Love,” a first-person story about a man who works at a nursing home and has trouble connecting emotionally with his girlfriend, South examines how individuals are sometimes better able to express and experience love when they put up barriers and pretend to be someone they’re not. In the story, the main character discovers that the elderly men in the nursing home are dialing sex hotlines and detailing their most outlandish fantasies. His coworker finds these calls hilarious and records them. The man then listens to the recordings during his commute and while cooking, finding the hushed voices “oddly soothing,” like “some kind of perverted ocean.” His girlfriend catches wind of the recordings and entreats him to call her from another room and speak to her in the same way. After she climaxes, the man feels unable to join her. He wonders, “Why did it feel so impossible for me to lie down tenderly with her when she was awake?”
In a collection teeming with darkness, absurdity, and the grotesque, I was amazed to find myself comforted by the glimmers of hope and the nods toward recovery that South offers in her conclusions. South ends with the confidence that these complex characters are ready to begin the grueling process of healing and putting their lives back together, and she does so without coming off as cliché or sentimental. During this uncertain time of global pandemic, collective grieving, and adapting to socializing mainly through screens, we need exactly the kind of inspiration South offers in You Will Never Be Forgotten, in stories that serve as testaments to our ability to hope, heal, and love again. Like South’s characters, we will have to slowly peel away the emotional barriers of fear, shame, and avoidance that prevent us from being vulnerable and loving.
As I was re-reading, I wondered what a Mary South story would look like that began amid a character’s healing process, rather than during the drama of falling apart? Would it be just as compelling? As Leslie Jamison demonstrated in her memoir about alcoholism, The Recovering, the story of recovery can be every bit as electrifying as the train wreck itself. I would like to see a strong writer like Mary South challenge the assumption that healing cannot be as enthralling as unraveling.