Creatures (Van Meter)

Creatures:  A Novel
Crissy Van Meter, 2020
Algonquin of Chapel Hill
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616208592


Summary
On the eve of Evangeline’s wedding, on the shore of Winter Island, a dead whale is trapped in the harbor, the groom may be lost at sea, and Evie’s mostly absent mother has shown up out of the blue.

From there, in this mesmerizing, provocative debut, the narrative flows back and forth through time as Evie reckons with her complicated upbringing in this lush, wild land off the coast of Southern California.

Evie grew up with her well-meaning but negligent father, surviving on the money he made dealing the island’s world-famous strain of weed, Winter Wonderland. Although her father raised her with a deep respect for the elements, the sea, and the creatures living within it, he also left her to parent herself.

With wit, love, and bracing flashes of anger, Creatures probes the complexities of love and abandonment, guilt and forgiveness, betrayal and grief—and the ways in which our childhoods can threaten our ability to love if we are not brave enough to conquer the past.

Lyrical, darkly funny, and ultimately cathartic, Creatures exerts a pull as strong as the tides. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Crissy Van Meter grew up in Southern California. Her writing has appeared in Vice, Bustle, Guernica, and Catapult. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the New School. She lives in Los Angeles (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Crissy Van Meter’s vivid and moving debut, is a novel powered by atmosphere.… The characters are as complex and explosive as the setting.… As Creatures unfolds, Van Meter subverts narrative expectations by making long and frequent digressions away from the compelling present, pre-wedding story line, to reveal either the past or future… eventually this structure begins to sway under its own weight.… At times, inevitability begins to outstrip surprise, and feeling is more reported than animated.… In its rendering of Winter Island, though—of sea-soaked splendor and terror and rage—Van Meter’s debut is an unwavering triumph. Equally dazzling is the novel’s emotional ballast.… For all the novel’s visual description, then, it’s Van Meter’s perceptive eye for this—the unseen—that makes for a coming-of-age that’s as human as it is wild.
Laura van den Berg - New York Times Book Review


Creatures evokes a family’s fragile bond as deep as the sea…. The sensibility of this short, gemlike novel puts Van Meter… in league with contemporary novelists for whom humans and their environment are tightly bound together—Lydia Millet, Joy Williams and T.C. Boyle come to mind. And Creatures is studded with lovely, melancholy sentences that shimmer like dark sea glass…. Van Meter tells that story with empathy and clarity but also evokes the wildness that her setting deserves. Creatures delivers a powerful feeling that we, like Evie, are destined to always feel at least a little adrift.
Los Angeles Times


In fluid and nutrient-rich prose, Van Meter creates a sense of island life that will have even the most dedicated landlubbers tasting salt on their lips.
Minneapolis Star Tribune


[E]xcellent… a beautiful look at how we navigate the pain and heartbreak that comes with being human.… Creatures jumps back and forth in time…. [The] narrative technique… seems to highlight that lives don't happen in a straight line; we're all a collection of past and present, and we never really escape what's happened to us years ago.… Van Meter also displays a real talent for crafting characters that feel real, with impulses both good and bad, and the capacity to love and to hurt.… Van Meter is a wonderful writer, and her novel is so beautifully written… a gift of a book
Michael Schaub - NPR


An alluring, atmospheric debut.
People


[T]ender and atmospheric…. Despite some unnecessary structural flourishes in the form of essay-prompts and themed-chapter sections, this promising debut sneaks up on the reader, packing a devastating emotional punch.
Publishers Weekly


This promising debut is set on Winter Island on the eve of Evie's wedding, with a dead whale trapped in the harbor, the groom possibly lost at sea, and the mother of the bride suddenly reappearing after having walked out long ago.
Library Journal


Van Meter's wonderfully un-ordinary debut is rather like the ocean itself: layered, deep, and happening all at once…. This is a moving, graceful novel of how people change and are changed by natures within and without.
Booklist


Some of the most heartbreaking moments in this novel are the most simply told, and there are scenes of beauty and magic and dry humor amid the chaos. And Evie is self-aware enough to acknowledge her own complexities and shortcomings. A quietly captivating debut.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
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