Tag Archives: Carol Anshaw

Aquamarine by Carol Anshaw

Posted by Kate W in Fiction and tagged with , , , ,

The ‘Sliding Doors’ concept is not particularly new yet it takes a certain skill to pull off convincing  alternative stories for the same set of characters. Carol Anshaw does it beautifully in Aquamarine, a story that begins with Olympic swimmer Jesse Austin, seduced and consequently edged out for a gold medal by her Australian rival, Marty.

“It won’t take a scaling down of expectation to accept this defeat, but rather a substantial reconstruction of her notion of herself. And she must accomplish this in the next few minutes, before she’s out of the pool and dried off and sweatsuited and ushered smiling (the smiling is imperative, imperatively expected) up onto the staggered pedestals, positioned slightly lower than Marty.” Continue reading →

‘Carry the One’ by Carol Anshaw

Posted by Kate W in Fiction and tagged with , , ,

It was a case of reading deja vu when I began Carry the One by Carol Anshaw. It starts with a wedding and a fatal car accident, just like Red Hook Road by Ayelet Waldman but the similarities end there.

The story begin’s with the final hours of Carmen’s wedding reception, when a car filled with stoned, drunk and sleepy guests accidentally hits and kills a girl on a dark, country road.

“Its tires had stopped spinning, the passengers inside were as still as sacks of flour. This was a small inhalation, a bracing for the immediate future, which was racing in.”

For the next twenty-five years, those involved, including Carmen’s brother, Nick, her sister, Alice and her new sister-in-law, Maude, connect and disconnect and reconnect with each other and their victim.

“I hate that it doesn’t matter if we see each other. There’s still this connection, between me and him because we were both in the car. Like in arithmetic. Because of the accident, we’re not just separate numbers. When you add us up, you always have to carry the one.” Continue reading →