by Creative Nonfiction Editor Stephanie Seguin
A beautiful narrative arc in a very short space
When reading through submissions for creative nonfiction I look for beautiful writing, of course, but also for some sense of connection. I want to feel as though I've gotten to know the narrator a bit. In Lora Straub's Second Prize winning A Fragile Inheritance, I felt a connection to this narrator and her family.
I am also a reader who is charmed by small details. I loved the grandmother with an extensive crystal collection who drinks her chianti out of a favorite plastic juice cup and washes all her dishes by hand even though she has a dishwasher. This family, with their quirks and running jokes, felt familiar.
The other thing that felt special about this piece of writing in Bacopa Literary Review 2021 was the growth of the narrator. Twelve hundred words is precious little storytelling space, yet within that, we see this narrator grow from a young woman who resents talk of death, to a woman who wants to be taken seriously enough to be trusted to wrap up her grandmother's crystal, finally to a woman who understands the gift she has been given by both her mother and grandmother.
When my husband and I unboxed them, six years after Grammar's death, Steve unwrapped each with reverence. Held one after the other up to the light and admired the cut. I buried my nose in a goblet like I was smelling a flower, still caught a whiff of mildewed books and Grammar's warm presence in the stale air caught between the glass and newspaper. Perhaps the stemware summoned the scent.
It had nothing to do with trust. Wrapping that crystal was one of the last things Mom could do for her mother, and that doubled as a gift for her daughters: the unwrapping. Grammar's house, most of her books, dishtowels, the gold carpet, her fake fruit: all gone. But the scent: a momentary return of a singular spirit.
Lora Straub lives in Boston, MA. Her poetry prose chapbook, Id Est, was released in October 2017 by SpeCt! Books. Her work can be found in Construction Mag, She Explores, The Fem, The Elephants, and Wave Composition, among others. She is currently working on a memoir.
