Post by rorschalk on Jul 16, 2019 21:16:37 GMT
Dear janeVC,
I cannot publish THE DOMOVOI for a few reasons I will elucidate now.
I come away each time, having read it thrice, feeling somewhat confused and with no sense of wonder. Perhaps this is because the protagonist did not imprint herself on me or my sympathies.The bleak landscape is more interesting to me than any of the characters. This passage is absolutely entrancing … Sunlight slants thin and buttery through the bay windows overlooking the fields. Frost has crystalized the ponds that dot the pasture, turning them into mirrored sequins; the winding road that leads to town look like a sinuous silk ribbon.
But the characters … they leave me flat. Jeanie comes across as unenergetic and pliable. Her deep sympathy for the plight of the barren Lily is contradicted by her quick decision to renege on the deal she made to carry Lily's baby. Her reticence is natural and understandable but is not the stuff of good fiction. There is no mystery in the reaction or surprise in it, and it plays out with the same blasé march toward the inevitable escape.
Also, I am confused by the creature that shares the work's title. I am intrigued by the first line The Domovoi is ugly as sin. Which led me to believe this was going to be an allegory, or the title creature was at least sin's anthropogenesis or personification or however you want to put it, but then it is clearly tied into the idea of some kind of domestic spirit that is some transcendental essence, some energy with direct kinship to the foreign maid Jeanie. Is the Domovoi a stand in for Jeanie's conscience? Is it real? The concept of it never quite comes together because there are competing threads working at cross purposes to try and stitch it all together.
The allusion to Jeanie's sexuality leaning toward a same-sex attraction when Lily is fixing the clasp of the ruby to her neck is intriguing but leads to nothing. It could have led to some good fiction wherein the idea of motherhood is tossed out with the bathwater, so to speak, when Jeanie confesses her love for Lily. The Domovoi is as large as an infant, it was said in the beginning of the work. Could it stand in as a proxy for that very thing that two women could never have together if the two women decided to run off together? Anyhow. I'm just riffing, and am glad the narrative did not go that way for moral reasons because that seems to be the current flavor of the day. Anyhow.
Writing this makes me realize my problem with THE DOMOVOI is it seems to never congeal into a satisfying narrative that distils any concrete theme. It is fractal and kaleidoscopic, which is to say repetitive in a chaotic way that does not allow me to pin it down and figure out what the heck that it's saying. If there is one sentence from it that seems to me to sum up its lack of cohesion it is this: I imagine the little bundle of cells is also pressing its hand against my inner wall. The two concepts, bundle of cells and hand clash together discordantly in my mind as things that cannot be the same. It seems to me to be one or the other, not either, or.
All this being said, it just never came together in an emotional catharsis for me. That's about as plain as I can put it. Again, thank you for your submission and putting your work through our unique process. I hope it was not too painful and that we can do business in the future. Best of luck.
TQR
I cannot publish THE DOMOVOI for a few reasons I will elucidate now.
I come away each time, having read it thrice, feeling somewhat confused and with no sense of wonder. Perhaps this is because the protagonist did not imprint herself on me or my sympathies.The bleak landscape is more interesting to me than any of the characters. This passage is absolutely entrancing … Sunlight slants thin and buttery through the bay windows overlooking the fields. Frost has crystalized the ponds that dot the pasture, turning them into mirrored sequins; the winding road that leads to town look like a sinuous silk ribbon.
But the characters … they leave me flat. Jeanie comes across as unenergetic and pliable. Her deep sympathy for the plight of the barren Lily is contradicted by her quick decision to renege on the deal she made to carry Lily's baby. Her reticence is natural and understandable but is not the stuff of good fiction. There is no mystery in the reaction or surprise in it, and it plays out with the same blasé march toward the inevitable escape.
Also, I am confused by the creature that shares the work's title. I am intrigued by the first line The Domovoi is ugly as sin. Which led me to believe this was going to be an allegory, or the title creature was at least sin's anthropogenesis or personification or however you want to put it, but then it is clearly tied into the idea of some kind of domestic spirit that is some transcendental essence, some energy with direct kinship to the foreign maid Jeanie. Is the Domovoi a stand in for Jeanie's conscience? Is it real? The concept of it never quite comes together because there are competing threads working at cross purposes to try and stitch it all together.
The allusion to Jeanie's sexuality leaning toward a same-sex attraction when Lily is fixing the clasp of the ruby to her neck is intriguing but leads to nothing. It could have led to some good fiction wherein the idea of motherhood is tossed out with the bathwater, so to speak, when Jeanie confesses her love for Lily. The Domovoi is as large as an infant, it was said in the beginning of the work. Could it stand in as a proxy for that very thing that two women could never have together if the two women decided to run off together? Anyhow. I'm just riffing, and am glad the narrative did not go that way for moral reasons because that seems to be the current flavor of the day. Anyhow.
Writing this makes me realize my problem with THE DOMOVOI is it seems to never congeal into a satisfying narrative that distils any concrete theme. It is fractal and kaleidoscopic, which is to say repetitive in a chaotic way that does not allow me to pin it down and figure out what the heck that it's saying. If there is one sentence from it that seems to me to sum up its lack of cohesion it is this: I imagine the little bundle of cells is also pressing its hand against my inner wall. The two concepts, bundle of cells and hand clash together discordantly in my mind as things that cannot be the same. It seems to me to be one or the other, not either, or.
All this being said, it just never came together in an emotional catharsis for me. That's about as plain as I can put it. Again, thank you for your submission and putting your work through our unique process. I hope it was not too painful and that we can do business in the future. Best of luck.
TQR