This is my stop during the blog tour for The Angle of Flickering Light by Gina Troisi. The Angle of Flickering Light is Gina Troisi’s debut memoir novel published by Vine Leaves Press. This blog tour is organized by Lola's Blog Tours. The blog tour runs from 6 till 19 April. See the tour schedule here.
Blurb: Gina Troisi’s father moved out when she was five years old, but before he left, he insisted on telling her about his various affairs—with prostitutes, with her mother’s friends, and finally, with his secretary, Brenda, whom he had decided to marry. By the time she reached adolescence, on a search for respite from her father's verbal abuse and Brenda's psychological torment, Gina spent hours doing Jane Fonda’s workouts, smoked cigarettes instead of eating food, became obsessed with her thinness, and with the notion of fading away. She began to find solace in restlessness—drinking hallucinogenic mushroom tea and inhaling crushed pills and powders—perching herself on the periphery of danger again and again. As an adult, when she finally glimpsed a better life for herself, her grandfather, who had been a surrogate father to her, became terminally ill, and she fell in love with John, a stranger who was utterly familiar, but who was addicted to heroin. She moved from New Hampshire to California, crossing the country in an attempt to alleviate her selfdestructive tendencies, but found herself pulled back to New Hampshire, to John, a man with whom, despite his struggle, she could not deny the sense of home she felt. But what would it cost for a girl to run wildly and recklessly into womanhood, making instant, temporary homes? And would she ever find home within herself?Links: - Goodreads - Amazon - B&N - Kobo - Apple - Booktopia - Gumroad - Bookshop
Wrapped Up in Skin,
Hidden Behind Eyes
When I was in the third grade, during a weekend
visit to my father’s house, Brenda picked out
a movie for the two of us to watch: Fatal Attraction.
Sitting on the sectional couch with her feet propped
up on the coffee table, Brenda said, “Makes you think
twice about where to put your dick.” In the film, Dan
Gallagher, the lawyer, slept with Alex Forrest when
his wife was out of town; he intended for the affair to
be a one-night stand, but she began to stalk him and
his family. Near the end of the movie, she broke into
his house, snuck into the bathroom, and as Dan’s
wife wiped steam from the mirror, Alex’s face was
revealed. The mistress was standing behind the wife:
her blonde, frosted hair coiled around her face, her
mouth solemn and silent. She wore a long white dress
with no bra, her nipples shading its sheer fabric, a
butcher knife in her hand.
When the movie was over, Brenda looked at me,
waited for my response. “Well?” she asked. I said
nothing. I nodded the way I always did when Brenda
talked about dicks or sex, the way I did when she
told me about haunted houses where blood dripped
out of the faucets, or kidnappers driving white vans
through town. Brenda wore her closed-mouth smile
while she gazed at me, then straight ahead, satisfied
with my compliance.
*
My father, the lawyer, met women on planes. When I
was in college, I called his office and the receptionist
giggled, “Oh, hi, Gina. He got tied up.” Somewhere
over the Atlantic. Somewhere over the Gulf. “He’ll be
back a couple of days later than expected.”
He was a natural when it came to affairs—he moved
easily into their illusory territory, into the arms of
foreign women. He was the type of man who fell into
the life of a woman and allowed her to reshape him,
design him as she saw fit. Each woman was his prospect,
then his project, then his proprietor.
*
When Brenda was promoted from my father’s secretary
to his paralegal, and then to his wife, and they
moved in together, I saw a paper peel-off name tag, the
kind worn at a business convention, in their master
bathroom: Brenda Troisi. Since it had already been
used and was stuck to the windowsill of the bathroom,
I figured it was trash. When I asked Brenda
if she wanted me to throw it away, she said, “Are
you kidding? Don’t you dare. I worked long and hard
for that name.” Her face reddened, and she stared
at me with her cutting features: her sharp nose, her
high, prominent cheekbones, the bulging whites of
her eyeballs.
