Creatures by Crissy Van Meter is another one of those childhood-upbringing
stories in which the mother leaves and the father stays. While Evie is shaped
by the dysfunction of her family, she does love her itinerant, druggie father
and is so in need of her on-again off-again mother to love her. Does insecurity
and abandonment shape how she looks at her world? Most definitely.
Evie tells her story, moving back and forth on the
timeline, in this character-driven novel. Set on a Catalina-like island off the
coast of Los Angeles, Evie is about to walk down the aisle as the story opens
only to have a dead whale beach itself within smelling distance of her home, her mostly absent mother show up unannounced, and
her fiancé Liam seemingly missing at sea.
Winter Island has been her home all her life, a place
where she mostly raised herself living off the money her father made dealing in
Winter Wonderland marihuana. Sometimes without a home of their own, they shelter
with various friends and lovers of her father. Throughout the story, the sea
and the creatures living in it are the one constant Evie has leaned on.
The debut novel of Los Angeles-based writer Crissy Van
Meter will be a must-read for those of us who find solace in stories about
dysfunctional families and how they shape their offspring. We are not alone!
Van Meter teaches
creative writing at The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College.
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