Maria Meindl

Happy Birthday

June 9, 2013

Weighing in on literary prizes

May 22, 2013

Last week, twice, I asked Rolf the same question, twice in a row, with no recollection that I’d done so. I hate this. What could be worse than a partner who’s “there but not there”?  These days, I’m that partner.

I joked about senility. Really, I’m tired and preoccupied. I’m up at five every day, revising my novel before work and teaching and organizing readings.

Whenever there’s a pause in this routine I park myself beside the cache of literary treasures I’ve gathered. This has been an amazing spring for fiction. In order of when I bought them: The Blue Guitar, by Ann Ireland, Ayelet Tsabari’s The Best Place on Earth, Matadora by Elizabeth Ruth, and Ania Szado’s Studio Saint Ex sit waiting in a blessedly quiet spot where there’s a view of the park gradually coming into bloom. I’m fortunate enough to be inspired, not intimidated, by other people’s fiction. Over the last six months I’ve stubbornly pushed my way through another draft of my novel, and reading has spurred me on.

I printed the manuscript up in its entirety last week, read through it, and came to the conclusion it’s not good enough. It’s going to take more investment of time, (aka money) and creativity, not to mention the part of myself that should be listening to conversations with people I love, before I can get to the next stage … of self-investment.

I’ve been through a crisis in the last six months, though I was kind-of too tired to notice. The thinking went something like this: a healthy person, an effective person would not do this. She’d write books that would sell so that writing could become her job. And if that didn’t happen, she’d give up, in the same way a healthy person would give up on a love affair that’s gone on for thirty years, costing a lot and yielding little, a healthy person in my situation would give up writing.

Not that I’ve never had any of these thoughts before, it’s just that I’m in my mid-fifties and I’m tired, and I’m still at the beginning of my writing career, while my need to feel – I’m looking for a real word and can find only pop psych clichés – empowered? Self actualized?

Spare me.

My need to feel like a functioning adult has become an emergency.

And it’s increasingly clear that writing is not going to get me there. The crisis is not about the terrible state of publishing but about me, that I keep going anyway. And chime a meaningless, “How was your day?” to the person who believes in me more than I believe in myself.

So there are the books.

Last night I set out to read a few pages of a book I missed last year, Linda Spalding’s The Purchase. Before I knew it I had used up two of the precious six hours I’d carved out for sleep. I was so tired that some of the content slipped into the same hole as conversations with my husband, yet I didn’t care. I was carried along by the integrity of the book. This author had created a seamless world of character and time and place and history and prose, that I could trust. These days, sinking into a created world feels more restorative than sleep. The possibility that I might give someone else the same healing balm of art is one of the few things keeping me going.

The Purchase is good. I think it’s a classic. And it makes me feel good that I believe it deserved the Governor General’s Award. For there to be justice in the world of prizes has become really, really important.

Which of the newer books will win prizes? A literary prize or even placement on a shortlist can confer – not simply recognition – but the feeling of being a functioning adult that hardworking writers deserve. In a perfect world, they’d each get one. It’s not a perfect world.

I’ve heard a lot of talk about how the prizes act as gatekeepers, that they’re taking over the promotional work that a publisher should do. We have enough of them in this country that winners and shortlisted candidates can fill up reviews pages, interview shows, creative writing faculties, festival programmes. But few enough that the majority of perfectly worthy books go unnoticed.  Disappointment at not winning a prize is not just a matter of being a sore loser. The stakes in this day and age are very high. Yes, we can take promotion into our own hands and are encouraged to do so. We’re told that we have power in the situation. Still, all the effort in the world is overshadowed by forces we can’t control. Elizabeth’s Ruth’s Matadora comes to mind.

My book, Outside the Box came out in the fall of 2011. It is a work of literary merit and historical significance, one that helps Canadians understand our identity, encourages artists in our struggles, helps women articulate the issues underlying our situation in the world. When it came to the stories of the living and the dead I went through the work of determining what felt to me like an appropriate balance of truth and respect. I made it beautiful. This took twelve years. It won a history prize but did not receive so much as a nod on any short or long list for any of the literary prizes that might have put me on the map.

I’m okay with this.

My grandmother, the subject of the book, was censored from publishing poetry about the impact of the Second World War on her as a woman and as a mother. Later, her career was squashed by the post-war backlash against women. Males returned to dominant positions in newspapers and publishing, pushing out the women who had been flourishing. Reviews vilified “lady writers”. Lacking public discourse on the issues at stake, my grandmother took it all personally, and several generations of the family suffered the consequences.

Sure, it feels like a lottery, but as long as I can publish this new book, I know it stands a chance of falling into the hands of a jury of fair, honest and hardworking writers like myself, who will carefully weigh the decision, understanding exactly what it’s like to be on the other end of it. 

I know my history. I’d rather have my fate determined by an ever-shifting jury of more-or-less peers, than by a couple of despotic reviewers or editors who might dominate literary fashion for years on end.

Of course, the whole context is messed up: the way books are sold and marketed, the way the arts are funded, the way the press covers the arts. We need more of everything, not to mention a shift in public thinking. On the other hand, the internet puts us more in control than we’ve ever been, as long as we ourselves don’t become its slaves. Thanks to people like Kerry Clare, who believe in the book, it has more ongoing presence that a print review could offer. There are still people discovering and – yes – buying it.

And best of all, people are talking about these issues.  The censorship of silence has been fought on the internet by organizations like CWLA.

It’s hard to be working on something as thankless as this novel, and knowing that it will come into a world with very few resources. But given a historical perspective, I’m still proud to know that Canadians have found a way to be as fair as possible.

Deus ex Mercury

March 13, 2013

I’ve been trying to tighten the plot of my novel in the saggy spot between pages 200 and 300. More dialogue, I tell myself! More sex! Better sex! Worse sex! Okay, no sex! Cut! Cut! Cut!

Nothing is working and I’m worn out from the effort of trying to tighten a novel while juggling various other activities. Writing fiction these days feels like bailing out a floundering love affair, and I’m all the more desperate because it used to be so much fun.

Furthermore, it’s Mercury retrograde which I’m told is to be followed by a Monster Moon. And my computer has died so I’m working on a notebook whose keyboard sometimes rearranges itself as if the machine has had it’s own little version of a stroke.

And I should feel lucky to have such minor problems, etc.

By 9 p.m. I’m good for little other than watching DVDs, so have been happy to have Season Two of Game of Thrones to make me forget my troubles. And forget them I did, the other night. I found the actress who will would be ideal for Rebecca, my statuesque protagonist, in the movie version of my novel!  She is the majestic Gwendoline Christie, who plays Brienne of Tarth in the series.

It was, I thought, a sign that my novel would not only lose its sag, it would get published and eventually made into a film.

And while Brienne fought off some invaders, I fell into a debate with myself. Well I shouldn’t dignify it with the term ‘debate’. It was more like the kind of waffling I used to do in my head when I was single and lonely and met someone I knew was completely unsuitable but convinced myself I should get involved anyway just because it wasn’t good to make a habit of expecting the worst.

Brienne presented a kind of flickering hope that was interesting mostly because it demonstrated how discouraged I have been feeling about the whole Quixotic enterprise of writing. This poor, sagging novel has so many life threatening dangers to go through. Finding a publisher, having the publisher stay in business long enough for it to get out, struggling for whatever scraps of attention I’m able to garner for it. To name a few.

Imagine what would happen if all the barriers just disappeared and the resources just materialized. What if the appearance of  Gwendoline Christie on our living room wall meant that this quest to complete my work must inevitably succeed. Disappointments in both love and art have put me on guard against that kind of thinking. Brutal realism has served me better in both areas of my life.

But I sure would like Brienne to travel beside me for a while.

In case you haven’t met her:

False polarity …real pain

February 26, 2013

The first of many times I read Of Woman Born by Adrienne Rich, this section jumped out at me:

“… the gulf between ‘mothers’ and ‘nonmothers’ (even the term is pure negation, like “widow,” meaning without) will be closed only as we come to understand how both childbearing and childlessness have been manipulated to make women into negative quantities, or bearers of evil.”

She goes on to write,

“The ‘childless woman’ and the ‘mother’ are a false polarity, which has served the institutions both of motherhood and heterosexuality. There are no such simple categories.”

It was an important moment, discovering that passage. I went on to explore this territory in many conversations and journal entries, and recently in writing, thanks to the brave and brilliant Kerry Clare, who turned one of her conversations into an anthology and invited me to participate.

Here’s her blog entry about the book, Truth, Dare, Double Dare: Stories of Motherhood, which is schedule for publication in spring, 2014. I’m delighted that my story, “Junior” will be included.

I have whinged — and will continue to whinge; it’s fun — about the pain and peril of writing non-fiction. I keep writing it because of the profound effect that works of non-fiction have had on me over the years. I like to imagine I can bring to others a new way of seeing or perhaps articulating their own experiences. A way to start a conversation or take it to a new level. And perhaps, in this case, bridge a gulf.

Mercury Regretade

November 30, 2012

I don’t believe in astrology except when it comes to mercury retrograde. Three times a year, for three weeks on end, communications go awry. Mail gets lost, appointments get missed, misunderstandings abound. As a Gemini with a Virgo rising, I am to all intents and purposes made of mercury. The confusion hits me hard.

It brings unexpected benefits though. You can revive old friendships, for instance, or find stuff you thought was lost. A couple of weeks ago, I ran into a classmate from high school. In Indigo, of all places, in the Manulife Centre. Where I only go when I’m in the neighbourhood and have half an hour to kill. Which is almost never. Seeing her face reminded me that this exponentially growing city is, still and always, my hometown.

It’s also been a time to revisit old writing. At the launch for Terri Favro’s Bella and the Loyalist Heroine (kicking off with a video trailer about her hometown), I read a monologue I premiered in (ulp!) 1996. It’s part of a series of performance pieces I created, satirizing new-age philosophy. In 1996, energy anatomy, visualization, and finding your bliss were all the rage. My position (then and now) is that this is pure narcissism, at best a prop to an individual’s confidence, at worst, a form of social Darwinism.

In the monologue, I talked about my long-standing phobia of singing in public, springing, so I claimed, from a general lack of assertiveness. I declared my intention to change all that, culminating with a solo rendition of “You Can’t Get a Man with a Gun” in the loudest voice I could muster.

That piece took me a long way, the high point being a performance at the Festival of Women in the Arts at the National Arts Centre in March of 2000. They had a real actress performing it, and it was praised as a show-stopper. There was a video made. I took a copy to my mother and watched it with her in her nursing home. Seeing me called up to the stage to receive a round of applause, she declared, “What a big nose you have!”

I cycled immediately through the round of anger and depression she could set off in me with what I realize, in retrospect, was just her dry sense of humour. (Easy to say, ten years after her death. Easy to say when there are times I would give anything to be able to laugh with her again.)

Things have changed. To the point where I wished I had someone to perform the monologue for me, at Terri’s launch. I am no longer shy and retiring, and don’t have the acting chops to convey that personality.

I stated an intention back in 1996 (just like the new-agers say) and gradually fulfilled it. I changed my whole life, my habits of thinking and behaving, my work, my educational and marital status, my name, the people I consider “family,” and yes, my voice. Maybe that’s why it was so gratifying to have a high-school friend recognize me. There are times when I feel like a stranger in my own life.

But I didn’t just “attract” this change. I worked at it. I took a voice workshop with Richard Armstrong who got me past my fear by inviting me to sing the worst note I could imagine, as loudly as I could. This has been followed by twenty years of studying voice with Fides Krucker, which still continues. And there was Feldenkrais technique, a slow and astoundingly methodical method of addressing long-term habits. Habits of moving, thinking, feeling. And habits of choice.

But sometimes, friends are the greatest teachers. At that same launch, Diana Kiesners performed a hilarious monologue based on her blog, The Accordion Diaries. Her monologue is about pleasure and music, and letting go of control. It’s also about the healing power of a good teacher, and about remaining forever a beginner.

Diana and I met in the mid-eighties, at a writing workshop. Unsatisfied in both our work and personal lives, we hatched a plan to go to Mexico together. There we explored ruins and restaurants, museums and markets, got followed by love (or dollar) sick young men, puked together out the windows of an all-night bus. And laughed.

As late boomers, we had hit recession after recession in our careers, and launched our romantic lives in the midst of a feminist backlash. We had to find a way to take control. And on our return, we did. With the help of Diana’s computer and the “half price after midnight” special at Kinko’s Copies, we formed a small press called The Writing Space, which carried on, in one form or another, for two decades. As late bloomers, I like to think we are still finding ways steer each other through the latest thicket of challenges and the ones that lie ahead.

The launch was held at Q Space, at the corner of Borden and College streets. That used to be “my” corner, in the years leading up to writing the monologue. Back then, I lived in a room recently vacated by Diana’s and my friend, Jacqueline McClintock. In a dubious bid for flexible work hours, we all did transcriptions at an office that created editing scripts for TV and radio. We sat in a room at the back of a downtown house with earphones in our ears, feet pedaling and fingers pounding the keys as fast as they could to squeeze out every dollar before the next inevitable mechanical glitch. We were paid by the tape minute, and lost money when the company’s machines broke down.

At exactly three every afternoon, the boss would saunter into the staff washroom for an elaborate and protracted bowel movement. If she found us talking when she emerged, she would call out, “Back to the machines girls!” and leave us sitting in her laxative fug while she returned to her game of solitaire. Diana wrote about it. I made cartoons. Jackie moved to New York to study with Sanford Meisner.

Last September, I got an email from my friend Noreen Shanahan, attaching the obituary she had written of Jackie for the Globe and Mail. She had no idea Jackie and I had known each other. I had no idea Jackie was sick.

Time telescoped in the way that it can after a sudden loss. I thought about how friends hold memory for each other. Jackie and I had slipped out of touch in the past few years, yet I felt like part of myself had died. The only comfort was to see that her work had been recognized. She had gone on to teach Meisner technique throughout the world, influencing the face of film and theatre and establishing loyal followers everywhere she went.

Noreen points out in her first paragraph that a good teacher is immortal. Jacqueline was very much my teacher. I first met her at Bishop’s University (where we fought). Later, I shared a house with her in Montreal. I was looking for relationship models, back then, and Jackie and her partner, David, were like no couple I’d ever seen. She was the first to point out to me that the sexual revolution had not necessarily done women any favours. The sweetheart she met in her teens was her mate for life. Yet she was far from oppressed. At a time when I was using most of my imaginative resources finding ways of bending myself out of shape to please others, she provided living proof that a woman could be adored for being powerfully and unabashedly herself. With her dedication to her aunt Irene, Jackie demonstrated that it’s possible to be incredibly cool, and adhere to good old-fashioned values of caring for your elders.

My friend’s early death inspired many reflections, for it was during the years in Quebec that I made many of the decisions (or non-decisions) that have shaped my life since. I decided not to become a journalist or go to teacher’s college (the two most obvious options for supporting writing), but to throw myself out into the world and just see what happened. I didn’t have the chutzpah for journalism, but if I’d taken a teaching certificate, I’d be getting ready to retire, now.

I’ve always taught something, and yet for some reason, I decided to become one of those people who teach outside the system; my only certification is as a Feldenkrais practitioner and I teach creative writing, too. From a financial point of view, it was the worst decision you could imagine. Time and again in my working life I have ended up going “back to the machines.” I can’t say I’ve completely finished beating myself up over it, but this month I did eventually get bored with all this self questioning. If I don’t believe in myself no one will do it for me. Besides, I have classes to teach.

A few things

October 30, 2012

I look forward to the launch of a comic book called Bella and the Loyalist Heroine by Terri Favro and Ron Edding on Sunday November 4 at 3 p.m. It’s a Q Space, 382 College St. At Borden.

A few other people will be reading as well, including yours truly and the lovely and talented Diana Kiesners, who, it is rumored, will be accompanying herself on the accordion for a hilarious and smart, not-to-be-missed monologue. Other readers include Jordan Fry, Terry Trowbrige and Jade Alyssa and Koom Kankesan.

Thing two: some time ago, I did an interview about a story in an anthology called Twelve Breaths a Minute, published by Creative Non Fiction.  It just appeared on their blog.

And finally, I’d like to recommend this wonderful essay by Heidi Reimer.

Story and self

October 23, 2012

‘Incredible’ … ‘family’ … ‘complex’ … ‘forgiveness’ …  a few words drifted toward me across the café. Somehow, I knew the two women at the neighbouring table were talking about Sarah Polley’s The Stories We Tell.

It’s a film to be discussed. In the washrooms after the show, on the escalator on the way down from the cinema, I picked up scraps of intimate conversation. I imagined people fanning out from the theatre in twos and threes, sitting down for a glass of wine or picking up the telephone the minute they got home. By exploring different perspectives on Polley’s family history, the film invites us to air and rehash our own.

What captivated you in this film?

This the question I want to ask everyone who’s seen it. Was it the theme of nature versus nurture? The bringing of family secrets to light? Was it the radically different perspectives? The question of what really constitutes the truth? The character of the mother? What else? It’s a testimony to the film that the way we answer says a lot about ourselves.

For me, it was the way this theatrical family, so steeped in the business of conveying emotion, handled real-life moments of emotional power. The play Scratch by Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman held the same fascination for me. The choice Polley makes in recounting the mother’s death in such a restrained fashion would be touching in any story, but given the context, it’s an unforgettable piece of film-making.

And there is the issue of loyalty. Yes, I wanted to find out who Polley’s biological father was, but for me the most suspenseful moments came when certain characters began vying for control of the narrative. Vying for belief in their version of events. The audience’s belief, I wondered? Or Polley’s?  Or does the distinction blur at some point?

In Outside the Box, I wrote about something I came to call Dueling Narrators. When I was growing up, not only did everyone have a different version of events, but narrative became the metaphorical ground on which power struggles were waged. To show loyalty to someone, I felt I must subscribe to that person’s version of reality.

My struggles in writing Outside the Box had to do with forging my own narrative, deciding what to put in, what to leave out, how to arrange the material. I had to give myself permission to privilege my own perspective over the dueling narrators that had taken up residence in my head many years before. Asserting that I had the right to do that was terrifying, and shaping the narrative my own way became a forging of self.

Polley doesn’t offer much in the way of her own memories, but nor does she ever absent herself from the scene. There are constant reminders that everything we are watching is a construct (even the interviews … even the “home movies”). She’s ever-present as a witness, as a listener, and as the one who filters and arranges what we see. Her genius shows in the way she lets us in on her choices.

To me, the most touching moment in Stories We Tell is the one in which Michael Polley gives his daughter the story he has written, along with the choice of what to do with it. He, of course, becomes the narrator of the film.

Two courses

October 10, 2012

With some trepidation and lots of excitement I’m going to be offering a couple of writing courses this fall:

1)      The Memoir Question(s) and
2)      Writing Moves

Here are some details about dates and fees.

The Memoir Question(s) grows out of my ongoing obsession with writing about real life. It’s often fraught, as Stacy May Fowles trenchantly describes in this essay.

This week, I was revising a story about care-giving that I wrote some years ago. Even reading it over made my whole body hurt. The secret to a long life is a short memory. It feels dangerous to re-enter this territory. Why continue? The answer is always different.

For me — at least these days — it’s satisfying to know that my own difficult experiences might end up being USEFUL to someone else. And I am a great believer in useful reading material. Recently, I read a couple of books by Jeanne Safer. They’re popular psychology books, which emanate from her own formative life experiences and gain intellectual and emotional heft as she brings in psychological theory and weaves in the stories of her clients. I breathed differently, held my body differently after reading those books. It was that way with Of Woman Born by Adrienne Rich, with The Boy in the Moon by Ian Brown. Among others.

Finding what is essential in a story means navigating a seemingly chaotic welter of life experiences. And providing a pathway for others to do the same. I think good memoir writing take time. Way too much time. And requires a particular kind of giving over to the thoughts and opinions of others. It can be tough stepping outside the framework-slash-prison of our preconceptions, but it has to be done. This gets used to justify a lot of bullying on the part of editors as well as a lot of self-bullying on the part of writers. But does a bullying approach really help, in the end, to create a useful narrative?

To me, it seems essential for people writing memoir to create a trusted, trusting community of pre-publication readers. This is what I’d like to establish in the course.

Writing Moves is thankfully a little less complicated. Each session will include a Feldenkrais lesson, an hour or more or protected writing time, and an optional discussion. The Feldenkrais method is all about setting aside familiar habits, and about focusing on the process rather than the goal. How can that NOT be a great way of transitioning to any creative activity, writing included? It’s an ongoing exploration for me and I hope some people will join me on the journey.

If you’re interested and the times don’t work for you please get in touch with me anyway at bodylanguage at sympatico dot ca

Speaking of blessed community, while I spent weeks brooding, my friends Diana Kiesners and Terri Favro were good enough to mention these courses on their blogs. Thank you!

By the way, if you would like a thrilling read pick up a copy of Terri’s book The Proxy Bride, which boasts – among other features – a classic, evil villain.

Memoir thoughts: Christa Wolf

October 2, 2012

Almost everything belongs in here: it has come to that. The suction this work exerts is getting stronger. There no longer is anything you can say, hear, think, do, or not do, that doesn’t somehow touch this web. The mutest summons is recorded, forwarded, turned up, turned down, rerouted onto old tracks that are mysteriously connected, in ways that are unpredictable, out of the range of your influence and, to your regret: indescribable. Of course you have fits of discouragement in the face of the thicket which cannot be disentangled and which devours the very second in which you place the period at the end of the sentence. Reflecting, recollecting, cutting swathes through the jungle with your description (while attempting to report not only what was, but also how it feels) — which require a certain, readily unpsettable balance of seriousness and recklessness. It remains a makeshift solution. A gimmick, which leads to other gimmicks.

The concept is always infinitely more beautiful than the finished product.

Soon a sort of stalemate comes about, composed of equal parts of eagerness and digust, self-confidence and self-doubt, which looks like laziness on the outside and produces excuses as long as the real reasons for the paralysis remain hidden.

From Christa Wolf, A Model Childhood, English translation by Ursule Molinaro and Hedwig Rappolt, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980 p. 93

Could a work this detailed, layered and subtle be published now … here?

Paranormalizing violence

September 11, 2012

I really wanted to like ParaNorman, which promised to be a classic among the all-ages animated films that have come out in recent years. They overlay heartwarming stories for the child in all of us with a web of sophisticated details aimed at the grownups. The film starts well, with its endearing underdog for a hero, and its darkly nuanced setting: a recession-beleaguered town in New England.

Eleven-year-old Norman sees dead people, who seem to be much more genuine than his steadfastly conventional family. These characters, in all their blandness, are clearly crazy, in a way we can’t help but recognize from our own lives. So, too, are Norman’s schoolmates and teachers, who don’t take well to his “talent.”

So far so good: the film tells us that the outsiders and freaks of society are the real sane ones. But it goes on to deliver another – as far as I’m concerned – really offensive message, all the more troublesome for being couched in such an inviting package.

Here – spoiler alert in more ways than one – is the story. Norman’s ability to talk with the dead is shared by his uncle Prenderghast, a pill-popping outcast whom everyone — including Norman — fears. His dying request is is that Norman carry on the tradition which made Prenderghast himself suffer so much. His job will be to keep at bay something called “the witch’s curse” which hangs over the town. This makes sense to Norman, as images of burning buildings and various types of carnage increasingly haunt him.

The witch’s curses started in the 1700s when an eleven-year-old girl, Agatha Prenderghast, was hanged for her own ability to speak to the dead. But the resourceful tyke managed to whip up some supernatural support. All seven of her accusers died terrible deaths and continue to haunt the town as zombies in the present day. It’s up to weird uncle, and now Norman, to read to Agatha`s ghost from a book of fairy tales, send her to sleep for another year and forestall the town’s destruction.

There follow all kind of hijinx involving high speed chases with zombies, the conversion of the town bully, Norman’s vapid cheerleader sister and a car-obsessed jock to the cause, and a series of confrontations between Norman and a mob of vigilantes, Norman and the zombies, and then Norman and the witch herself.

Here’s what Norman finds out: the judges are sorry. They’re nice zombies after all, but can’t rest in peace because Agatha/witch is still pissed. She appears as an enormous head in the sky emanating ribbons of fire which culminate in menacing, all-powerful hands. She can burn things up and generate storms. When Norman confronts her, she becomes a kind of iluminated tree creature, whose innocent and pretty little face lights up with ghostly, white hot rage.

She is — in short — awesome.

But not for long.

Here’s what the audience finds out: it’s not the egregious crime against humanity causing all these problems, but stubborn Agatha`s refusal to kiss and make up. We don’t see the judges being confronted with the consequences of their actions. We don’t see the suffering of Agatha`s familiy, or what Agatha herself went through awaiting and enduring being hanged. The witch-head is pretty damned scary and there are rotting zombie body parts being thrown around, but the reality of the crime is glossed over. All we know is the last moment before she got taken away, Agatha was happy with her mother. Forgetting her childlike innocence – and not being murdered — has made her into a destructive force of nature.

So Norman approaches awesome, fierce Agatha who isn’t – quite understandably as far as I’m concerned – keen to be touched. He confronts her in an accusatory way, and she flares, as if in pain. Gradually her light dwindles, she turns into a nice little girl who does what nice girls are supposed to do, I guess. She disappears.

Here`s what I really, really don`t understand. Why load the action of the movie down with an arch and overly complicated backstory when there’s a better and more vibrant one just waiting to be plucked? Suppose there were something bad going on in the town, still? We all know that never happens any more, and even bullies are really nice underneath, but it’s just a movie. Suppose there was a crime being committed against a little girl in the present day? Suppose Agatha couldn’t rest — not because she was being a bad sport — but because she wanted to protect another endangered child? Suppose Norman were charged with uncovering the problem instead of shutting the victim up?

My suggested plot might scare children. But would it make them feel any safer to believe they could be killed by people in positions of trust, that this would be fully legal, and they’d cause centuries of destruction to themselves and their famlies if they demanded justice?

Maybe we would all — not just feel — but BE safer in a world where people believed injured girls had the power to fight back.