My Henry James Tour

We were alone in the hostel dorm room when the Egyptian boy put his hand down my pants.  “No,” I said. And he slapped me.  The fury I unleashed was fucking seismic.  He stepped backwards with his hands raised, palms up.  Appomattox.  Oh, look, a boundary.  I was 22.  In Scotland.  I’d spent the morning in a church graveyard feeling spiritual.  Three weeks later, in Venice, I deliberately got lost.  Wending my way deeper into the alleys, dreaming of the girl and her vivisections, and I found myself at a dead end with two large men and a commercial truck.  As I spun a retreat, I saw a white sheet spread into the afternoon from a window.  And the black ringlets of a woman in the tenement above me.  The white sheet, the black hair, some Italian lullaby.  It felt like grace.  I was lifted.

I’d been back home for a week when I ended up with the survivalist.  He’d taught me to kill and eat red ants as though they were lemon drops.  He’d taken me across a beaver dam and nearly got me eviscerated. We’d spent months together not fucking.  And now, from the other side of the room, he stands and says, “I’m sexually attracted to you.  How do you feel about fucking me?”

After I stop laughing, I say, “Subtle.”

“Forthright works for me.”

Yes.  For me also, and I adopted it, his methodology, and it has served me well too.  The survivalist was the first boy who always asked first, who heard No as No and never pushed. The one who taught me power could be exchanged. Handed back and forth like a baton.  Neither of us controlling the other.  Our positions interchangeable.

I’d forget these lessons.  Or lapse into dangerous habits. Or test my limitations.  I’d court injury because it was years before I understood it was the vulnerability I craved and not the pain.  And I have worried about my power, the way I have worried about my intelligence.  I have worried that I’ll victimize others.

Conscious.  Keep conscious.

6 thoughts on “My Henry James Tour”

  1. Tess, that’s a really interesting point. And I think you may be right. That worry, and fear, and doubt are ways of keeping yourself from the kind of awareness growth requires. They’re like busy work instead of progress.

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Jill Malone

Jill Malone grew up in a military family, went to German kindergarten, and lived across from a bakery that made gummi bears the size of mice. She has lived on the East Coast and in Hawaii, and for the last seventeen years in Spokane with her son, two dogs, a hedgehog, and a lot of outdoor gear. She looks for any excuse to play guitar. Jill is married to a performance artist and addiction counselor who makes the best risotto on the planet.

Giraffe People is her third novel. Her first novel, Red Audrey and the Roping, was a Lambda finalist and won the third annual Bywater Prize for Fiction. A Field Guide to Deception, her second novel, was a finalist for the Ferro-Grumley, and won the Lambda Literary Award and the Great Northwest Book Festival.

Giraffe People

Giraffe People

Between God and the army, fifteen-year-old Cole Peters has more than enough to rebel against. But this Chaplain’s daughter isn’t resorting to drugs or craziness. Truth to tell, she’s content with her soccer team and her band and her white bread boyfriend.

And then, of course, there’s Meghan.

Meghan is eighteen years old and preparing for entry into West Point. For this she has sponsors: Cole’s parents. They’re delighted their daughter is finally looking up to someone. Someone who can tutor her and be a friend.

But one night that relationship changes and Cole’s world flips.

Giraffe People is a potent reminder of the rites of passage and passion that we all endure on our road to growing up and growing strong. Award-winning author Jill Malone tells a story of coming out and coming of age, giving us a take that is both subtle and fresh.

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A Field Guide to Deception

A Field Guide to Deception

In Jill Malone’s second novel, A Field Guide to Deception, nothing is as simple as it appears: community, notions of motherhood, the nature of goodness, nor even compelling love. Revelations are punctured and then revisited with deeper insight, alliances shift, and heroes turn anti-hero—and vice versa.

With her aunt’s death Claire Bernard loses her best companion, her livelihood, and her son’s co-parent. Malone’s smart, intriguing writing beguiles the reader into this taut, compelling story of a makeshift family and the reawakening of a past they’d hoped to outrun. Claire’s journey is the unifying tension in this book of layered and shifting alliances.

A Field Guide to Deception is a serious novel filled with snappy dialogue, quick-moving and funny incidents, compelling characterizations, mysterious plot twists, and an unexpected climax. It is a rich, complex tale for literary readers.

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Red Audrey and the Roping

Red Audrey and the Roping

Occasionally a debut novel comes along that rocks its readers back on their heels. Red Audrey and the Roping is one of that rare and remarkable breed. With storytelling as accomplished as successful literary novelists like Margaret Atwood and Sarah Waters, Jill Malone takes us on a journey through the heart of Latin professor Jane Elliot.

Set against the dramatic landscapes and seascapes of Hawaii, this is the deeply moving story of a young woman traumatized by her mother’s death. Scarred by guilt, she struggles to find the nerve to let love into her life again. Afraid to love herself or anyone else, Jane falls in love with risk, pitting herself against the world with dogged, destructive courage. But finally she reaches a point where there is only one danger left worth facing. The sole remaining question for Jane is whether she is willing to accept her history, embrace her damage, and take a chance on love.

As well as a gripping and emotional story, Red Audrey and the Roping is a remarkable literary achievement. The breathtaking prose evokes setting, characters, and relationships with equal grace. The dialogue sparks and sparkles. Splintered fragments of narrative come together to form a seamless suspenseful story that flows effortlessly to its dramatic conclusion.

Winner of the Bywater Prize for Fiction, Red Audrey and the Roping is one of the most memorable first novels you will ever read.

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