Staff Pick: I Don’t Think of You (Until I Do)

Rebekah recommends I Don’t Think of You (Until I Do) by Tatiana Ryckman:

Tatiana Ryckman’s voice radiates from the pages of her 2017 book I Don’t Think of You (Until I Do). Her musings on the emotional turbulence of a long-distance relationship are authentic, honest, and raw. For those who have gone through a long-distance relationship, this book is a heartfelt commemoration of that experience, a comforting blanket of solidarity. And for those who haven’t, the narrator’s emotions are so deep, so human, so universal, and so elegantly expressed that they will captivate from the start. Unafraid to give voice to the smallest, to the pettiest, to seemingly insignificant and foolish feelings, Ryckman absolutely nails the exploration of the human condition in all of its facets––its inconsistencies, its weirdness, and its beauty.

For the entirety of the novella, Ryckman never specifies the genders of the lover and the loved. By leaving her characters pronoun-less, Ryckman erases any potentially distracting gender markers, establishing a closeness and inclusiveness that blurs the boundary between book and reader. Suddenly, a story and an experience that seemed to belong to Ryckman’s narrator becomes the reader’s as well. The feelings emanate from the text, uninhibited by specifications and labels. The genderless narrator could be anyone; the emotions are everybody’s.

It is rare to find a book that approaches emotionality with such a frankness and willingness to delve into the nitty-gritty. Ryckman rejects the embarrassment that many authors feel when dealing with private emotions and the visceral ways in which they physically manifest. Grappling with the emotional roller coaster of believing that a distance, no matter how large, could never defeat love while simultaneously being forced to face the insurmountable loneliness of day-to-day life causes the narrator to engage in behaviors that might seem strange. But human beings do odd things when confronted with harsh realities. Things like distractedly watching porn to reconstruct a missing sense of intimacy, fabricating an imagined imposter who steals the lover’s affection away, or mapping associations with the lover onto everyday objects, like hairbrushes, become coping mechanisms. In all of their abnormality, the narrator’s actions never seem contrived, and this is where Ryckman’s talent really shines.

Ryckman returns time and again to religious terminology to accentuate the depth of the narrator’s infatuation. The narrator essentially worships at the altar of their love, trying to keep it alive and to imbue it with some sense of tangibility as its lack of physical immediacy constantly threatens its existence. In an early moment of reflection, the narrator states, “I prayed at the foot of my memories,” memories so firmly rooted in the past yet colored by a yearning for an imagined ideal future. Insecurity, jealousy, and a perpetual fear of the end become pleasurable. They become ways to keep the flame of something so distant burning. In order to preserve their desire, the narrator elevates the beloved to the level of a god while self-transforming into a martyr.

Ryckman’s musings do not follow a traditional story arc in the conventional sense of the word, but it’s still possible to trace a progressive development in the narrator’s self-perception as they navigate the ever-increasing muddiness of their relationship. At the beginning, the relationship essentially consumes the narrator: “I hadn’t thought of you as The Other, only as The. As Me. So much so that I could not delineate between my image of you and the parts of you that had inserted themselves into my image of myself.” The alternative version of their beloved, desperately created to fill the void caused by their physical absence, swallows the narrator’s individuality. However, progressively over the course of the text, Ryckman subtly shifts the way in which the narrator talks about their lover. Barely perceptible at first, it becomes apparent that the narrator, with the healing passage of time, is slowly beginning to reclaim their identity, with all the pitfalls and relapses mandated by the process of letting their partner go. In one of the most empowering lines of the book, the narrator says, “I remembered that just because you weren’t there, didn’t mean I was alone” (77). More than just a testimony to the difficulties of long-distance relationships, Ryckman’s novella details the sometimes painful and sloppy yet inspiring journey of self-discovery.

Eventful Evenings at Malvern Books

It’s been a delightfully hectic few days here at Malvern, and we’ve been thoroughly spoiled vis-à-vis awesome events. First up: on Saturday night we hosted a reading with writers Tatiana Ryckman and E. Kristin Anderson (below, left and right).

Tatiana and Kristin

Tatiana’s brilliant collection of tiny fictions, Twenty-Something, is one of Malvern Books’ bestsellers, so we were obviously keen to hear her read. She entertained us with a food-themed performance (to show her mom that she can write about something other than sex) and made us blush by praising our “phenomenally curated” shelves (thanks, Tatiana!). And Kristin very kindly brought Found Poetry kits for attendees (thanks, Kristin!) and proved herself to be an exceptionally multi-talented writer, reading both verse (her found poetry collection, A Jab of Deep Urgency, is sourced from Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad) and science fiction.

And last night we hosted a wonderful event with a distinctly Spanish theme: guitarist David Córdoba (below left) treated us to Flamenco music, and editor Valerie Miles (below right) read from and discussed her anthology A Thousand Forests in One Acorn, which features twenty-eight of the greatest Spanish-language writers.

David and Valerie

It was fascinating to learn more about Valerie’s anthology, which she describes as a “best of the best” collection with a twist: we know which stories the critics praise most, but which of their own works do the writers truly admire? Check out the footage below to find out (and visit our YouTube channel for more videos from this event).