Alicia Elliott publishing first novel — get the first look at And Then She Fell now
And Then She Fell will be available on Sept. 26, 2023
Alicia Elliott is a Mohawk writer living in Brantford, Ont. Her writing has been published most recently in Room, Grain and The New Quarterly. She is the author of the nonfiction book A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, a columnist for CBC Arts and CBC Books named her a writer to watch in 2019. She was chosen by Tanya Talaga as the 2018 recipient of the RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award.
And now Elliott is adding novelist to her impressive writing credentials. Her debut novel is called And Then She Fell and it is coming out this fall. And Then She Fell follows a young woman named Alice who is struggling to navigate the early days of motherhood and live up to the unrealistic expectations of those around her.
Elliott told CBC Books about how her own journey as a young mother inspired the short story that became her upcoming novel.
"This novel started as a short story — the first one I wrote during my undergraduate creative writing degree, in fact. At the time, I was an 18-year-old mother of a newborn, which made me feel completely isolated from the carefree, childless students I shared classrooms with," Elliott said via email.
"Motherhood felt totally different from what society made me think it would feel: it was always thankless, it was difficult and unintuitive, and people were always ready to judge you for whatever choices you made as a mother, never once considering your reasons for making those decisions. I wanted to explore that dissonance between the ideal of motherhood and the reality of motherhood through fiction."
I wanted to explore that dissonance between the ideal of motherhood and the reality of motherhood through fiction.- Alicia Elliott
The cover was commissioned from artist Jay Soule, who creates are under the name Chippewar. Soule is from the Chippewas of the Thames First Nation in southwestern Ontario.
Editor Kiara Kent spoke about how the cover reflects the themes of the book.
"With this cover, and with the brilliant, subversive eye of Jay Soule, we wanted an unforgettable image to seize the reader and capture the horror elements of the book, the tension of Alice moving off the rez and into a threatening world from which she feels inexorably cast out, the weight of intergenerational trauma and racism that is alive and allowed to thrive today, the disorderliness and strength of motherhood, and the wild turn the book takes into the surreal," she said in an email.
And Then She Fell will be available on Sept. 26, 2023. You can read an excerpt below.
I love Steve more than I knew it was even possible to love another person. I can tell by the way I always turn toward him wherever he's in a room — still — as if he's the sun and I'm a sunflower starving for his light.
But I can't help but notice: he hasn't suffered at all since we've gotten married. If anything, he's excelled. Now that he's married with a baby, he can better relate to the older, tenured faculty in his anthropology department.
He can drag me along to dinner parties where I feel like an exhibit on display and dress up our daughter in cute baby drag so that strange white women are more enticed to scoop her out of her stroller or car seat without my permission.
Every action we take is purposeful and imbued with meaning for him, because it makes him more "relatable," more "feminist." And through it all, he has the luxury of forgetting about not only the pain and violence of the actual act of childbirth, but also the ongoing trauma it's stamped on my body.
Me, though? I'm consumed by this inescapable feeling of hopelessness.
Me, though? I'm consumed by this inescapable feeling of hopelessness. Every day is the same. Same exhaustion. Same humiliation. Same loneliness. I look out at the young women who walk past the house and fantasize about where they're going, who they're gonna hang out with, what drugs they're gonna do when they get there, who they're gonna mess with when they start to come down and everything else has lost its glitter. Fantasizing is all I can do. I'm stuck here.
- Alicia Elliott: Does art about abuse need to make us comfortable?
Steve doesn't notice. He wouldn't, though. He's too blinded by the picture of us he's fixed in his mind. That's partially my fault — Steve's not knowing. I've perfected the art of looking like I'm okay — more than okay, even, great — since back when I was working at the racetrack as a kid. You could never let men at the track see you flinch, because then they'd know the way in. They'd know how to make you uncomfortable. How to make you hurt.
Better to keep that hidden. Better to keep yourself hidden. Still, that word comes back again, nagging at me. Shonkwaia'tison. Mohawk feels like a weapon coming from Steve's lips — not because he's necessarily wielding it that way, but because history is.
Here was the language I had lost, the language my parents and aunts and half my grandparents had lost, which was so different from the English that'd been forced on us that I secretly worried my tongue would never be able to make those sounds. And here was Steve, rattling it off easily, as if it weren't an endangered language, my endangered language; as if those words, which held my culture, were simply... words to him.
The thing is, though, they were. And why wouldn't they be? He didn't need to question his identity and worth every time he said a Mohawk word. His voice didn't shake when he spoke, scared any mispronunciation would signal to everyone he didn't really belong. That he never did, and never would. That wasn't his legacy. It was mine.
When you both die, Steve will have to translate your ancestors' words to you. As soon as the words enter my head, I see my ancestors staring at me, disappointed, their foreheads crinkled like tissue paper, as they slowly push out syllables for Steve to catch and pass to me. I shake my head slightly to chase the words — the vision — out. No. Not now. I'm the one in control.
"Did you learn that word in class?" I manage to say without my voice cracking.
"Learn what?" he asks, distracted. "Shonkwaia'tison?"
I nod, afraid that if I say anything, I'll scream or cry.
"Yeah, mostly." He's grinning like a schoolboy getting praised by his favourite teacher. "I mean, I'd hear your ma say it all the time before, but I wasn't sure of the syllables. Was it okay?"
Hearing him mention Ma feels like a tiny dagger in my gut. I swallow — quietly — then force my voice to mimic excitement. "Yup. Good job, babe!"
"Thanks."
We've been married nine months but it already feels like decades of unsaid words have settled between us.
He nuzzles into my neck and I know I'm being unfair. He's learning Mohawk! It's one of the hardest languages in the world to learn, and he's learning it. He's learning it for me and he's learning it for our daughter. Yes, he's also going to be able to use this to better position his career, but that doesn't negate the good.
He talked to Melita about her experience learning it, and he knows it'll be easier for Dawn to retain Mohawk if it's spoken at home, too. I know he cares, that he would never intentionally make me feel bad for not knowing my language. I know that he would willingly act as translator for my ancestors and me — gladly even.
Just as I know there is a disconcerting plea in his voice, barely perceptible. I'm not sure what it's a plea for, but it immediately strikes me as everything that's wrong with him, with us. We've been married nine months but it already feels like decades of unsaid words have settled between us.
A lattice pattern of silence and secrets to match the sofa set.
Adapted and excerpted from And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliott, published by Doubleday Canada. Copyright © 2023 Alicia Elliott. Reprinted courtesy of Doubleday Canada. All rights reserved.
