Hello friend! Today I bring you the review for a short stories collection called The Lost Archive. Written by Lynn C. Miller, these stories explore themes of self-discovery, growth, love, grief, comfort and much more. Take a look below at what this book is about:
The Lost Archive
By Lynn Miller | Goodreads
The characters—young and old, queer and straight, contemporary and historical—who inhabit Lynn C. Miller’s stories often find themselves in defining moments and crisis situations. As they search through the archives of memory, truth, and experience, they seek to understand not only the past and present but themselves.
Stretching the definition of “archive,” Miller builds interconnected webs that surprise, much like the seemingly random papers collected in a box of materials. Fraught relationships, mistaken identities, mysterious disappearances, and the search for love play out in these stories. Friendships are celebrated, ex-husbands cross the line, and Gertrude Stein attempts to write her memoir.
An unusual collection that proves greater than the sum of its parts, The Lost Archive will haunt readers with the intensity of its vision.
My thoughts on The Lost Archive
I love the idea of an archive in relation to our lives and the human experience. The Lost Archive is a collection of stories where the protagonists are at pivotal moments in their lives. Sometimes, they are discovering how to live after a loved one has passed away, other times, they find themselves at the defining moment where their choices will change the course of their lives drastically. Lynn’s writing is beautiful and the moments that she shares with the readers explore how simple things in life can mean so much. I found the writing to be evocative, visual and so many times, I was transported into the worlds of the stories. Some stories are timeless, others are set in specific time periods.
I had a few favorites amongst the sixteen tales in The Lost Archive. The first story, Archival Footage was a wonderful introduction to the concept of archives. They are often seen in the context of historical records and research. As the main character discovers, our memories are archives too and because we can have different interpretations and meaning around events we may have shared with some people, every archive is unique.
“An archive was a repository of materials that opened a window into a life. But then one day it occurred to her how archives were in the end just a convenient way of ordering things. In fact, memory itself was an archive. Who you were depended upon what – and how – you remembered. Each day, material got added. Other details dropped away from lack of use.”
Words Shimmer, a story about the American novelist Gertrude Stein was an excellent look into her life and growth. It’s about being seen by someone so completely that fame no longer matters.
“Nothing exists without an audience.”
I particularly enjoyed the stories that were written in second person. Pale Blue was about a young girl whose father receives letters from who she imagines to be another girl like her. It’s about the ways in which we glimpse the lives of other people without them confirming or denying what we think. Sometimes, we just don’t get the opportunity to ask and our imagination ends up becoming a huge part of our personal archive.
Standing in the Light exposes insecurities that one has as they get older. It is about learning to coexist with other people and generations.
“The light is big enough and bright enough for all of us.”
The last story, The Last Usher, had great insight on families and how houses can represent dreams of the life we hope for.
I love journaling and recording the mundane in my journals is an important part of archiving. While reading The Lost Archive, I had the chance to visit a family reunion on my mom-in-law’s side. This broadened my understanding of archives and supported the stories in the book. The role that we play in remembering those who are gone, the archival properties of photographs and family trees, the power of creating new memories and the ways in which an encounter with a stranger or a particular place can be defining beyond our imagination.
In their own right, each story is unique and offers something to think about. Together, the connections are quite loose and it is upto the reader to derive deeper interactions. I liked this collection of stories and I am glad to have read it.
About the Author: Lynn C. Miller
Lynn C. Miller is the author of four novels. Her third novel, The Day After Death, was named a 2017 Lambda Literary Award finalist. She has performed and directed the work of women writers including Gertrude Stein, Edith Wharton, Victoria Woodhull, and Katherine Anne Porter and sometimes weaves their histories into her writing. Miller taught performance studies and writing at the University of Southern California, The Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Texas at Austin where she was Professor of Theater and Dance until 2007. She is co-publisher of Bosque Press, co-host of the podcast The Unruly Muse,and lives in Albuquerque. For more information go to www.lynncmiller.com.
Many thanks to Random Things Tours for giving me a chance to highlight this book on my blog in exchange for an honest review.
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