In the past few years there have been a spate of powerful novels that barely reach two hundred pages. I've discussed three of them here: Clear, Whalefall, and Audition. After the Parade, Lori Ostlund's first novel, published in 2015, comes from a different era. Though it lacks the minimalism of the three I've mentioned, the larger chunk of life it examines gives the reader the same deeply pleasurable experience. But there is a difference: there is no urgency. The novel enfolds and mesmerizes, but at a more leisurely pace.

The novel opens when Aaron, our point of view character, leaves Walter's house in Albuquerque, New Mexico in a U-Haul that contains all of his belongings. For the past two decades Aaron has lived with Walter, an older friend, lover, and benefactor, but in recent years his resentments have piled high enough for him to realize that it is time to leave. He goes to San Francisco because he has a friend there who can help him get settled. Even so, leaving Walter's orbit is a frightening prospect for a man who tends to get waylaid by fear, despite his imposing height, good looks, razor sharp intellect, and ability to articulate the absurdities of life with what seems to be casual humor, qualities others see in Aaron but he lacks the confidence to see in himself. Ostlund makes it clear that the move requires not just courage but a willingness to examine his past to discover how he had become so dependent on a man he respected, but hadn't, for a long time, enjoyed living with. And so, as the narrative moves forward, away from Walter's house, it also moves, in an organic and seamless manner, backwards into Aaron's child and early adulthood. This forwards/backwards structure never feels arbitrary because I always knew that the goal was for Aaron to arrive at a place of ease and acceptance.

What emerges from this backwards glance is a collection of people who inhabit Aaron's formative years. These secondary characters, each vividly portrayed, parade through Aaron's memory. One of them is Clarence, an important figure in Aaron's childhood. He is a dwarf who lives in a rundown farm that becomes a haven for Aaron and his mother when they need a place to stay. Aaron bonds with Clarence almost immediately in a mentor/mentee relationship that will later resemble his adult relationship with Walter. Clarence's favorite book is a monograph of photographs taken by Diane Arbus, a woman who chronicled the misfits and outcasts of American life in the seventies. Through the novel's Arbus-like characters, Ostlund shows the reader that Aaron is compelled to search for others who are wounded and, in some way, marked, because that is how he regards himself. She makes it clear that it is not the fact that Clarence is a dwarf that attracts Aaron, but rather the two growths that sprout from his nostrils. Clarence refers to them as his tusks and in the excerpt below, after Aaron has admitted that he's afraid to look at Clarence because of these strange protuberances, Clarence invites Aaron to touch them.

Clarence's eyes were closed, but as Aaron placed his index finger against the nearest tusk, Clarence sighed, the air from his nostrils rippling across Aaron's finger. "Does that hurt?" Aaron asked.

"On the contrary," Clarence said, "You have an exceedingly light touch."

Aaron stroked the tusk once, then retracted his hand. "Do they grow?" he asked.

"Indeed they do—and far too fast. I had them removed just a few years ago, but I fear that another operation is imminent."

Aaron continued to lean against Clarence's wheelchair, gazing at the tusks. "I love them," he said (132).

That dramatic and spontaneous statement gripped me. Of course! Aaron feels so manifestly grotesque within himself, he is grateful for outward appearances that are in sympathy with his inner state. The scene has the effect of a photograph and there are others like it populating the novel. Each one has such visual clarity it pins down the various periods of Aaron's life and as they accumulated, I realized this was how Ostlund externalized his interior struggle. Rather than only describing her character's inhibitions and fears, she creates images of the people he sees and remembers, the people who populate his past, like the tusk-sprouting Clarence. It is a technique with clear advantages for any writer.

Ostlund, Lori. After the Parade. 2015: Scribner, New York.

Filed under: Using an image to show what the character is feeling