A Voice for Independent Authors

“You can kill a book quicker by your silence than by a bad review.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri

REVIEWING TODAY: IN THE STORM BY KAREN METCALF

At its most obvious, In The Storm by Karen Metcalf is a marvelous, imaginative novella combining a sense of metaphysical fantasy with a realistic portrayal of childhood abuse. In this guise, the book succeeds impressively as a thought-provoking and engaging mini tour-de-force. The young protagonist narrator – Carly – weaves a relentlessly emotive tapestry about her finding sanctuary from her daily hell, escaping an encapsulated reality of overpowering anxiety by “clicking” into a surreal parallel world apparently of her own making. There she meets a possible guardian angel in the figure of a boy who both educates her as to the reality of this new world and its portent for the young brother she leaves behind, as well as taking steps to ensure that she at least will survive the debilitating consequences of her dreadfully de-humanizing abuse at home.

The reason Karen Metcalf makes this small book, In The Storm, so much more intriguing than some fantastical adventure, however, is due to the exquisite writing skills she employs, and the parallel psychological depths revealed by them. Every moment in this breathtaking story of a symbolic, or archetypically constructed world (per the best analyses of Carl Jung) is filled with deep compassion and understanding of the nature of life and meaning and the scars of ritual abuse. This could easily be the other world that any such sufferer must seek; one created simply by the overpowering need to just survive. Metcalf’s writing is bold, concise, and powerful. She does not flinch from implicating life itself as perhaps a non-compassionate force. Her final, unexpected twister of an ending demonstrates her fearlessness at resisting the temptation to tie things up all nice and tidy. A remarkable little book in any guise.