In fiction and memoir alike, Lidia Yuknavitch impresses with her audacious subject matters. In Reading the Waves, she sets out to read and interpret her own life as literature, focusing on pivotal scenes and repeated themes. The penetrating memoir-in-essays reckons with trauma and commemorates key relationships.
Yuknavitch (Thrust; Verge: Stories; The Misfit's Manifesto) is fascinated by how memory is stored in the body. She was invited to give a reading in Houston, Tex., but a panic attack stopped her from boarding the plane--her subconscious knew her last trip to Texas was for the funeral of her cousin, a victim of misogynistic violence. She shakes her head at her younger self staying with a lover who punched her, blaming a combination of his toxic masculinity and her failure to value herself. The author identifies as sexually fluid and recounts several obsessions with older women. But her most haunting bond is with her second husband, Devin, who died in a drunken fall in 2015; she only summons the courage to read his autopsy report years later.
Some content will be familiar to readers of Yuknavitch's previous works, especially the references to her mother's limp and alcoholism, her father's abuse, and her baby daughter's death. However, as always, she effectively deploys water-related metaphors and cycles gracefully between topics. There is also experimentation with form, including a third-person segment in her "Ever After" story and a section of aphorisms. This vibrant work of self-revelation and -mythologizing is ideal for fans of Pam Houston and Rebecca Solnit. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck