The Shadow Catcher by Marianne Wiggins
Yet another book from 2007 that I discovered through the Morning News Tournament of Books was Marianne Wiggins’s Shadow Catcher. It won its first and second matches, but lost in the semis to the juggernaut Oscar Wao.
The Shadow Catcher is a postmodern novel, intermixing photography, biography, autobiography, fact and fiction.
How the average person dreams is how the average novelist puts a page together. Random bits of seen material float in, dismembered parts of memories, skeins of information knit and shred in contrast to their logic.
The narrator is a woman named Marianne Wiggins, who meets with movie studio execs to discuss a project on Edward S. Curtis, who famously photographed Native Americans in the early 20th century. The character of Wiggins wrote a novel on Curtis, and their stories become strangely intertwined when Wiggins drives out to Vegas to see a man identified as her father, who committed suicide decades ago. At a few points I felt it was over my head. I didn’t doubt the skill of the author, but rather my skill as a reader. Uneasy at times, but also fascinating, towards the end I raced to finish it and find out what happened.
April 8th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Have you read Wiggins’ John Dollar? It’s an Atwood-esque take on Lord of the Flies, and it’s very good. The hardcover release (1989) was, unfortunately, overshadowed by the fatwah imposed upon Salman Rushdie and The Satanic Verses (Atwood, I’m sure you know, was married to Rushie at the time). At the time, John Dollar was pitched by its publisher as the more impressive literary novel.
April 8th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
I DIDN’T KNOW THAT! I guess the whole Padma Lakshmi thing just obliterated that two of the most famous writers ever were married. Wow. I haven’t read John Dollar, but your description and The Shadow Catcher make it sound worthwhile.
Did you know that Emma Thompson married the guy who played Willoughby in Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility?