Review by Elizabeth Brown
Fictions by Ashley Honeysett, the Miami University Press Novella Prize Winner 2023, is the author’s first book. She studied creative writing at Stephens College in Missouri and has lived in the United States, Ireland, and Japan. Before Fictions, she published poetry and prose in various literary journals.
Written in almost a diary-like style, Fictions depicts the principal character’s life as a mother and her life as a writer. Writers will identify with the way she has interwoven these strands throughout. The style and tone work strongly together, juxtaposing the mundane and the dramatic in patchwork pieces of fiction, memoir, reportage, and journal. The author displays the ups and downs of the writing life coupled with the challenges and joys of motherhood and caring for other family responsibilities:
Two days before my due date I was admitted to the hospital with high blood pressure. I sent the story about the guy who’s always surrounded by idiots to five literary journals from my hospital bed and recorded them in the Excel spreadsheet where I track submissions. Later I recorded the five rejections. (21)
Honeysett threads plots, characters, and stories into the novella as the character’s life unfolds. At times the reader catches a glimpse of the intricacies and feedback she receives from a creative writing workshop. “It drives one of my writing group members crazy that I’m calling the thing Fictions. It’s a memoir, he said…you could rework it as a series of essays…the thing is crying out for structure” (63). Or she lets us in on bite-size moments of raising a child and caring for other family members: “Cathal has started to tell stories back to me” (54) and “I called my sister last week and told her I was writing a long, semi-autobiographical thing that talked about her” (83). Life and art connect and force their way into the reader’s heart with this work. The novella is hard to put down.
The author’s voice sounds familiar, as if she lets the reader in on her secrets, like a good friend sharing her diary. The prose is energetic, allowing the reader to ruminate, to wonder, and peer into the creative mind and process. She brings readers so close to her thoughts it is as if they are in her head, writing with her: “Mom cried when I said the thing about the exclamation points. And she stopped writing” (88).
Honeysett’s brilliant writing flows effortlessly across the page, at times like the ebb and flow of a gentle river of words and at others like the flood she uses as a motif in the book, with the rush of emotion and drama of life: “Because my mom’s voice is strong, isn’t it? Your mom talks to you – about her childhood, about the book she’s writing – and that voice is laid down in your head for the rest of your life” (89) and “But I want Cathal to spend time with her. Maybe where she and I have failed to understand each other, they will succeed” (116).
Most of all, Fictions and Honeysett’s literary prowess demonstrate what’s possible when people believe in themselves as writers, as mothers, and as creative souls.
Fictions by Ashley Honeysett
Miami University Press, 2024
9781881163749
Elizabeth Brown is an award-winning children’s book author.She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. She teaches writing and humanities at Saint Augustine College. She lives outside of Chicago with her teenage daughter and three sleepy cats.