Sandra Shwayder Sanchez continues to prove herself as a powerful voice in the serious, literary scene. Her latest book, Three Novellas, is a darkly compelling work filled with complex characters, vibrant images, and sparklingly insightful prose.
Each novella depicts the lives of various characters and their connections to one another. Sometimes the connections are because of family ties; sometimes because fate ironically brings their lives together. The novellas are about the journeys, either conscious or unconscious, that the characters take, while seemingly they roam aimlessly, lost in a vastness that’s too large for them to figure out.
In “The Last Long Walk of Noah Brown,” we meet Noah, a kind and innocent soul in a world of evil. Though he’s not aware of it, Noah is developmentally disabled, a person who is “too innocent for the guilty world.” (29) Noah is the product of incest, a fact he learns from his mother later in life. He begins his journey in Annapolis in 1965, and we go through his ups and downs (a lot more downs than ups) all the way to New Orleans in 2007.
During his journey he meets many people, some good, others evil. He learns and experiences many things, including the carnal love of a woman. He develops a close, warm relationship with his mother, whom he had always believed to be his sister. Most intriguing of all, Noah has an ambitious dream - to build an ark (he sees this as his destiny, having being named ‘Noah’) and save people and animals from a flood. In New Orleans, he finally lives to see his dream come true.
“The Last Long Walk of Noah Brown” is filled with vivid images, at times touching, at times dark. All throughout, however, there is a quiet atmosphere of sadness, doom, and helplessness. The story has the tone of a fable. Some segments are dream-like and sparkle with beautiful, sensuous writing.
Noah started walking to the water, watching its oily darkness, the soft sound of it lapping up against the sides of the boat. The moon glimmered on the water, a mother watching him, and he stared at it for hours mesmerized and soothed. Eventually he had to leave, go back home, he couldn’t stay here forever, watching the moon’s reflection on the water…unless… he did nothing that first night by the water. He returned every night and stared at the moon until it had grown from a silver crescent to a large full round moon and it was simply too lovely to leave so he looked for a way into the water, and finally jumped, shocked by the coldness of it, the breath knocked out of him and he let himself sink, stopped breathing even before he was completely under and passed out. (34-35)Sanchez accomplishes a marvelous rhythm and cadence by combining short sentences with very long, run-on sentences. At times her paragraphs are made up of only one long sentence, a la Garcia Marquez. Although this can be annoying with some writers, Sanchez seems to have a talent for it.
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