Defenestrate

LoveReading Says

Infused with Prague’s spectral atmosphere and a powerfully haunting evocation of mental illness (and finding a way through it), Renee Branum’s Defenestrate feels at once utterly unique and entirely authentic. At its heart is an exploration of how we tell ourselves stories to cope with trauma, depression, repression, feeling disengaged with the world, and how we might find a place in the world after many falls. Written in short, shard-like episodes, this bold, enigmatic novel speaks to the soul in unexpected ways.

Twins Marta and Nick have been haunted by the tragic tale of their great-great-grandfather Jiri for their entire lives. The story goes that he was pushed to his death in his native Prague, whereupon his family left the city to make a new life in the American Midwest. In the throes of a Buster Keaton obsession since childhood, the twins spend time in Prague as adults, two lost souls, evasive of reality, with their religious mother struggling to accept that Nick is gay. In this city that exudes a “mythic glow”, Marta comes to realise that they’re not living, that Nick is sinking: “I saw the ways the city had took shape in Nick, watching the liquor reach his veins, and spread along them like a highlighter over the correct route on a road map.” When he’s seriously injured after falling from a window, Marta wonders whether the fall was intentional. She’s stirred to try to ground herself, to stop her family from falling apart for good. Realising that faith has many forms, that you can have faith “in your own life, in the unseen shapes the world sometimes takes, in the stories you tell yourself to gain back trust”, she comes to a kind of peace: “If we still live, we live more carefully, hopefully.”

Joanne Owen

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