This is a strange not-a-novel. A conversation between a psychologist and a shaman, set up as a series of weekly encounters during therapy sessions.
It’s clear and direct conversational prose, examining a whole world of interesting experiences and beliefs. Unfortunately, the psychologist half of the conversation is just a straw man, with no depth, which exists only to spark somewhat self-indulgent monologues from the shaman. It reminds me of those Victorian occult lectures disguised as novels (Zenoni, Ghost Land) except there is no plot. This reads as a group of autobiographical sketches; a record of a life filled with the strange and magical. Each of the sketches is vivid and short, with only loose connections in theme between them.
Beginning with the account of a near-death experience leading to a sense of mystical union with the Universe, and progressing through encounters with a variety of gods, otherworldly guides, land spirits, ghosts, a range of magical experiences.
The shaman self-identifies as both as a wombat spirit living in a human body, also as a goddess living in a human body with the limitations of human bodies. She tells stories of guardian spirits and of family abuse and trauma both in matter of fact and straight-forward prose. Vivid short stories of her magickal experiences and of abusive relationships, mix mundane and metaphysical life experience together.
Her discovery of witchcraft and the BBS systems (pre-internet in the early 1980s, I remember those days) plus the snark and backbiting of the Pagan communities (still around, unfortunately) are honest and blunt stories of the magickal communities and occult subculture.
There are too many stories of otherworldly experiences to detail all of them, but I particularly felt the experience of living much of her grandmother’s life – being the reincarnation of her grandmother, even while meeting her as a child, a living a life that included everything her grandmother hadn’t been able to, and the meditation where she met the Green Man and he gave her an acorn, which was physically present in her hand when she woke up. Her meetings with different gods including the Smith god and the storm gods and her acquaintance with the personification of Death. The vivid ancestral journey through guided meditation to an early hominid ancestors and Venus of Willendorf. And a conversation about thought-forms aka fairies. (Tooth Fairy, Menstruation Fairy, Parking Fairy, House Goblin…).
Perhaps it is that Merrieweather pulls so many different things into this one conversation, and I don’t see a unifying theme aside from this singular voice? But ultimately, I was not engaged, not caught up into the shaman’s world.
That said, I liked her writing voice, perhaps because I know the author and can hear her speaking here. Her descriptions are vivid and detailed, her prose, while conversational is clear and supple.
~review by Samuel Wagar
Author: Nisaba Merriweather
Tellwell Talent 2024
175 pg. paperback £23 / $26 Can / $16 US
