Write On Eh

I was more than touched; I was affected by the narrative of the little girl in Meg Tilly’s novel, Singing Songs. Originally released in 1994, it has recently been re-released. I am almost embarrassed it took me this long to find it.

Simplistically told, this a story of Anna’s life with her, seemingly, ever changing siblings. It is a story of children being raised by adults somewhat detached from reality. Again, it is reminiscent of my own childhood, and as such I was touched by the familiarity of it.

Anna is a head strong little girl who does the best with what she has, which isn’t much. It is difficult to read the passages where Anna is unwittingly lured into sexual acts by some of the adults that pass through her life, but I think it is wholly important that we do read these things.

The way in which Tilly has Anna describe the sexual abuse is so innocently lacking of innocence. Anna lives in an environment where adults use children for the purposes of burden, martyrdom, punching bags, and the occasional dress up doll or sex toy. And while that is tragic, the part that is really effective is the off handed way in which she describes all of the above; almost as if it were nothing. Which for a child who has known nothing else, it is nothing. That is what is most haunting about this book.

She touches, with a dirty finger, that which society chooses to overlook time and time again. She touches that part of sexual abuse and abandonment that nobody really wants to see, because it is just too damn awful.

I applaud Tilly for writing it into words, and also for writing it in a way that isn’t pornographic, but perhaps, only not pornographic if it is not read by a pedophile. I guess that is a chance you have to take. It is definitely raw, and it is definitely innocent.

Tilly’s voice for Anna is so strongly written that you read as if talking to a cheeky young girl who is telling you a story in broken little pieces. The chapters seem to have no real flow and are broken into distinct memories more than a chronological order, and yet the book flows well over a period of time in Anna’s life; the time of Richard, the step father.

Essentially, this story covers the time period just as Richard, “new daddy”, comes in Anna’s life, and ends just after he has left. Richard, for better or worse, is just another product of Anna’s mother’s misguided life.

I don’t have much of an opinion on Anna’s mother. She is tragic and awful. Yet, she is perfect representation of what is happening behind way too many closed doors. Her character speaks to me as a poster child for lost women. Women too weakened by their own lives to fight properly for their children, too weakened to know or want better.

It is not, however, that Tilly paints men as the monster. She writes of the collision of lost souls raising children; more importantly though, it is the tale of Tilly, who survives that collision and lives to tell the story…as Anna.



You can find a very open and lovely Meg Tilly here.