The Mythmakers by Keziah Weir
“We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams; —
. . .
You shall teach us your song’s new numbers,
And things that we dreamed not before:
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
And a singer who sings no more.”
The Mythmakers by Keziah Weir is a wonderfully immersive story — the type where the world around me goes gray and unfocused while I'm reading scenes that are vivid and every bit as fixed as the reality I'm steadfastly ignoring.
Sal Cannon, unwittingly on the precipice of rock bottom, starts the novel having just read an excerpt from an unpublished book by Martin Keller, an author she happened to have met some six years prior at a literary gathering of sorts. The magazine-published fictionalized story is about their meeting and a seemingly lasting connection that causes the narrator to contemplate this young woman and the possibility of a life not lived, a future left untouched. A quick internet search shows Sal that Martin died only recently, and the excerpt was published posthumously.
Alongside this revelation in her life, Sal is soon grappling with a recently published profile of a playwright she has penned (purr at that alliteration) that has proven to be a near-complete fabrication with Sal having taken the playwright at his word. Or, perhaps she is in part to blame for the way she wanted the narrative to shape itself around the playwright's story and the story she was interested in telling — the clues and hints she chose, on some level, to ignore.
Amidst the tangled web of Sal's life, there's her relationship with Hugh, which either is teetering on the edge of collapse or languishing in a state of inertia. With neither of them invested in salvaging it, Sal's focus shifts to contacting Moira, Martin's widow. She's determined to interview Moira, delve into Martin's life, and catch a glimpse of his unpublished manuscript, all in an attempt to uncover her own place within his story.
Sal becomes a vessel for others' memories, even down to memories she herself should own some part of. Occasionally, over the course of the novel, suffering from frequent lapses in memory during nights of heavy drinking, Sal — who is beginning to acknowledge her drinking problem — takes a secret delight in hearing about her own behavior as told through others' eyes.
Revolving around relationships, connections, and the dynamics between muse and artist, perception and reality, the true essence of The Mythmakers lies in exploring memory. The intriguing elements of this novel, skillfully conveyed by Weir through Sal, are inherently unanswerable. Reminding me of Flaubert's philosophy that "There is no truth. There is only perception," Weir delves into the notion that memory holds no absolute truth, but rather subjective interpretations and a collection of overlapping perceptions.
What I really liked about this one is that it raises the oft-asked questions about "Who owns a story? And who allowed to tell it?" without actually saying it and chewing it down into unresolvable cud. Instead, it's like the essence of those questions is woven into the very fabric of the story, expressed through its captivating visuals and the raw power of both its narrative and beautifully complex characters.
Weir has a wonderful grasp on her writing style and the way she chooses to craft her words, the scenes, and develop her characters. She lobs beautifully executed adjectives at you like a perfectly timed tennis ball. Weir takes you on a journey through different lenses of the storytellers — Sal, whose hand is all over every aspect of this story, Moira, Martin, Lillian (Martin's first wife), and eventually Caroline (Martin and Moira's daughter) and Wesley (an old friend of Martin's). At the heart of the novel, beginning with the piece about the playwright, lies the concept of truth, making it an intriguing choice to present the other perspectives through Sal's lens. Also, it's worth noting that many books that use this structure of an interviewer dealing with their own life while uncovering the lives of others often results in an imbalance in the narrative, but Weir masterfully handles both sides and there never feels like a true division between the sections. Magically it all feels like part of a larger whole — a bigger story.
The Mythmakers is a thought-provoking journey that invites you to ponder the complexities of storytelling and the endless possibilities of interpretation.
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This affected neither my opinion of the book nor the content of my review.
