This House is Talking to You

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This issue of Prima Materia, which features OTBKB friend, Nancy Graham, was reviewed very favorably in Chronogram by
Pauline Uchmanowicz. Nancy’s poignant short fiction, "This House is Talking to You,"  is about a woman’s first walk inside a huge Victorian house she is thinking of buying with the ailing owner who, sadly, must let go of the house he loves.

An excerpt from the review: Founded four years ago by Brent Robison to showcase new fiction by Hudson Valley writers, the literary journal Prima Materia‘s
latest volume includes poetry and memoir. Its brief and fleeting 32
selections progress like a slide show, projecting images of family,
home, landscape, and travel onto the pages. A fertile travelogue
emerges overall, though limited space allotted the prose pieces (some
excerpted from larger projects) makes the journey read like closely
spaced exit signs along a toll road. While Robison’s inclusiveness (24
local authors in all) is commendable, one might hope for fewer but more
expansive pieces in future issues. Still, Speeding Through the Night achieves a consistent sensibility, with several selections worth mining for their deftness and lyricism.

A young family goes house hunting in Nancy Graham’s "This House Is
Talking to You,"
a fine-spun story starring an aging seller who is
deeply invested in the hundred-year-old historic landmark with which he
must part. "There were large rooms with wide openings, gilt-edged
mirrors over fireplaces of twin parlors, bookcases framed by deep-set
windows for nestling on the margin between outside and in," one of the
would-be buyers notices.

Houses also appear in Wendy Klein’s arresting
memoir excerpt "Snapshots," composed of brief, interconnected frames
that amplify a quarter-century, beginning in 1963. "In a big white
house with hidden passageways and too many bedrooms, a black maid
serves us scrambled eggs on sunny mornings," Klein writes of childhood,
games of hide-and-seek foreshadowing secrets that over time splinter
and divide the family.