The Memory of Things

“Two planes have hit, one building is down, and my dad is in there somewhere.”

The novel’s action begins in media res: Kyle moves in a vast, surging crowd across the Brooklyn Bridge just after the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapses as a result of a terrorist attack. Here he recounts the conflict on the novel’s first page, updating the reader in real-time. The conflict is bold and sweeping, affecting thousands near the attack; it is also deeply personal, as the general whereabouts of Kyle’s father is known but his precise location and condition a mystery. This line sets the stage for the duality of the novel’s conflict; it will exist on two levels (communal and personal) throughout.

“He waits, so I try, / nod and breathe past the / scraping pieces in my chest: / (brick, / stone / metal, / glass). / Try to ignore how it aches.”

This early passage from the first-person perspective of the nameless girl establishes her character voice and represents her confusion and pain with its free-verse style, word choice, and connotation. The parentheses indicate images and memories from the scene of the attack; later, Kyle indicates that the girl’s covering of ash and dust is so thick that she must have been very near the South Tower when it was hit or when it collapsed.