Spinning Wool

Spinning Wool in the Mouth of the Monster. I considered the title, stark on the white page, with a baleful eye. Why had I burdened my novel with such a cumbersome name?

Oysters, I decided, it all came down to oysters. When a grain of sand invades an oyster’s protective shell to grate its sharp corners into the soft flesh of the oyster itself, the oyster does what it can. Turning the ragged invader over and over, it coats it with layer after layer of mother of pearl, the same smooth excretion that protects it from the roughness of its own outer shell, until the raw grain becomes a smooth, lustrous pearl which its tender flesh can tolerate.

The question that had invaded my brain through news photos of Albanian refugees; the question that my brain, soft and defenseless as an oyster inside its skull, had kept turning over and over, coating it with layers of  art and craft until it had transformed it into a book which was less painful than the ragged edges, was . . . How do you live, how do you conduct yourself, how do you carry on your daily life, once you know, once you have seen, once you have looked into the face of and believe, the capacity of human beings to unleash brutality on other human beings?

The answer that rose to me as I worked my way into the book, the answer I grew to think the book, and my heroine, would work towards, presented itself to me in the title Spinning Wool in the Mouth of the Monster.

The Monster, of course, is the war, the occasion for the unleashing of brutality; our heroine walks right into its Mouth. Spinning Wool is the ancient Albanian craft of working brushed sheep’s wool into yarn from one hand-held spindle to another, which women traditionally practice at every moment of their day when their hands are otherwise unoccupied. It signified for me that, even in the presence of global strife, you can, you must, still inhabit the actions of your daily life; you can, you must, still invest them, from humble tasks to moral decisions, with the meaning of your attention.

As is the way of a book once you, the author, have surrendered myself to it, my heroine took me beyond my preconceptions, to the question of how she will face elements of her own culture which perpetuate patterns of brutality. As she painfully discovers, this is not always as easy as standing against Others who are oppressing Your People.

Spinning Wool in the Mouth of the Monster is a working title. It will probably change, but I thought you’d like to know what went into it.

Please let me know what you think in the comments box below.