Book Review

The Second Elizabeth
by Karen Lillis
Six Gallery Press, 2009
http://www.sixgallerypress.com.
ISBN: 978-0-9782962-1-6

Karen Lillis' The Second Elizabeth is a song of self. It's also a song of unself. In this short but lovely book of identity, Lillis breaks down language and her (fictionlized) self, piece by piece, and reassembles them in a poignant personal and literary rebirth.

This de/reconstruction takes place in the course of two months, July and August, or the first and second halves of the book. We discover early on that Lillis is living in Virginia with her brother, trying to start her life over, and has met a new friend, Beth, who comes to work with her at the town deli.

Elizabeth is my middle name. It is July and I am just being born for the second time. It is July and I am living in Charlottesville, with my brother Michael. It is July and Beth is living in the apartment building next door. Beth's name is not Elizabeth, but when I met her I saw her name inside my middle name.

Lillis uses a mixture of repetition and deconstruction to set the conditions of language in her search for new life. She uses a limited vocabularly, with set cadence, and embarks on a systematic, scientific method of self discovery. Although there is a bit of a plot (Beth and Lillis work at the deli, write on trains, hang out and make art, dance), the bulk of the book is set in Lillis' inner prism, a kaleidoscope of memory and mental probing.

A long time ago, before I had four names, they called me Tree. I told them I wanted to be a tree when I grew up, and they called me Tree for awhile, my parents and Aunt Ginny and Mimi and Pop, until I forgot I wanted to be a tree, until they forgot that they called me Tree.

Throughout, Lillis is consumed with naming, but it is more than naming. One is named, and language is given. But one needn't be saddled with them. Lillis tries on each word, each memory, like a pair of shoes, finding ones that fit, discarding all others. Is Lillis "Elizabeth," or she is someone else, and how does she find the language to speak the words inside of her?

My story wrote itself on me and it forced tears out of my middle, my story that I didn't write made mixed up letters pour down my cheeks, my story that I didn't want wanted me to have a new language called Elizabeth because the old language couldn't speak anymore, my old language couldn't speak the new story....

The Second Elizabeth is a lyrical, dreamy read that reminds you of those spaces between waking and sleep, the places where the soul lives, where the light sometimes shines, albeit briefly. It is a joy to discover that soullight glowing faintly, warmly on Lillis' prose.—Jen Michalski