One can't help but think that Laura van den Berg loved myths as a child. Her debut collection, What the World Will Look Like When the Water Leaves Us, is full of characters culled from folklore: Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, the Mokele-mbembe, the mishegenabeg (or "great snake"). And there is a reason for that: van den Berg, when discussing her debut collection with author Michael Kimball in his Faster Times column, said that "to a large degree, I think my characters believe in things like the Loch Ness and Mokele-mbembe because they are trying to form a narrative that will make their own lives comprehensible; they want their lives to be about something."
Even if her characters are locked in an elusive search for meaning, van den Berg is not. World is full of sophisticated writing, mature beyond its years. The collection, full of explorers and academics and obsessives, feels so complete, so quietly self-assured, so powerful in its quietness. Sure, there is weirdness at every turn, but van den Berg weaves her stories with the help of old-fashioned storytelling, multilayered stories full of grays and browns and greens that amalgamate into rich gemstones.
In the first story, "Where We Must Be," Jean, whose big Hollywood aspirations culminate in a job outside LA as Bigfoot chasing around paying customers, begins a relationship with her neighbor, Jimmy, who has a terminal illness. Both are trapped in the moment of their lives, whether by their mortality or their limitations, but there is an acceptance of their circumstances. As Jean explains, "All I know is that I'm in what I'm in and I don't want to leave it, not yet." For some of van den Berg's protagonists, the stagnation is of their own making, like in Diane, the protagonist of "High Up in the Air," who has an affair with one of her undergrad students while her husband searches for an a mythical snake, a mishegenabeg, in Lake Michigan.
Others are trapped, like Celia, teenaged narrator of the title story, who is dragged out of school in New York to Madagascar by her mother, June, a leading expert on primate habits, to study the habitat of the Indri lemurs. Like all of van den Berg's characters, it is not the lemurs June is seeking but something far more complicated and unattainable. Of all van den Berg's characters, however, Celia comes the closest to emancipation. Via a friendship with her mother's younger research partner and lover, Daud, Celia approaches an old love, competitive swimming, through a new lens: the prospect of open-water, distance competitions. The reader leaves Celia as she takes that first step out of her mother's shadow and into the unknown.
Although we are elated at first, we never really sure whether Celia will survive or whether she will become another of van den Berg's lost souls, adrift in the wide expanse of sea. Throughout, water is double-edged sword; it signifies compulsion and misdirection but also great potential reward. The other end of the spectrum is desert, so skillfully plotted by van den Berg in the postcard of desert June never sends to a colleague, one in which she was written "what the world will look like when the water leaves us."
But even the biggest schemers know that dreams often are a tough road to hoe. Perhaps June says it best, after Celia informs her mother of her plans to return home to New York and begin her training: "Strangeness is everywhere and everything makes you tired in the end."
In addition to its carefully textured narratives, World is a meticulously researched. From the forests of Madagascar to the fogs of Inverness to the heat of the Congo, van den Berg's locales are lush and pulsating, travelogues in their own right. Despite their emotional perils, they're a call to adventure one would be foolish not to heed.—Jen Michalski