If the elements of this story were egg whites, Maso would have whisked them into stiff, firm peaks.

Although we tend to think of it as such, reading isn’t a singular action. It’s a collection of actions that result in having read something. When we read, we do a lot of things very quickly. We -- to name a few things -- guess, contextualize, interpret, critique, remember. We do a lot, and those who can accomplish these tasks simultaneously and quickly are called "good readers." Those who don’t do these things well can train their minds to do them better. But wherever we fall on the spectrum of readers, we can all agree that AVA by Carole Maso is the perfect book to remind us that some books are meant to be slow, that sometimes we need to stop and think about all those things that we do when we read -- and do them deliberately.

AVA's simple plot is the recounting of Ava Klein’s last day alive. Among memories of friendships, moments of critical theory, short good-byes, and sex, Klein lies in a colorless hospital room, dying. Bouncing back and forth from youthful indiscretions to her present, pragmatic end, the book takes us polyphoniously through Ava’s life, even saving a little time for her hopes for a future in which she won’t be here. Humor sits comfortably next to tragedy, next to snobbery, next to bawdiness, and although it might not be interesting to point out that the plot mixes high, low, and everything in between, because a lot of books mix those elements seamlessly, none that I know mix them so quickly and in so few words. If the elements of this story were egg whites, Maso would have whisked them into stiff, firm peaks.

And those peaks would be sentences. The book is structured as a collection of loosely connected, nonlinear sentences. If there is a narrative arc -- and I choose to revel in the lack of one -- it is subtle. The first sentence is as important as the seventy-sixth, which is as important as the last. The evenly distributed weight of each sentence creates this wonderful gravity toward reading for reading’s sake. If you read AVA and randomly eliminate five pages, you won’t miss anything ‘important’ about the book; you’ll still get the same ending, the same feelings, and you’ll know Ava. But what you will miss is the joy of reading those pages. Those pages matter because they are written, and they are good. They justify themselves.

To me these sentences were good from the start, but around page one hundred, I started questioning myself a little. Am I reading this right? How should I be taking this in? I suppose this is the reader’s equivalent to, "How does my butt look in these jeans?" But Maso is a kind guide, and like William Carlos Williams with regard to his masterpiece, Spring and All, she leaves hints of a rubric for analyzing not only her work, but Experimental Literature in general. A few examples: 

Words are less integers than points in a continuum. Indeed one might well describe the structure of the lyrics as the expression of the interval (40).

. . . Form and content constantly shape each other like the elements of the ecosystem and this allows truth,infinite possibilities for expression (90).

You will have literary texts that tolerate all kinds of freedom—Unlike the more Classical texts—which are not texts that delimit themselves, are not texts of territory with neat borders, with chapters, beginnings, endings, etc., and which will be a little disquieting because you do not feel the

Border.

The edge (113).

A common critique of what’s named Experimental, Avant Garde, Modernist, Postmodern, etc. is that the heavy focus on the structure takes away from the soul of what’s written. It’s a common critique because it contains some truth. Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy is brilliant and Ulysses may be the crowning achievement of 20th century literature, but they’re cold. They aren’t necessary, they’re just genius. Carole Maso’s unparalleled novel AVA stands out in this balancing act of soul versus structure because the book is accessible, universal, funny, poignant, and above all soulful. And all the things I love about the possibility of books live in this novel.