How To Read An Unwritten Language

Philip Graham

"Graham's novel is replete with oddities. They intrigue, inspire, and scare us in a way that is both familiar and very peculiar. This book resonates long after being read. A revelation flows in, wavelike and forceful, about our often futile attempts to verbalize 'truth" and the sometimes ineffectiveness of words. For a writer, this is a humbling and simultaneously liberating notion. Graham clearly seeks such knowledge about his life and art. With this novel he has taken a giant leap toward a stunning career as a novelist."

--Janet St. John, reviewing How to Read an Unwritten Language for Booklist, September 1, 1995.

Excerpt from chapter 16, "Suicide Songs," of How to Read an Unwritten Language:

When the time came, Kate packed her half of our dividing house with a light touch, filling each box almost tenderly before taping the cardboard flap shut. I worked more slowly, noticing that she took special care not to pack any objects I'd collected--did she somehow understand that they held secrets, like the illustrations she kept inside herself?

Yet there was something from my collection that I wanted her to have, a secret gift that would be my rueful farewell: a long brown bootlace that once belonged to a young woman whose lush blond hair, I'd been told, was her own halo. While resting one afternoon in a park, she'd caught sight of a friend she secretly loved, unexpectedly approaching along one of the cobblestone paths. Though caught off guard, she quickly untied the lace of one of her boots and used it to tie back her hair. She greeted him as he walked by, and when he stopped to chat she casually reached back and loosened the knot, her hair tumbling undone for this man who now, suddenly, had nowhere else to go.

While Kate continued her meticulous, patient packing, I climbed the stairs to our nearly empty bedroom and searched in her closet for her slim leather boots, hoping she hadn't yet packed them. There they were, in a dark corner beneath a line of dresses, one boot lying sadly on its side. I picked it up and examined the lace--it was nearly the same color and only slightly thicker than the one I held in my hand.

I quickly exchanged them, my fingers fumbling at the button hooks, satisfied with this small presence I was bestowing on Kate. Each autumn through winter she'd wear these boots, tightening them in the mornings and then going about her day, but in the evenings she'd unloose those laces, and the subtle energy of the one I'd just given her might make her pause for a moment, as if she heard someone speaking from far off, not yet recognizing that stirring within as the urge to finally let herself go. And one day, as all laces do, this lace would snap, perhaps finally breaking the spell of her own inner knot .