Experimental novels are risky. In Lidia Yuknavitch’s THE SMALL BACKS OF CHILDREN, a straightforward narrative and conventional storytelling are replaced by highly poetic prose and a severe distance from both the characters and the events taking place. Rather than traditional storytelling, the language is highly figurative, mixed with quick matter-of-fact sentences, and the narrative moves like one long poem.

Consider the opening scene in which the main character, known simply as The Girl, is taken to a nearby farmhouse: “The white is flat. The girl does not look at her feet. She looks straight ahead, willing the shape in the distance to become the farmhouse they said it would be. The sky has smudged the sun.”

But with risk comes reward, in this case a highly experimental affair that blurs the line of literature and attempts to transcend into its own level of art, giving us an intimate portrayal of writing, love and war in broad strokes yet also contradicting itself in small moments of intimacy in the most detached form.

Yuknavitch is known for such works as DORA: A HEADCASE, a Freudian coming-of-age story, and THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER, a coming-of-age memoir concerning sex, violence and grief within a young artist. Each title is equally experimental in its telling and format, looking deeply at the emergence of art through numerous mediums.

"Rather than traditional storytelling, the language is highly figurative, mixed with quick matter-of-fact sentences, and the narrative moves like one long poem."

With THE SMALL BACKS OF CHILDREN, Yuknavitch takes us from Prague to a small Eastern European village, where a young girl is engulfed in a war unknown to Americans. A photojournalist captures The Girl at the moment when an explosion has killed her family but left her alive. From there, we are given a new perspective in the form of The Writer, who seeks to rescue The Girl from her war-torn village and has suffered the loss of a stillborn child.

The results, while at times beautiful in their imagery, are also abstract, especially when describing scenes of extreme violence and sex. One will consider these a coping mechanism. Yuknavitch’s voice within the novel implies that she is harboring deep wounds. The detached narrative is a way of confronting these wounds by putting them on display, word for word, without hesitation.

Consider an early scene, in which the filmmaker’s younger sister improvises during a playful rendition of Shakespeare and makes up the line “Pity the small backs of children…” From that point on, she’s the writer in the family, and her brother becomes a New York playwright. In her later years, she has a friend who is a poet. She is a drinker. She is a daughter. Her husband is the filmmaker. Her fiercest friend is the poet. They’re all given titles but no names, which creates a severe distance for the reader.

While it is important to commend risks taken in literature, there’s a fine line between doing so and creating something that’s readable and appealing. Going too far in one direction, as THE SMALL BACKS OF CHILDREN can do on occassion, can be alienating for readers. Books that challenge the traditional form of storytelling yet still get us to flip pages should and do exist, such as INVISIBLE by Paul Auster, THE TUSK THAT DID THE DAMAGE by Tania James, and HOUSE OF LEAVES by Mark Z. Danielewski.

In the end, THE SMALL BACKS OF CHILDREN is a deeply poetic work. It is also detached, overly figurative, and at times a challenge to follow. Several formats are used to tell the story of the painter, the poet, the playwright and the girl --- from journal entries to poems to paintings. Much of the storytelling element is replaced by minimalistic imagery and flowery fragmented poetry. It would be easy to label Yuknavitch the writer, but she is also the painter and the poet. Faces are what she paints, abstract ones, along with memories and dreams. She holds together the supposed opposites --- beginnings and endings, life and death --- in her hands. Reading it is to exist in the middle of it all.