The Tower by Thea Lenarduzzi
In Thea Lenarduzzi's The Tower, two complex narratives mingle and diverge in an exploration of storytelling and trauma
Thea Lenarduzzi’s The Tower follows T the protagonist, who is not the narrator, on a search for Annie, a young girl confined to a tower built by her father; and later follows the narrator, who may be the protagonist, on a hunt for the truth into her own experiences.
As T journeys further into Annie’s story and the hunt for answers, both she and the narrator come up against the slipperiness of stories and the ultimate precarity of women’s histories; confronting disappearance and erasure as the trail runs and Red Riding Hood’s wolf lurks. Lenarduzzi explores the domination of girls and women through illness and patriarchy in a narrative which at times confuses its speakers; swapping between first and third person in an embodied exploration of the many selves contained by personhood.
The complexity of the medical industry mingles with folklore and herbal remedies of old as female illness falls between the cracks of history. T doggedly pursues answers even when there are none, lives and narratives are layered over one another as the trauma of illness fosters a deep desire to find understanding in stories and histories, using them as a surrogate to explore our own pain. Weaving together investigation and story, adding memoir in a deeply personal, if abrupt, narrative turn, The Tower runs a complex course and questions the stories we tell ourselves.
