"'Love is not a boat moored on a lake / that bobs on waves, more like a house, its foundation / drilled into bedrock, that in an earthquake / still shakes,' writes Ellen Kombiyil in Love As Invasive Species. This collection, notable for its stylistic gravitas and formal experimentation, illuminates the life-worlds of four generations of working class women in Kombiyil’s family as if they are circuits waiting to be electrified: like bulbs drawing moths to light, their memories are bright and dead-hot. As both daughter and mother herself, Kombiyil uses the method of a “tête-bêche” or “double book,” allowing us to read from either side of the book into its center. Such a strategy, along with hidden glossaries and other fine, subtle details, mimics the experience of encountering family secrets. Inside these labyrinthine halls of memory are paths that circle opaque symbols: for instance animals, particularly those in ambivalent relationships with humans, embody roles that are neither comforting nor repellent. Butterfly flies into the oven, a pet tarantula is lost for decades, worms and fleas infest the house, whale babies sing for help and a mother cat dies while lifting her kittens into her mouth. Here, humans and animals both love in ways deeply marked by loss, violence, hunger, consumption, and ache."

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                                                                                                    —Nicky Yeager (www.nicyeager.com)

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“Reading this book is a physical experience, and that fits the subject matter well. Readers are encouraged to get inside the book, almost taking it over – the way memories that are passed down and called love take us over, invading the present, interpreting how we see the present. ”       

 

                                                                                                                        Read the Full Review​                                                                                                                           — Katie Kalisz, MER

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