Revenants and Revisitations: Thoughts on Lisa McMann’s Cryer’s Cross
This was a riveting experiment in revisitation. I read Lisa McMann’s Cryer’s Cross when it was first published in 2011 (as evidenced by ownership of the hardcover version of the book, which is graced with a delightfully foggy graveyard and not the strange Harlequin-looking romance cover of the new paperback edition), and as an angsty and vaguely weird 14-year-old I remember being enraptured by it. To my young teenage mind it was creepy, angsty, romantic and enthralling — everything I wanted in a book at that stage in my literary development.
I came across a paperback of Cryer’s Cross in August this year — complete with its new and distressingly “middle-aged sex book” cover — and decided to pick it up.
As I stood in the bookstore, master’s thesis completed, I remember thinking: “This book made a lasting impression on me as a fourteen-year-old. I wonder if it still has any literary merit if I re-read it now — ten years later with two literature degrees?”
The result of this line of inquiry was… unexpected. It was a bit like reading two entirely different novels. What I didn’t expect, though, was that the elements that stuck in my mind as a teenager were the haunting, supernatural tragedies that transpire over the course of the book; whereas the elements that strike me now as an adult were those interpersonal interactions that build and maintain the human aspect of horror.
If I had to classify Cryer’s Cross as a type of Gothic, it would sit firmly in the realm of American Gothic — and more specifically midwestern Gothic. I would put it in a similar vein as The Devil All the Time, although with much milder violence because it is a young adult novel.
Cryer’s Cross follows seventeen-year-old Kendall through her last year of high school in a farming town in central Montana. The children and teenagers of Cryer’s Cross are going missing, and the grief and disbelief that’s rocking the town begins to interfere with (and exacerbate) Kendall’s Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). After Kendall’s boyfriend Nico disappears without a trace, she becomes preoccupied with finding clues to the whereabouts of these missing kids, even at the cost of her health and sanity. Although she’s successful in solving the mystery of Cryer’s Cross, it comes at a huge emotional cost, and the trauma of the past year ties into cycles of generational violence, racism, toxic masculinity, and re-understandings of mental health that irrevocably change the way the town understands and supports people who are struggling.
WE
Touch Our face and you’ll hear Us again. You’ll wonder. You’ll let Us into your mind, your thoughts. Your soul. We whisper to you in a single melting voice—the voice you want to hear. You know that voice. You miss it.
You want to save it.
SPOILERS BELOW
I must preface this passage by stating that, although I think there is literary merit in analyzing young adult fiction through scholarly lenses, this is very much a young adult novel. The prose, although relatively sophisticated in the horror elements, is obviously geared towards a less mature audience. This presentation made it a nice break from the denser reading I’ve done for my M.A. over the past year, but I’m not used to cruising through a book in under forty minutes. I find when prose is that transparent it fails to hold my attention, but still, coming back to it with more life experience and a few solid years of training in the field allowed me to see certain elements that I did not (and could not have) picked up on as a tween.
This book definitely has more romance in it than I remember. As a tween, I was preoccupied with the horror of disappearing children and haunted, whispering desks, but I see now that that really is an undercurrent to the (age-appropriate) sexual tension between Kendall and the novel’s resident bad boy, Jacián. This was amusing as an adult, and the nostalgia of those early relationships was not necessarily a welcome revisitation, but overall, the novel handles it well. What DOES stand out through the romance arc is how the novel examines institutional racism and sexism. As a young Mexican man settling into small-town Montana for his last year of high school, Jacián is blamed for everything, including the disappearances, and the local police can’t get enough of targeting him for town mischief. Jacián’s reputation as a menace is further exacerbated by Kendall’s OCD triggering a hyper-awareness of him, which in turn leads to some uncomfortable interrogations of her by local police and a growth arc for Kendall as she examines her internal bias. Kendall, too, has her fair share of awkward run-ins with police, particularly through invasive questions about her sex life with both Nico and Jacián, and the novel communicates the problems with these interactions in an age-appropriate, but nonetheless effective, way.
What impressed me the most revisiting this book was the attention to (and presentation of) Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in the novel. I didn’t have high hopes after writing not one, but two theses on disability in fiction, but McMann’s exploration of OCD was presented with an understanding of the disorder that demonstrates clinical research, not the social (mis) understanding of how OCD can impact one’s life. Kendall’s symptoms are presented as an overwhelming need to ensure that her surroundings are symmetrical and that her space is safe, with her habits of triple-checking window latches and deadbolts coming at the expense of food, sleep, and rest — and worsening when she experiences stress. Her need to document and verify any changes in her surroundings actually ends up saving her in the end, but her struggles with OCD are not romanticized, nor are they fetishized, and they occupy space in the novel with gravity and grace. It always interests me that disability seems to find a comfortable home in the horror genre. I’ve been studying it for years now, but I still don’t have a straight answer as to why that is. I’m hoping that, as the years go by, I’ll be able to understand these patterns a bit more. As of now, however, this novel is just another data point in an ever-lengthening pattern.
As a mature reader, I do wish there had been more attention paid to the horror elements of the book. The prose that McMann uses to communicate the hauntings are deliciously creepy, even as a horror veteran, and through the re-read, I could see how McMann alluded to the delightfully twisted ending through the whisperings of the haunted desk. Still, mid-twenties me wants more attention to the details of the hauntings and perhaps a bit more sleuthing for clues.
The mechanics of the haunting itself are very, very interesting. The “big reveal” at the end of the novel is that the haunted desk, complete with its dynamic, shifting graffiti — in addition to being the common denominator among all the missing children — was sourced from a derelict boys school infamous among the older townsfolk for its problems with systemic child abuse. This desk, kind of a static foil for generational violence, lures children to the grounds of the former school and compels them to dig their own, bloody graves before lying down and dying in the mud, as many of the former students did to escape the floggings from the school’s sadistic headmaster. The cursory examination of how generational trauma is transmitted is sophisticated for a YA novel, and I think McMann did an excellent job of communicating a truly horrific history in a way that is accessible to younger people without reducing the gravity of the subject matter. The academic in me wants to do a deep dive into the implications of this technique, but I don’t think there is really *enough* material to generate a solid analysis and it would take time away from procrastinating on the articles I need to revise for publication that are already finished.
This was honestly a very revealing journey in the evolution of my own literary taste. Would I recommend this book to my readership? Probably not unless something about this tickles your fancy and you tend to enjoy YA fiction (I don’t).
What I will say, though, is it is a worthwhile exercise to revisit those books that gripped you when you were younger to see how you read them now. What stands out to you now vs. then? Was it an enjoyable read after so many years of life experience? Can you see how you’ve evolved as a person as well as a reader?
I guess what I’m saying is it pays to respect a revenant, on occasion.
Happy reading,
LC
