Tyler Grant

ENGL 3306

Dr. Anderson

10/2/19

Kristen Iskandrian

From the first page, in both works, Iskandrian sets up our view into the mind of an

awkward human, the most human of humans, in the way only a perfectly average person can be.

In Motherest, we meet Agnes Fuller, and with her we see a memory from her childhood. She is

reading her mother’s diary, not realizing that any part of her mother was off-limits to her,

because she was oblivious to anything outside her perspective. In Good with Boys, we meet Jill,

and realize that she too is oblivious in her own way. With both characters, but particularly with

Agnes, it quickly becomes apparent by the way that Iskandrian writes, that they can and are

caught up in a moment or person. Oblivious to the outside world or consequences, sometimes not

even aware of the passing of time. We should not root for them and their desires, but somehow

we do. They should not be well rounded characters but somehow they are. Iskandrian

accomplishes this by putting us in the main character’s head and allowing us to walk around.

The voice is essential in both works and maintained by the perspective of the characters

that Iskandrian writes. In Motherest, Agnes is fleshed out as a character by the events that unfold

around her. While she has a whole novel to develop who she is, that is established on the very

first page. “Do you know what private means? I did, but I told her I didn’t, which was maybe my

version of what private meant. When something is private, she said, it belongs only to you. From

then on, I understood my mother to be private, in how she kept herself to herself, and in how, in

my mind, she belonged only to me.” This is the setup to who Agnes is. “I really thought I was
entitled to her, to the most intimate parts of her, which seemed to be in that drawer: photos, a

bible, stacks of letters held together with rubber bands, a diary. None of it helped me. Most of it

probably wrecked me. But sometimes, that’s how you know something is working. The world

may have been destroyed by a flood- but that doesn’t mean we don’t still need the rain.”

Iskandrian shows us who Agnes is with a single scene. Agnes isn’t malicious, she’s just humanly

unaware of the world that doesn’t involve her. She believes that her mother is hers, and that her

mother doesn’t exist in a way that doesn’t involve her. And Iskandrian immediately helps us

connect with the character.

So, the characters are crafted well, cool, but what about the rest of the story? With

Motherest, Iskandrian immediately sets up the main conflict between mother and daughter. This

is the tension that lasts throughout the whole novel. Agnes’ mother vanishes from her life her

first year of college. So Agnes writes letters to her mother that she never sends, and keeps them

bound together. Agnes begins to vent her frustrations to her mother, about all the things that are

happening and how she wants her. It’s not until Agnes is pregnant that she realizes she needs her.

But for a whole year her mother is not there. That tension is just building throughout the novel,

until her mother reappears after the Agnes’ baby is born. Iskandrian portrays the mother for most

of the novel as this enigmatic and complicated figure, and upon her return she just turns out to be

an overbearing mother. Agnes is her baby, so clearly Agnes can’t take care of a baby. So, while

the mother was figuratively looming over the novel, Iskandrian has her actually loom over the

edge of Agnes’ vision, swooping in to mother her grandson the moment that Agnes’ turns away

for one second. This skillful use of the character creates a payoff for the tension of the novel,

when Agnes’ finally snaps and steals the role of mother away from her mother, and leaves.

Leaving behind only the letters she’d written for her mother. But Iskandrian establishes hope for
their future relationship, by having Agnes’ leaving the letters in order for her mother to

understand her, and Iskandrain strategically reveals the babies name, Daniel, as a way to close

the distance between them and resolve the conflict.

The violence is in the rearview mirror. And it is a major part of the conflict between

mother and daughter in Motherest, which is that Agnes’ brother Simon killed himself. It happens

sometime before Agnes goes off to college at the start of the novel and is the driving force

behind why the mother fled their home. She, like her husband and her daughter, was processing

the grief in her own way. Iskandrian controls this moment by revealing it only in the middle of

the novel. It quickly becomes part of the conflict between Agnes and her mother when her

mother returns to start mothering her grandson. Agnes has had this baby, but her mother wants to

make him the new Simon, even suggesting the name for her new grandson. This all comes to a

boil when Agnes takes the role of mother back, which Iskandrian uses to end this conflict

between mother and daughter in a peaceful manner. The name Daniel is given to the baby as a

way of moving on from Simon and the violence of the past, which is how Iskandrian closes the

novel. Simon is gone, and Agnes can breathe again, and maybe someday the mother can too. But

for now, the roles are reversed, and Agnes is the mother who’s gone. Iskandrian is great at

duality.

What to take away from Iskandrian’s writing is this, characters are not perfect, but that

doesn’t mean they can’t be interesting or even well developed and likeable. Situations can be

completely normal, but fantastical. Reality is subjective, Agnes spends most of the novel in her

own head, and her infatuation with her mother and Tea Rose comes from obliviousness and not

understanding until the very end, which is how Agnes develops. Iskandrian controls characters in

both works by showing how their presence affects the main character, even if it’s just as small as
“that person existed.” Jill is so hyper-focused on Esau that only obstacles in her way become

clear. Adam and Esau’s mother exist only to foil her plans, but she does not exist just for the

pursuit of Esau. She mentions that she knows Esau Abraham will come and go, but her scholarly

needs will always remain. Iskandrian creates depth in the way that the characters perceive

themselves and the world around them. Until this, it seems like Jill is just infatuated and curious,

but we see how the focused perspective lets us walk around in Jill’s head. Agnes basically lets us

move into her mind, so much so that we’re drawn into wondering what’s next. Information can

be withheld to create an interesting situation, the mother’s whereabouts are unknown to Agnes,

but her father has known all along where she fled to. But Iskandrian uses dialogue to propel the

plot instead of stalling it. Time speeds up and slows down based on perception. We learn things

about this place in specifically timed fashion. Events happen or have happened at the corner of

perception. And a world is crafted.