A tiny bit more

Here’s another para I cut from the Mitchell review. It has a spoiler, and it’s harrowingly about the loss of a child. I don’t entirely know how he wrote this, it’s so precise and painfully imagined:

It is in an earlier section, when Elf comforts her sister Imogen after Imogen’s baby son dies of cot death, that we see Mitchell fully in his power, bouncing mercilessly between the comforting platitudes of Elf’s parents and the miserable, useless grief Imogen feels: “Hot tears well from Imogen’s sore eyes. Elf hands her a tissue. “He must’ve known. He must’ve wanted his mum. He must’ve been afraid, he must…” Imogen shakes and curls up like a child fitting into a hiding place. “Last night I heard him crying. My milk started up and I woke in the dark and was halfway to the door when I remembered, and my nightshirt was damp so it was out with that bloody breast pump and then when it’s done I have to wash the milk down the sink, and—“ (352-3). Imogen’s hopeless grief is suffocating; Elf helps – she soothes her sister, she comforts her – but her help won’t be enough, and this kind of grief – it’s very clear, here – has no respite. Elf’s comfort, too, is limited: the band is on the rise: its guitar player has been caught in Italy with drugs, so Elf’s loyalties are divided.