A Review of Mandira Pattnaik’s Glass/Fire
The Fragility That Shapes Us: A Review of Mandira Pattnaik’s Glass/Fire
Life applies pressure to all of us; it’s up to us to decide whether or not we crack under that pressure or allow it to mold and shape our lives. Family, love, and loss all work together to make us who we are; like glass in the fire, we all must be melted down and reformed. Mandira Pattnaik explores these themes in her new novella Glass/Fire from Querencia Press in such a vivid and raw way that it had me looking at life with a fresh, new perspective.
In addition to Glass/Fire, Pattnaik is the author of Anatomy Of a Storm-Weathered Quaint Townspeople (2022), Girls Who Don't Cry (2023) and Where We Set Our Easel (forthcoming). Mandira's work has appeared in McNeese Review, Penn Review, Quarterly West, Passages North, DASH, Timber, Contrary, Watershed Review, Amsterdam Quarterly, AAWW Margins, and others. She edits for trampset and Vestal Review. You'll find “A Harvest Mismatch” in Issue 16 of Miracle Monocle.
In Glass/Fire, Pattnaik follows the story of three sisters and their family's immigration back to their family home, Eddy Villa. After living in New jersey for the first years of their lives, the girls are thrust into this new context. Though loss, death, love, and life’s many struggles, we follow them through their lives, one chapter at a time. Pattnaik uses many compelling images to add texture to life’s many struggles—from the stars to scientific reactions, the weather, and even mangoes. Pattnaik successfully interweaves the mundane with the complex, giving readers new perspectives on both. Her beautifully crafted and vivid imagery paint a vivid picture, creating an almost dreamlike feeling. Small moments grounded in reality made these departures more compelling.
Each chapter of Glass/Fire could almost work as a stand-alone piece of flash fiction. While this quality worked to make the novella more unique, readers must work to locate the small details that connect each chapter. On a first read, this could prove confusing, but by the end of the reading experience, the overarching story snaps into place. While I appreciate the writer's experiment with creating a storyline out of snapshots, I do want to acknowledge the different kind of engagement this style of writing demands of readers.
In the end, I found Glass/Fire to be a beautiful meditation on life and death and a motivational story about how to keep going despite everything. Pattnaik's vivid imagery and the book's heartwarming ending make the journey worthwhile--especially in a time when we could all use a little hope.