Friday Fiction: Dear Reflection (Review)

I Never Meant to be a Rebel

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Dear Reflection: I Never Meant to be a Rebel by Jessica Bell

I don’t normally read memoirs. They strike fear into my heart as potentially being Trojan horses for egomaniacs. Everyone has a story to tell, why should someone think theirs is of interest to others? Well, the answer is already there – we all have stories to tell. Whether fiction or not, there are patterns in lives, and there are experiences in common, and characters where we can identify feelings and behaviour and say, “Yes, I have felt that too.” This is why we read. And that’s why it was a pleasure to read this.

Firstly, you can tell you are in safe hands. Jessica knows when we need detail, and when we don’t; when the reader can be guided, and when the reader can be trusted; and that restraint was one of the things that first endeared me to the book. Jessica is an experienced author/creator, and this is far from her first work. As such it is well-written and polished. More than that, it is crafted with a fiction-writer’s sensibilities. There is foreshadowing. There is repeated imagery. There is structure holding it together. There is an arc. If someone had never written a book before then I would not recommend that they tried a memoir, but in the hands of someone who understands the craft it can be as readable as any work of fiction.