{"id":496092,"date":"2025-10-13T12:12:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T12:12:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/496092\/"},"modified":"2025-10-13T12:12:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T12:12:16","slug":"out-of-the-archives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/496092\/","title":{"rendered":"Out of the Archives"},"content":{"rendered":"

This seems to be an obsession of mine,\u201d Ilana Masad said, \u201cthis notion of forging connections with people who are no longer here, and how that can also assuage loneliness.\u201d This was on a Zoom call at the end of August to discuss the author\u2019s sophomore novel, Beings<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Cultural and literary critic Masad writes with shrewd sensitivity to her characters\u2019 humanity. Beings is a tender examination of reciprocal trust and of how conviction allows us to form both connection and identity. The book follows three separate but intertwined narratives. The first two stories run concurrently through the 1960s: that of Barney and Betty Hill, a real-life interracial married couple (in the novel, unnamed) who believed themselves to be the first alien abductees, and that of emerging copy editor and budding science fiction writer Phyllis Egerton, a closeted lesbian navigating the prejudices of the era. When the Hills are outed before they\u2019re ready to share their story publicly, the couple\u2019s lives become about defense of the unlikely. Phyllis\u2019s safety relies on whether others believe that she\u2019s straight. Masad recounts the couple\u2019s experiences in third-person point of view and Phyllis\u2019s through first-person letters and journal entries addressed to Rosa, an early love. In a third narrative, these two accounts are compiled and interpreted by an isolated nonbinary Archivist looking for connections across history. Their own repressed memory of a childhood alien encounter is one they are not sure that they even believe themself.<\/p>\n

The Archivist\u2019s commentary on the Hills\u2019 story reveals how deft Masad is at considering the implications of viewing past action through contemporary lenses. The Archivist enters the story through dialectical commentary; their first note is on the mutability of language and why they\u2019ve made specific choices about words related to race that may become anachronistic. They write into lacunae of the historical record: Where the couple\u2019s records are sparse or formal, rather than personal, the Archivist allows the Hills generous agency. \u201cI am telling it out of order, aren\u2019t I?\u201d they offer in an early note. <\/p>\n

I can\u2019t help it. I am trying to tell you a story about things that actually happened, whether you or I believe them or not, but I am sidetracked, time and again, by imagining my way into their mundanity.
Let\u2019s call it what it is: I am making things up.
With a purpose, though. Which is to convey the truth.
Well.
A truth.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Archivist\u2019s entries interrogate their own easy assumptions as much as they interpret the couple\u2019s stories of an extraterrestrial encounter for the reader. What results from their work represents a kind of illuminated manuscript, a new creation unto itself and a refreshing commentary on the act of storytelling.<\/p>\n

Beings is in this way a love letter to those who do the quiet, laborious, and sometimes subversive work of historical preservation and interpretation: academics, archivists, and librarians. These confessional insertions also call to mind a biographer\u2019s stylistic and narrative dance: Just how much of their influence on the narrative do they acknowledge on the page? \u201cMy Autobiography of Carson McCullers [by Jenn Shapland] was a huge influence on me,\u201d said Masad. \u201cIn that book, it\u2019s all about that acknowledgment. It\u2019s all about how she\u2019s, like, taking ownership of her version of Carson McCullers. It was [a] revelation that I can insert a voice that is asking these questions.\u201d <\/p>\n

Phyllis\u2019s story is presented through her unreliable first-person narrative. Masad said, \u201cIt felt, to me, really important to have her attempt to put on a good face,\u201d even though Phyllis runs away and has to make a life for herself in a world that is intolerant of her queerness. Yet through Phyllis\u2019s story, the author reveals how the pre-Stonewall era defies easy classification. Phyllis\u2019s psychologist, upon learning of her desires, treats her harshly because she lives in a time when queer identity was classified as a mental illness. Her chapters represent the internalized American pressure to draw facile conclusions from her own struggle, even though she lives in an America that denies her ability to live and love truthfully. Masad makes good use of the epistolary structure to underscore this tension. And as a fiction writer with literary ambition, Phyllis is an example of many women during that time who faced gender discrimination yet found a more viable path to publication in the more tolerant science fiction genre.<\/p>\n

The Archivist finds meaning in their work but also communion with the Hills and Phyllis, whose stories they preserve. Their frank admissions in the archives run alongside their own story of a quiet life and a desire for greater human connection that isn\u2019t always possible. The Archivist wants \u201cstrangers to care about them. They want to care about strangers.\u201d They find that connection in the archives, writing, \u201cI only know that, decades after his death, decades after hers, I grieve for them. I keep them alive just a little bit longer, so that I, too, am not so very alone.\u201d Masad honors the Archivist\u2019s introversion and assigns value to human connection that can happen across decades or centuries. The quiet, important document she has the Archivist create as a result of their research\u2014the manuscript and careful archive they create with their own commentary\u2014is itself a beautiful way to honor the Hills and Phyllis.<\/p>\n

This is a story about faith in other people\u2019s versions of their truth. Not faith in UFOs, but in the sense of believing what people say about themselves, their identity, their needs, or their experiences. \u201cWhat does it mean to believe someone, and when is it hard?\u201d Masad said when I asked her about the question at the core of the novel. \u201cWhere does belief stop? Where do we honor belief, and where do we not? How do we decide that? How much of that is about power and control? Or, why do we believe? Why do we not?\u201d<\/p>\n

Beings reminds us that narrative requires suspension of our disbelief. So, too, does human connection.\u2022<\/p>\n

BEINGS, BY ILANA MASAD<\/p>\n

\"<i>BEINGS<\/i>,<\/a>Credit: BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHINGRelated Stories\"Headshot<\/p>\n

Heather Scott Partington is a writer, teacher, and book critic. She is a regular contributor to Alta Journal and a board member of the National Book Critics Circle, where she serves as fiction chair. Her writing has appeared in publications such as the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. She lives in Elk Grove, California.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This seems to be an obsession of mine,\u201d Ilana Masad said, \u201cthis notion of forging connections with people…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":496093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[163214,163210,17588,3444,163213,77,163211,163212,163215,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-496092","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-alien-fiction","9":"tag-beings-by-ilana-masad","10":"tag-book-review","11":"tag-books","12":"tag-complex-novel","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-heather-scott-partington","15":"tag-lgbtq-novel","16":"tag-speculative-fiction","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115366798735734083","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}