The Healer Formula

Status Quo: Troubling, unsettling details in a text stand out to a reader, demanding analysis.

Trouble: Many troubling details surrounding the character of Lisa went over my head while I was reading The Healer by Aimee Bender.

Question: Why did I not pick up on these details while I was reading?

Claim: Not only in the beginning of the story but consistently throughout, Aimee Bender’s story flirts with the fairytale genre. As a reader who hadn’t read much slip-stream before, I felt the need to make The Healer comply with one set genre: that of fairytales. In trying to make it fit into the genre, my thought processing had to emit details about the narrator Lisa, who is too complicated and problematic to fit the archetypal role of the fairytale narrator. I had to simplify her in order to process her. I accepted her as a slightly creepy stalker. However, the problem with Lisa is that throughout the story little troubling details of her personal life pop up. Fairytale narrators don’t start talking about themselves and their issues – their chief purpose is to deliver information about the other characters and the issues they have to deal with. So I had to 2-dimensionalize her to make her fit back in the background, enabling me to zoom in on the central story of the fire girl and the ice girl.