“Las Cartas” by Lisa Ratcliffe
Introduction by Andrew Oldham
I have been asked to write this introduction to the short story, “Las Cartas.” I have found this difficult. There is a reason for this, introductions promote the idea of objectivity, I knew Lisa, she was my friend and like many others who knew and loved her we are still coming to terms with her death. I will never see my friend again and this is why reading “Las Cartas” has been incredibly hard. There is not a line or word that hasn’t in some way come from Lisa’s own experience. Writers are told to write what they know. Lisa wrote what she experienced. This is a form of writing that is often painfully honest. It leaves nowhere for the reader or writer to hide. This is an act of bravery that many writers and poets would avoid but for Lisa it was part of the course.
It has been so hard for me to separate my friendship with Lisa from Lisa Ratcliffe the writer. How can one introduce a friend that you are mourning? With honesty.
In the story, “Las Cartas”, the reader sees the protagonist come to the realisation that no matter what life brings; no matter how far you run, you cannot avoid the truth. This is a story of painful realisation, about finding strength in family, friends and the people around you. The use of dialogue borders on the lyrical, there is a real sense of duende at play here. It’s a classic story of realisation, a coming of age, a return over the first threshold to the past. This is what makes this story haunting. The reader is part of the protagonist’s journey, they never just watch. The story resolves with an open ending. This means days after reading, you still find yourself worrying about the protagonist. This is a rare gift, the ability to make the reader empathise with the characters after they have left the page. There is a real sense in “Las Cartas” that life continues no matter what happens.
Lisa Ratcliffe was a rare writer. She knew the act of writing was not just about the use of words, the editing of words and the production of word counts. She knew that what wasn’t written on the page was what often drove stories forward and haunted readers for years to come. ‘Las Cartas’ is a perfect example of this kind of writing. The underlying drive of the story is the myriad of secrets. The narrator conveys a loss of time, of hidden lives, forgotten language and menace. The resolution is painful, and shows Lisa knew fiction couldn’t always give the answers. The protagonist has to make a choice between worlds. She will lose one to win another. It is something that many readers will have to come to terms with during their life but Lisa points out that we can draw strength from those that we have known, those that we have loved and those that we continue to love. That there is always hope in living.
