The writer chooses an unconventional voice to narrate a life story

By Liana Yadav

Fresh off a streak of publishing multi-genre works, including a memoir, a short-fiction collection, poetry compilations and a chapbook, Iranian-Canadian writer Hollay Ghadery released her debut novel this February: The Unravelling of Ou.

The novel is a slow burn and powerful tug at the same time. It takes place over several hours but is told entirely through flashbacks and memories from the eyes of a sock puppet named Ecology Paul or EP.

In an interview with CanCulture, Ghadery explained that this unique perspective was shaped by her experience as a mother, making sock puppets for her kids.

“Because we’re constantly losing socks, we often had unmatched [pairs] and what better thing to do than make a sock puppet?” said Ghadery. “It was kind of a perfect, or maybe not perfect, but strange storm of a bunch of things happening at once in my life that led to the puppet taking over the narrative. I had all these other ideas, but eventually, this squeaky little voice of this sock puppet took over everything.”

Ghadery made the conscious decision to wear a puppet for a year while writing this book, to “really understand the choreography.” Describing it as the “prototype,” Ghadery got attached to the puppet more than she had expected.

“I think a lot of people would say, ‘How could someone become so dependent on a puppet?’ You know, in this very cold and cruel world, when you have this adorable and wonky and absurd little bit of comfort that makes you feel at home, why wouldn’t you become a little bit too dependent on it?”

In the novel, the puppet — a silent bystander — is ironically the only way its owner, Minoo, ever communicates, never actually uttering a word herself to the reader. EP steers the ship in distressing situations as her safety shield. It becomes the embodiment of Minoo’s shame surrounding the truest parts of herself: her body, her sexuality and her desires.

“I was thinking a lot about my own internalized shame and guilt over my body, dealing with years of eating disorders and substance abuse and how I never really came out publicly or identified as part of the queer community until well into my 30s,” said Ghadery. “Why was that? Why was I so ashamed of everything? What was I so scared of?”

It is striking to follow Minoo as she turns from a child into a teenager, to a young mom and then a grandmother all within the same pages. A sense of childhood and innocence stretches along all phases, preserved within her through this sock puppet that is always in her hand. It becomes a source of comfort, allowing Minoo to retain parts of herself as she grapples with a harsh reality. Everything shifts around her, but the way she communicates with the world stays frigid, to the annoyance of both her strict Iranian mother and embarrassed Canadian daughter, Roya.

Motherhood has dimensions. Minoo’s mother, unnamed yet a looming presence in the story, is always disappointed by Minoo not fitting into the traditional archetype of a woman. Generational trauma results in Minoo having issues with her daughter, with all three women never seeing eye to eye despite bearing many similarities.

Ghadery explains how she was fascinated by women’s complicity in upholding the patriarchy, while acknowledging that men are oppressors in the system. Minoo’s mother was moulded by her circumstances, growing up in a politically tumultuous Iran, where she hid parts of herself for protection. Ghadery holds a soft spot for her.

“[I was] trying to show a character who does horrible things, definitely, but isn’t necessarily a horrible person. And I wanted to show that because I don’t think that too many people are beyond redemption.”

Minoo’s mother raised her with constraint, holding back her display of love. As a result, Minoo never learned how to be a mother herself, giving in to her worst tendencies — addiction and talking to a sock puppet instead of seeing a fight through with her daughter.

“Minoo loves her kids without condition, but also maybe, without intention,” says EP in the novel. EP describes this love as “a sort of wishy-washy excuse for doing everything for someone, except what you don’t think you’re capable of doing…like convincing yourself that because your daughter is strong, she isn’t vulnerable.”

Ghadery explains how she did not want to create a “dichotomy of bad parents and good daughter.” She describes the poison of trauma being diluted as it passes from generation to generation, rather than ending abruptly.

Calling herself a poet above everything else, Ghadery follows her own rules of storytelling, immersing you in the slippery and funny world of Minoo’s head. A lot of the imagery in The Unravelling of Ou is described in unconventional ways. Common phrases are turned around and emotions are attributed to words that combine self-awareness and a childlike perspective. Ghadery reveals that this was a conscious choice, iterating a piece of writing advice she likes — “your writing voice should be as close to the voice in your head as possible.”

While reading, I found myself forgetting that Minoo and her sock puppet are not separate. EP feels like a different entity, but is naturally only able to relay the parts of Minoo that she knows deep within herself, even though she doesn’t admit it. Reading it, I imagined that if the book were a movie, each scene would have a sock puppet somewhere in the frame, its stringy hair and bulging eyeballs observing everything for Minoo.

“There’s a long history of literature that prioritizes neurodivergence,” she says. “Or if it does, any neurodivergent perspective is often [shown] from the outside looking in. Of course, there are more contemporary books that certainly [do not] do this, but growing up, I didn’t read a lot of them.”

While Minoo is in no way a reflection of Ghadery’s life, she wanted to make her own lived experience a part of Minoo’s story. She did not want to distort those feelings to fit into a neurotypical framework of traditional storytelling.

Ghadery was careful not to blur the line between Minoo and EP. However, she was also careful about the book holding up as a plausible story from the perspective of both entities. She was trying to incorporate a multitude of readings, but was also hoping that readers would simply suspend any disbelief.

EP is Minoo’s escape from the world. While she gets judged for it because of its jarring presence on her hand, it is not difficult to understand why she roots all her fears and worries into this funny-looking object. We all have outlets that we escape into and oftentimes they’re not healthy. As I was reading, I wondered if there was a difference between endless doom-scrolling to feel better about myself and speaking to a puppet. I did not come up with many answers.

The Unravelling of Ou takes each chance to tell you more about its characters and their journey, right down to its descriptive chapter titles. Some of my favourites were “Boys should be boys and girls should be perfect,” “Small cages for big feelings,” and the final chapter, “An orange is not an organ,” where we learn that the truth cannot be dressed up forever.

“Having these little lines [as chapters] would ground the reader because it’s jumping back and forth so much, which is very common with my longer-form writing. I always feel like I’m somehow circling a drain of getting to my point and I write like that too,” said Ghadery.

The Unravelling of Ou is a delightful read, one that unwinds in ribbons of pain, trauma, longing, but above all, hope.

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You can find The Unravelling of Ou at your local bookstore!