Atmospheric Essays in 'House of Steps' by Amy Blackmarr

"Good heavens, honey... it's a hippie house!" -Amy's mother regarding her temporary Kansan home

Sophia Alexander with
House of Steps by Amy Blackmarr

I’ve just consumed The House of Steps while visiting my dear friend Kelly in North Carolina. Kelly keeps an ‘Amy room’ with a sort of shrine to her sister's award-winning books in it—and I don’t blame her one whit, as they are that well-written. In fact, their mother is thought to be descended from the national poet of Scotland, Robert Burns, so perhaps Amy did not pull her writing genius from nowhere!

The House of Steps is an anecdotal collection of short essays about Amy’s experience of moving (for a few graduate-school years) to a remote, cobbled-together house in Kansas with her dog. It’s a worthwhile follow-up to the raw authenticity of her first essay collection, Going to Ground, which sprang Thoreau-like from her pen during her pond residence at her family’s remote, south-Georgia cabin. Both essay collections, quite atmospheric, remind me of those by fellow Aries Southerner, Barbara Kingsolver. Blackmarr's essays fill me with a love for Georgia's natural environment, though I sense no equivalent appreciation for her temporary Kansas surroundings.

In fact, my favorite tales from The House of Steps actually relate back to her family and girlhood in Georgia, but this may be personal bias, since I’m familiar with the family. Nevertheless, I particularly enjoyed reading about their mother’s genteel reactions to Amy’s strange new Kansan house and Amy’s perverse defense of it.  Yet while Amy does allow isolated glimpses into her past life, they come only as she mulls her existing environment and life itself—and I do so enjoy hearing Amy’s unique take on her world. In summary, I do recommend Amy Blackmarr’s books, including House of Steps, as quirky, rich, perception-expanding, sometimes-amusing, regional, atmospheric reads.