From the roof of my third-storey house, I look up at the clouds for reassurance; searching for bits of guidance or meaning in the everyday. They are always lingering above me with considerate movement, constantly dissipating and changing form. Each day they’re new, unprecedented, remarkable. Following the clouds is a lot like growing up; a constant learning curve, pausing for moments of reflection and evaluation. Cloud-watching is a menial chore, but a necessary compulsion in Big Shadow, fiction writer Marta Balcewicz’s debut novel. Our troubled protagonist Judy spends a lot of time looking at the sky, although not entirely on her own terms, but prompted by her cousin Christopher and his officious friend Alex’s cultist beliefs. They become fixated on an impending “Big Shadow,” an idea ambiguously relayed to us through their eyes as a means of transformation; a mechanism for transference; to be shuttled off to a new reality.

Judy is clearly not interested in their escapades and is in search of her own revelation. In fact, she feels far removed from the people closest to her, which she maintains by keeping an emotional distance. She operates in her own bubble, often speaking about things she doesn’t really mean to please others. It feels as though her relation to the characters and the audience are two separate people entirely. The complexities of her desire and her conflict with identity are thoughtfully transposed by Balcewicz in the coming-of-age novel. Judy can talk circles around herself. Her anxious and ambivalent thoughts cycle in words that feel vulnerable and exposed on the page. Her honesty we can resonate with. They grip and plunge the reader into bathtubs alongside stacks of “obscure” and “arty” magazines or in dark rooms where she can hide from the gruel of the July heat. In this vivid exploration of her thought process, Balcewicz offers clever insight. We can see that a new fear replaces each concern for her. Judy spirals through internal dilemmas like mindlessly flipping through pages of a magazine. Yet “all of it remained inside” she writes, as most worries do until they’re spoken out loud and talked through.

Ridden with boredom and wallowing in her own thoughts, Judy is impressionable. She’s captivated by a visiting poetry professor and retired musician Maurice Blunt; with the way he flings on his cowboy boots on the way out the door. He’s a theatrical guy, an exaggerated flub. It’s surprising that she’s so taken with him. It’s only subject to conveniently having met him when she’s uncertain and looking for some semblance of purpose. In classic late ‘90s fashion, Judy hides a corded phone in her room, waiting for his call, as she reads through the historiography of Maurice’s band, The Satellites, in anticipation at least twenty times over and recounts the scene of their first interaction again and again. To replay those details in your mind about a fruitful encounter gives almost anyone a sick sense of satisfaction. The animated guitarist appeared out of the rain for her as some kind of godsend, an otherworldly figure to come save her from her mom’s hot, suffocating and lonely apartment. To romanticise these short encounters when we’re craving connection is just of human nature. A dependency forms, not necessarily on him, but the blissful independence he offers her. The opportunity presents itself, and Judy can see it on the horizon, between a maze of floating clouds. She can see a place of her own right within reach; “I wanted this freedom, this apartment, and its mess for myself so badly.”

Judy’s rebellious nature exemplifies a longing. It’s a gimmick we all used to assert ourselves in adolescence in order to discover what we really want. Quiet phone calls and secret suitcases personify her youth. How do you establish yourself when you’re so isolated? Balcewicz’s tender prose delicately tackles defining our sense of self. Seeking or feeling a need for approval from others lingers in the background of Big Shadow as we’re devoured by Judy’s buzzing stream of consciousness. It’s a familiar feeling, considerably in our youth, especially when impressing those older than us, but it isn’t limited to those years. We all feel it. We are condemned to feel lonely in the absence of good friends, which Judy lacks. For without support, the weight off our shoulders that platonic love grants us, how are we meant to feel confident at all? The outcome of looking for acceptance outside of ourselves often leads us to a feigned and temporary high of feeling appealing, delusional thinking and can destroy our self worth. It affects the way we perceive ourselves, as well as the love we feel worthy and deserving of. 

Judy is constantly concerned about the way she comes off to others as someone still establishing herself and not necessarily confident in her demeanour. With Maurice, she’s cool and nonchalant. Careful not to pry or ask for too much in “Mauriceland” – a place she establishes as dismantled and untethered, where “one had to accept things and not care.” By placing her ambitions in the hands of someone who she begs to adore her and validate her, she’s just prolonging her disappointment. She also refrains from developing a bond with her mother despite holding close their rare embraces; “[…] this world is what everyone should get down on their knees for. My mother, asleep on her left side.” Their relationship is fraught and fluctuates in a place between overbearing concern and comfort and warmth. But Judy still pulls away.

Unable to stand this proximity with her mother, an animosity she harbours in herself is put on display. For Judy fears what she might become, what’s in her future and her waning and evident loneliness grasps onto her. The love our mothers have for us is deeply intertwined with pain, protectiveness and wariness. It’s a desire to take on our most heartbreaking moments but also leave us the space to endure them and let us learn from them. Michelle Zauner writes in Crying in H Mart, “she was guilty only of caring too much.” We are what our mothers leave behind, a little piece of them. It’s a powerful ode to how multifaceted these relationships are and a reminder of how much we are loved, although it may not always be shown in the most overt ways. It’s in small spats over the right purse to pack for a trip or how much sunscreen to put on where her affection radiates.

In Big Shadow, many of Judy’s experiences are these intense moments of zooming in and out of focus, dissociating and then honing in and obsessing. How can we ever feel relaxed this way? This incessant nitpicking, trying to articulate our thoughts and make sense of them. Her budding artistic nature shows through here as a constant observer. There’s a beauty in seeing nuance as we go about our lives, but Balcewicz’s work is a lesson in not letting that fixation consume us entirely. Judy shows us that we aren’t too different from the clouds above us. We take shape and adjust as new circumstances arrive and we carry on.