Memoir, Mountains, and Mormons

Abstract

“ L ife imitatesArt farmore thanArt imitates Life,”OscarWildedeclares in “The Decay of Lying.” It’s an idea Liz Stephens might agree with. “I should acknowledge I’ve read too many movies. I’ve read too many books” (33), she writes in The Days Are Gods. Scenes she encountersmake sensebecause shehasbeen taught byart to recognize them: “I’ve seen that movie, the one with the barn in the mountains. I’ve read the book, the onewith the treacherouswinter” (31).Movies even help her understand her own body: “When I lope and remember not to look down at the horse’s neck, but lookout andaroundatwhere I’mgoing, I know the set ofmy head exactly, because I’ve seen it in the movies” (32). The Days Are Gods is a memoir told in sections that sometimes feel like chapters that cannot be read alone and sometimes feel like stand-alone but connected essays, especially since they have titles rather than numbers, as is standard for essay collections. It is both a meditation on the West and an account of Stephens’s life in the Cache Valley, where she moves to attend graduate school at Utah State University in Logan. The life available to her R E V I E W