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0593534565
| 9780593534564
| 0593534565
| 4.53
| 34,833
| Mar 07, 2023
| Mar 07, 2023
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it was amazing
| “Ellwood smiled, and a sudden, dry bleakness spread over Gaunt’s heart as he thought of Hercules, and Hector, and all the heroes in myth who found hap “Ellwood smiled, and a sudden, dry bleakness spread over Gaunt’s heart as he thought of Hercules, and Hector, and all the heroes in myth who found happiness briefly, only for it not to be the end of the story.” The Charioteer meets All Quiet On the Western Front in this haunting and elegiac debut novel that juxtaposes the horrors of war with a powerful love story. It’s a novel about love, survival, death, and the reality and the aftermath of witnessing and being participants in unthinkable violence. The idyllic landscapes and the trivialities of youth we encounter in the opening chapters belie the violence and pain that are to come, making those earlier moments all the more precious, all the more bittersweet. This novel broke my heart. It made me cry, it made me despair, it made me feel all of the feels. In Memoriam is a gut-wrenching novel revealing the brutality and the banality of war: time and again we are made to read of young men, boys really, dying in the most horrible and random of deaths, and we see how their bodies are merely replaceable cogs in the machine of war. But I am getting ahead of myself. “He went there in the mornings, sometimes, and gave himself to that strange country rapture, that deep, bonewarming feeling that England was his, and he was England’s. He felt it as strongly as if his ancestors had been there a thousand years. Perhaps he felt it more strongly because they hadn’t.” The opening pages transport us to 1914, to Preshute, the idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. Here we see the petty disagreements and secret entanglements between various students, most of whom have grandiose visions of the English Empire, of honor, of war. Despite their different temperaments Henry Gaunt and Sindey Ellwood are best friends. Their friendship is complicated by the unspoken feelings they harbor for one another. Each believes that their love is unrequited and that acting on it will inevitably ruin their friendship. So, they spend their days pining for each other and trying to hide, not always successfully, their true feelings. In this rarefied world, they spend their days talking about meaningless and meaningful things, yet, news of the war puts a strain on their days of idleness. Gaunt and Ellwood, alongside their friends, are particularly drawn to the ‘In Memoriam’ section of their paper, and while soon enough the names on those pages are of boys and men they know, these also seem to promise heroic tales that speak to them given that they are well-versed in the classics. Gaunt, however, who is half German, feels differently about these things from most of his peers. Yet, despite his anti-war sentiments he finds himself pressured to enlist by his mother and his sister after they reveal that it will put to rest rumours questioning where their family’s loyalties lie. “Ellwood’s England was magical, thought Gaunt, picking his way around nettles. But it wasn’t England.” Ellwood, a year younger, initially stays behind, keeping a correspondence to Gaunt that reveals the unbridgeable gap between his reality at Preshute and Gaunt’s one on in the trenches. They continue to yearn for one another, but their love is soon obscured by the horrors Gaunt experiences on the front. Class privileges continue to be felt in the army and Gaunt, a boy still, is in command of men who are twice his age and did not grow up in the sheltered walls of Preshute. Concerned for Gaunt, Ellwood eventually decides to enlist as well, and he is joined by most of his friends. Soon enough he realizes that his former visions of honor, glory, and England have little to do with the day-to-day reality of war. From the living conditions to the landscapes punctuated by bodies and gore. And always so much death all around them. Death that is not always a result of enemy fire. The men around him die because of infections, a literal misstep, or a mild malady turned deadly. They also die because they waver, and their hesitancy is deemed an act of cowardice. They are driven mad, by the violence they see, and the violence they do. “It was the Hell you’d feared in childhood, come to devour the children . It was treading over the corpses of your friends so that you might be killed yourself. It was the congealed evil of a century.” Gaunt and Ellwood’s love seems a foreign thing in a reality like this. Yet, their proximity to death is also what makes them now more than even desperate for the other. Their relationship is a fraught one given the circumstances that have led to their coming together. Gaunt in particular being Ellwood’s superior, and haunted by his own actions at the front, is committed to keeping their relationship one of convenience, something that pains him as much as Ellwood. Ellwood, who still retains at this point an easy-going insouciance, tries his best to be of comfort to Gaunt, but, eventually, their paths diverge. During the months and years following their enlistment, we watch them trying to survive but retaining one's body and one's mind in war is no easy feat. The more of his friends die, the more Ellwood begins to change, and his attempts to immure himself to pain see him turn into someone who is jaded, cruel, and angry. Gaunt, who had for so long suppressed his feelings, and rarely allowed himself to feel things fully, is reunited with some old friends and their companionship, as well as the possibility of seeing Ellwood, spur him on. Oh, my poor heart. At first, I was fooled by the beautiful prose and by the dazzling intensity of Gaunt and Ellwood’s yearning. Once we leave Preshute behind, there are only echoes of that earlier beauty. There are moments of kinship, of comradeship, between the men. Their banter is a temporary reprieve from the fear, uncertainty, and brutality of war. Against this unforgiving landscape, punctured by violence and agonizing waits, Gaunt and Ellwood’s feelings for one another, as well as their faltering relationship, appear almost as if bathed by a quietly luminous light. “I wish I could be more articulate, but the English language fails me. It sometimes feels as if the only words that still have meaning are place names: Ypres, Mons, Artois. Nothing else expresses.” Alice Winn doesn’t hold back from portraying the realities of war or from being critical of the British. Except for one character, Gaunt’s sister, the novel is populated by characters who for better or worse struck me as real. Given the period and depending on a character’s background, they would inevitably express troublesome views. Rather than indicting or condoning them, Winn allows her characters to be flawed, messy, and idiosyncratic. Notions of duty and honor, as well as cowardice, are recurring motifs, as we witness how these have shaped and continue to shape the characters. Some find themselves holding onto patriotic beliefs, others are unable to reconcile the realities of war with their lives so far. Some are driven mad, lashing out against their fellow men, or retreating inward, so inward that their physical body no longer matters. Time and again we are reminded of how young these soldiers are, and the myriad of banal ways their lives can be cut short. We see the disconnect between those on the front, and those who dispatch orders from afar, often sending hundreds or more to meet avoidable deaths. But you keep on reading, hoping against hope for a miracle, a way for Gaunt and Ellwood to be brought back together… “My dearest, darling Sidney, There was nothing else.” In Memoriam really tore me up. Yet, the majestic prose, the urgency of the story, and the bond between Gaunt and Ellwood kept me turning pages. There are so many scenes and passages that are harrowing, raw, and unsparing in their brutality. And maybe those make those moments of stillness, of quiet, all the more agonizingly tender. “Gaunt was woven into everything he read, saw, wrote, did, dreamt. Every poem had been written about him, every song composed for him, and Ellwood could not scrape his mind clean of him no matter how he tried. He thought perhaps all the pain would sour the love, but instead it drew him further in, as if he were Marc Antony, falling on his own sword. And it was a magical thing, to love someone so much; it was a feeling so strange and slippery, like a sheath of fabric cut from the sky.” And the more I read, the more worried I became, as it was clear that no one was safe and everything goes. And it was fucking heartbreaking to see just how unrecognizable some of the characters become. They may not have died but they are certainly not living. And Winn succeeds in capturing that specific terror of being confronted with the possibility that someone you know, someone you love, is there but not. Their body is, it may even look eerily unchanged. But their minds are no longer the same. You may lie to yourself into believing that they will be restored to who they were, that time will heal their wounds, but eventually, you might have no choice but to confront the reality: that they will never be who they were. The novel’s exploration of love, queerness, and of morality, definitely brought to mind works such as The Charioteer, The Absolutist, and Maurice. Winn’s writing has this pictorial quality and melancholy that really brought to mind the style of Mary Renault, so much so that even the way the characters speak, their inner turmoils, and the way they interact with one another, all made me think of Renault's work. The characters are continually faced with difficult choices, but the rhythms of war and the chaos of a battle rarely allow the time for them to question whether what they are doing is right, wrong, or another thing altogether. What do you do when you know you are being sent to your death? What do you do when the people around you are losing their minds? “Ellwood was surprised to find that he was not glad either, although his hatred grew and grew. But he could not hate soldiers. He longed to destroy, to hurt, to kill, but he wasn’t sure whom. Possibly the civilians.” My one quibble lies in Maud, Gaunt’s sister. She is the kind of female character that you can find in Natasha Pulley’s books or other historical fiction featuring a gay romance, that is a young woman who is a source of conflict for the couple, and always finds a way to excuse their callousness and selfishness (often by reminding the other person of the limitations imposed on her by her gender). Her presence annoyed me. Winn does, unlike Pulley, try to make her readers feel for Maud, but I had a hard time ignoring how uncaring and sanctimonious she was, especially towards Gaunt. And she never seemed to listen or to allow for someone else’s perspectives, presenting herself instead as the wronged party. But maybe a re-read will make her character more tolerable... “Ellwood had never been interested in ugliness, whereas Gaunt […] feared that ugliness was too important to ignore..” The main characters, Gaunt and Ellwood are compelling, and so are their differences and similarities. Not only does Winn render the patterns of their thoughts, but is able to convey their voices: the way they speak, the kind of things they would say, and so. The cadences of their speech, and the way their minds work, however exasperating, Winn captures all of this, so that they both felt like real people. This makes the way they change all the more heartbreaking. Having grown to care for them, to see them become so unlike themselves, it was truly harrowing. Their feelings for each other are beautiful. They long for each other, but they are unable to articulate their love. Yet, they do form a love language of sorts, as they borrow the words of other men, quoting poetry and the classics to one another. Even at Preshute their love is clouded by worry, by the possibility that their feelings are unrequited, and later on, it is obscured by the war. Trauma changes them, and it changes the way they can love, and I cannot stress enough how that scene, that scene you were waiting for so long, has none of the happiness and warmth you’d expected. This may seem like an exaggeration but I felt bereft. But it would have been disingenuous to have that scene go any other way. We encounter so many men within these pages. Some live, but a sentence, others live longer, but their safety is never a guarantee. “How alive it all seemed, and how gracious—to die in an era when your death bought you a brief moment at the centre of something. To be important, rather than one of millions.” Time and again Winn juxtaposes the beauty, the poetry, and the blissful freedom of their time at Preshute, with the newfound reality, which is oppressive, brutal, and bloody. In portraying Ellwood and Gaunt’s experiences on the front, Winn never takes the easy option, by making all of their actions and behaviors heroically selfless acts. Gaunt cannot wholly shake himself of his anti-war sentiments, nor can he ignore that he is fighting against the Germans, a people he still feels part of. Ellwood instead grows bitter towards that and those he’d loved, from the poets he admired to the civilians back home who easily speak of the war without even knowing its ravages first-hand. “It was a common conversation. In 1913, you might ask a new acquaintance where he had gone to school, or what he did for a living. In 1916, it was this: what part of yourself did you most fear losing?” The time period is depicted with startling realism. From showing the constraints experienced by Gaunt and Ellwood, their awareness of their difference from others, not only when it comes to their sexuality, but Gaunt is half-german and Ellwood has Jewish roots. We also see how Preshute both insulated them from the real world, but not wholly, as there they are still expected to obey certain hierarchies and traditions, and they are taught that displays of emotions are a weakness. “He did not know that it was the first thing homesick little boys in their dormitories learnt at boarding school: how to cry in silence.” In Memoriam is a novel that hits hard. It’s beautiful, theatrical, and romantic. It’s brutal, tragic, and devastating. It’s a book about war, death, trauma, and grief. It’s also a book about love: the love between friends, between brothers in arms, between allies, and, of course, between lovers. It’s by no means an easy read but it’s a gripping one. If you don’t mind sobbing, and feeling as if your heart was in your throat, In Memoriam is a soul-stirring and arresting read that has your name on it. A symphonic meditation on love, brotherhood, masculinity, death, grief, and trauma, In Memoriam is a startlingly evocative and deeply excruciating debut novel that I am planning on losing myself into again and again. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 28, 2023
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Jan 30, 2023
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Sep 03, 2022
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Hardcover
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B08VVTRFY3
| 4.26
| 454,191
| Apr 20, 2021
| Apr 27, 2021
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it was amazing
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❀ blog ❀ thestorygraph ❀ letterboxd ❀ tumblr ❀ ko-fi ❀ 4 ½ stars Richly observed and heartbreakingly candid Crying in H Mart provides a powerful acco ❀ blog ❀ thestorygraph ❀ letterboxd ❀ tumblr ❀ ko-fi ❀ 4 ½ stars Richly observed and heartbreakingly candid Crying in H Mart provides a powerful account of a complicated mother-daughter relationship. In her memoir musician Michelle Zauner writes with painful clarity of when at age 25 her mother was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. Zauner’s recollection of her mother’s terminal illness, her rapidly deteriorating health, and eventual death is heart-wrenching. Zauner conveys with devastating precision the grief, confusion, and hurt she experienced in the wake of her mother’s diagnosis. Interspersed throughout her memories of her mother’s illness are glimpses into her childhood and teenage years. In looking back to her youth Zauner examines her strained relationship with her mother, her evolving relationship to her Korean American identity, and the crucial role that food, in particular Korean food, played in her upbringing and adulthood. Food becomes a tether to her mother and her Korean heritage (speaking of which, there is this wonderful video starring Zauner & Maangchi ). Zauner’s immersive storytelling, which is brimming with piercing insights into love, loss, and language, is utterly captivating. Despite the harrowing subject matter, I found myself unwilling to interrupt my reading. In navigating her grief and her shifting perception of her mother Zauner presents her readers with some truly beautiful reflections on motherhood and daughterhood. I admire Zauner for being able to write with such lucidity about her grief and her mother’s illness. Zauner’s introspections also are worthy of praise as she is unflinching in her critiquing of her past-self. Zauner's examination of her often uneasy relationship with her mother underscores each episodic chapter within her memoir. In her recollection of her mother Zauner stresses how easy it is to mistake less 'conventional' demonstrations of love and affection as 'lesser'. Reading Crying in H Mart made my heart ache. Frank yet lyrical this is the kind of memoir that will leave a mark on its readers. ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. re-read: this was just as heart-wrenching this second time around. Yet, there is something about Zauner's voice that I find so compelling that makes her memoir into an ultimately uplifting book. There were many instances where I was moved to tears: from reading of the tragic reality of helplessly witnessing your own mother's deteriorating health, to those instances where food becomes a binding force. I loved the way Zauner wrote about the power of food, in particular those recipes that are part of our childhood or that remind us of our culture or of a specific person. I was reminded of the important role that food played in my family growing up, in particular during my stays with my grandparents. Even if I wasn't familiar with the foods and ingredients populating Zauner's story the vivid way in which she wrote about them—their aromas, their compatibility to each other, the places where you would find these—made it all too easy for me to visualise them. This memoir is a powerful ode to food and the bond between mothers & daughters, specifically Zauner's immeasurably complex and fierce relationship with her mother. ...more |
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2
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Apr 05, 2022
May 02, 2021
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Apr 23, 2021
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Kindle Edition
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0385539258
| 4.32
| 683,706
| Mar 10, 2015
| Mar 10, 2015
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it was amazing
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❀ blog ❀ thestorygraph ❀ letterboxd ❀ tumblr ❀ ko-fi ❀ “Fear and hatred, fear and hatred: often, it seemed that those were the only two qualities he❀ blog ❀ thestorygraph ❀ letterboxd ❀ tumblr ❀ ko-fi ❀ “Fear and hatred, fear and hatred: often, it seemed that those were the only two qualities he possessed. Fear of everyone else; hatred of himself.” A Little Life is a heart-wrenching tour de force. Dark, all-consuming, devastating, moving, stunning, brutal, dazzling, beautiful, disturbing, A Little Life is all of these and so much more. This is the kind of novel that haunts. “Fairness is for happy people, for people who have been lucky enough to have lived a life defined more by certainties than by ambiguities.” The first fifty pages or so may give one the illusion that the story they are about to read is the usual tale of a group of friends trying to make it in the big city. Which in some ways, it is. Friendship is one of the novel’s underlying motifs. But, A Little Life is first and foremost a novel about pain, suffering, and trauma. And as highly as I think of this novel I could not in good conscience bring myself to recommend it to anyone else. Large portions of this 800-page novel are dedicated to depicting, in minute detail, a man's past and present physical, emotional, and psychological suffering. We also have to read paragraph after paragraph in which adults inflict all kinds of horrific abuse on a child. What saves this novel from being yet another sensationalistic or gratuitous take on sexual abuse are Hanya Yanagihara's clear and realist style and the many moments of beauty, kindness, love, empathy that are interjected throughout the narrative. Still, even so, I can see why some may find A Little Life to be too much. Hell, there were many instances where I found myself thinking 'I can't it, this is too much'. But who was I kidding? Once I started this novel I knew that I had to finish it and in fact I devoured it over the course of three days. “Friendship was witnessing another’s slow drip of miseries, and long bouts of boredom, and occasional triumphs. It was feeling honored by the privilege of getting to be present for another person’s most dismal moments, and knowing that you could be dismal around him in return.” The novel recounts, decade-by-decade, the lives of four friends in New York City from their early 20s to their 50s. There is JB, a gay painter, Malcolm, who still lives at home and dreams of becoming an architect, Willem, an orphan who is pursuing an acting career, and Jude, also an orphan, who is a lawyer. Jude's is reticent about his past and his friends know to leave it well alone. He has a limp and suffers from many health-related issues, which were caused by a car injury. As the story progresses the narrative shifts its focus on Jude and his many ongoing struggles. Jude's horrific childhood and teenage years are revealed to us slowly over the course of the story. To cope with his traumatic experiences Jude self-harms, something that definitely hit close to home so I appreciate the authenticity with which Yanagihara portrays Jude's self-harming. Similarly, his self-hatred and self-blaming are rendered with painful realism, without any judgment on the author's part. While there were many—and I mean many—horrifying and painful scenes, there are moments of beauty, lightness, and tenderness. As an adult Jude is surrounded by people who love him, there are his friends, colleagues, neighbours, mentors, and it is here that the novel is at its most moving. This is a novel about sexual abuse, pain, grief, friendship, love, intimacy, hope, and silences. The characters (it feels wrong to even call them that) are fully-formed individuals, imperfect, at times incongruent, yet nonetheless lovable. Oh, how my heart ached for them. Yanagihara foreshadows certain events but even so, I found myself hoping against hope that the story would not be a tragic one. Yet, this unwillingness on Yanagihara's part to provide a happy ending or to give her characters sort of closure that makes her novel simultaneously subversive and all the more realistic. Things don't always get better, people can't always overcome or reconcile themselves with their trauma, love doesn't 'fix' people, you can't magic away someone else's pain. I have never sobbed while reading a book but I was sobbing intermittently throughout my reading of A Little Life. At times reading about Jude's pain was brought me to tears, at times it was when coming across a scene that is brimming with kindness and love (basically anything with jude and harold or jude and willem). “I want to be alone,” he told him. This novel made me feel exposed, naked, vulnerable, seen in a way I wasn't ready to be seen. It broke my fucking heart. It disturbed me, it made me ugly-cry, it made me want to find Yanagihara so I could shout at her. To describe A Little Life as a piece of fiction seems sacrilegious. I experienced A Little Life. From the first pages, I found myself immersed in Jude, Willem, JB, and Malcolm's lives. When I reached the end I felt bereft, exhausted, numb so much so that even now I'm finding it difficult to to articulate why I loved this so much (then again my favourite band is Radiohead so i clearly like things that depress me). I doubt I will ever be brave enough to read it again but I also know that I will be thinking about A Little Life for years to come. Adroit, superbly written, and populated by a richly drawn A Little Life is a novel unlike any other, one that you should read at your own risk. ps: the bond between Jude and Willem brought to mind a certain exchange from Anne Carson's translation of Orestes: PYLADES: I'll take care of you. ORESTES: It's rotten work. PYLADES: Not to me. Not if it's you. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 16, 2021
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Apr 18, 2021
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Apr 14, 2021
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Hardcover
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3.97
| 28,217
| Mar 02, 2021
| Mar 02, 2021
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it was amazing
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❀ blog ❀ thestorygraph ❀ letterboxd ❀ tumblr ❀ ko-fi ❀ tw: eating disorders “I thought a polished appearance and stellar behavior would be the pass❀ blog ❀ thestorygraph ❀ letterboxd ❀ tumblr ❀ ko-fi ❀ tw: eating disorders “I thought a polished appearance and stellar behavior would be the passport to belonging. And when I inevitably failed at perfection, I could at least wilfully do everything in my power to be kicked out before anyone left me.” Bursting with sharp humor and insight Yolk is a bighearted and profoundly honest novel. Never have I ever felt so understood and seen by a book. I have become used to eating disorders, bulimia especially, either being made into punchlines or sensationalised (i am looking at you Milk Fed). So, understandably I have become weary of reading books with main characters who have an ED. And then, lo and behold, Yolk. There is so much to love about this novel. First, our narrator, Jayne Baek. She's a listless twenty-year-old Korean-American college student who lives in an illegal sublet in New York. She shares the apartment with Jeremy, a polyamorous white guy she sort of had a relationship with. Not only is Jeremy scrounging off Jayne—over the course of a few months he only paid his half of the rent once—but he also gets her to help him with his 'projects'. Although Jayne hangs out with other people, she keeps others at length, partly out of fear of being rejected, partly because she doesn't want people to inspect her life too closely. Out of the blue, her older sister June shows up. June has a high-paying finance job, lives by herself in a swanky apartment, and, unlike Jayne, seems to have her shit together. The two sisters are not on the best of terms and in spite of living in the same city they have not seen each other for two years. Although Jayne isn't keen on making amends with her sister, her world is upended by the news that June has been diagnosed with uterine cancer. What follows is a heartfelt tale navigating the fraught relationship between Jayne and June. Jayne's voice is incredibly authentic. She could be petty, silly, and cold. She's also deeply insecure. Jayne wants to desperately leave her childhood and teenage years in Texas behind and tries to do so by barely keeping in touch with her family. She's never been able to fully transcend the linguistic, cultural, and generational divides between her and her parents, which has caused her to feel at a remove from them. When June barges into her life Jayne isn't all that happy. On the one hand, she finds June dorky, embarrassing even. On the other, she's ashamed—of lousy Jeremy, the crappy apartment she's living in, her 'lack' of success, and her ED. Because of this, June and Jayne's 'reconciliation is not smooth. Rarely have I come across such a realistic portrayal of siblings. When it comes to sisters especially creators/authors usually are rather lazy in terms of their characterization: one of them is good the other one is bad, or one of them is beautiful and the other is a 'plain jane', or one of them is outgoing and the other one serious (you get the gists). Choi does not confine June and Jayne to such narrow roles. They are both struggling in their own ways, they are capable of getting under each other's skin (in record amounts of time) as no other person can yet their shared upbringing, or history if you will, also means that they 'get' each other. The dynamic between them felt incredibly authentic. From their arguments, which vacillated between being playful and serious, to those quieter moments between them. Speaking of arguments, Choi writes some of the most realistic arguments that I have ever read. Usually, arguments in books/tv shows/films have this scripted quality to them (they either don't seem very spontaneous or they seem to build up gradually reaching a crescendo that ends with the people involved going their separate ways or breaking up or whatnot). Here instead the fights between June and Jayne are far more true-to-life. Sometimes they can momentarily defuse the tension between them, or sometimes their arguing reignites after a moment of calm. Choi excels at dialogues in general. I particularly loved the banter and flirting between June and Patrick. While the narrative does focus a lot on the love/hate bond between June and Jayne, Yolk is very much about Jayne and her relationship with herself and her body. I really appreciated the way Choi handled Jayne's ED. While readers know that she has an ED, we only know know towards the end of the novel. I thought this was both clever and extremely thoughtful on Choi's part. Clever because it is indicative of Jayne's self-denial. While Jayne knows that has an ED she doesn't want to really think about what this means. I used to rationalize my ED by treating my bulimia as a necessary step towards 'thinness'. I knew deep down that what I was doing was definitely not healthy, but I trained my brain into thinking that it was just another part of my daily routine. So, Jayne's denial really resonated with me. I could also really relate to Jayne's attitude towards perfection as I too have the bad habit of abandoning things if I don't get good enough results. The romance between Jayne and Patrick was this great combination of cute and realistic. Their chemistry was sweet, and I loved their moments together. Jayne's narration is full of cultural references which made her environment(s) all the more real. I did struggle with the fashion brands as I happen to be fashion-backwards. Yolk is a real beauty of a novel. It was funny, moving, whip-smart, and brutally honest. If you are looking for a more mature YA novel that explores sisterhood, mental health, love, heartbreak, and Korean-American identity, look no further (I just finished this and I already want to re-read it). Confession time: I actually didn't think that I would like this novel. A few years ago I tried reading Permanent Record but I wasn't vibing with it and ended up DNFing it and writing a high-key mean review (which I have now deleted and feel really shitty about posting in the first place). Choi please accept my apologies. As Madonna once said: Je suis désolé, lo siento, ik ben droevig, sono spiacente, perdóname. ...more |
Notes are private!
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2
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Mar 27, 2022
Apr 27, 2021
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Mar 28, 2022
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Mar 05, 2021
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1787395294
| 9781787395299
| 1787395294
| 4.12
| 10,084
| Jun 24, 2021
| Jun 24, 2021
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it was amazing
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| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | 4 ½ stars (rounded up to 5 as this is a debut) “When I next love someone, they will die suddenly, unfairly, quickly, od| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | 4 ½ stars (rounded up to 5 as this is a debut) “When I next love someone, they will die suddenly, unfairly, quickly, oddly, suspiciously, horrifyingly, traumatically; they’ll die in the worst way that someone could, and I will have to stand by and watch, take a photo.” Funny, raw, heartbreaking, Sunset is an exceptional debut novel. Jessie Cave’s unsparing portrayal of grief in all of its complexities is striking for its realism and depth. Cave’s blend of humor and tragedy did bring to mind Fleabag and I would definitely recommend fans of that show, or I May Destroy You for that matter, to pick this up. The novel is narrated by Ruth who is in her mid-20s and leading a rather directionless lifestyle. Her older sister, Hannah, is very much her anchor and the two share an intense bond. Rather than resorting to the classic good/bad sister type of characterisation Cave makes both Ruth and Hannah into multidimensional and entirely authentic people, who have flaws and idiosyncrasies as well as many other qualities. The two love each other to bits, even if they bicker a lot. They are best friends, each other’s worlds, really. The two go on a summer holiday together and a horrific accident happens to leave Ruth bereft. She attempts to shut other people out and begins working at a Costa in Heathrow airport. As time goes by Ruth is forced to confront what happened on that holiday. There is so much that I loved about this novel. Ruth is a wonderful narrator. Her anger, loneliness, grief, numbness, frustration, and sadness are depicted with such heart and realism as to bring her character to life. Her sense of humor, occasionally dark, always weird, made me laugh out loud and like her almost instantly. Some of her thoughts may very well make you uncomfortable but I appreciated how honest Ruth’s voice was. Her relationship with her sister is the central aspect of her story and their dynamic was wonderful and heart-rending. From their small habits to the way they speak to others or each other, Cave captures everything about them, making Ruth and Hannah feel less like fictional characters than real-life individuals. I also loved the way Cave portrays and discusses things like depression, death, sex, menstruations, and other things that are usually sensationalised or romanticised or completely glossed over. In addition, Ruth’s narrative is full of piercing observations about other people or her own life. I also found that those references to ‘real’ places (such as Costa, Tesco, WHSmith) made Ruth’s London all the more vivid. It's impressive that this is Cave’s debut as it is such an accomplished novel. Her prose is self-assured, her tone is consistent, and her characterisation is phenomenal. Cave’s depiction of grief and sisterhood is moving and believably messy. At first, I wasn’t sure about the way the dialogue is laid out (it appears in a script-like way) but I soon grew accustomed to it and I commend Cave for her choice (rather than jumping on the no quotation marks bandwagon). Speaking of dialogues, these too are marvellously realistic. The exchanges Ruth has with others could be funny, awkward, and/or tense. Regardless of the nature of the discussion or conversation, Cave’s dialogues rang true-to-life. Sunset is a bittersweet love story between two sisters that is bound to make you tear up and laugh out loud (often in quick succession). If you happen to like stories that focus on sibling bonds or that follow the experiences of directionless millennials, well, consider giving Sunset a shot. To sum it up: I loved this review so much one day after reading my netgalley copy I popped into waterstones during my lunch break and bought a hardback edition of it. ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. ...more |
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Jul 17, 2021
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Jul 19, 2021
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Mar 03, 2021
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Hardcover
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1573227161
| 9781573227162
| 1573227161
| 4.06
| 9,184
| Feb 02, 1998
| Feb 01, 1999
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it was amazing
| “It’s funny. When you leave your home and wander really far, you always think, ‘I want to go home.’ But then you come home, and of course it’s not the “It’s funny. When you leave your home and wander really far, you always think, ‘I want to go home.’ But then you come home, and of course it’s not the same. You can’t live with it, you can’t live away from it. And it seems like from then on there’s always this yearning for some place that doesn’t exist. I felt that. Still do. I’m never completely at home anywhere. But it’s a good place to be, I think. It’s like floating. From up above, you can see everything at once. It’s the only way how.” re-read: This is my favorite coming of age novel of all time. It makes for such an immersive reading experience. The characters, Birdie’s voice, the events that take place and come to shape her childhood and adolescence, they are all rendered in incredible, if painful, realism. Yet, despite the mood of ambivalence permeating Birdie’s coming of age, I have come to consider Caucasia a comfort read. Senna's descriptions have a cinematic quality to them and so many scenes & moments are imbued with a sense of nostalgia. My heart ached for Birdie, for the way she is made to feel both hypervisible and invisible, someone who is made to feel perpetually on the outside looking in. Her longing to belong, and most of all, her desire to be reunited with her sister, are portrayed with great empathy and nuance. Enthralling and haunting, Caucasia makes for a dazzling coming-of-age story. With piercing and heart-wrenching clarity, Danzy Senna captures on the page the psychological and emotional turmoils experienced by her young protagonist. Similarly to her later novels, Symptomatic and New People, Caucasia is a work that is heavily concerned with race, racial passing, and identity. But whereas Symptomatic and New People present their readers with short and deeply unnerving narratives that blur the lines between reality and the fantastical, Caucasia is a work that is deeply grounded in realism. Its structure takes a far more traditional route, something in the realms of a bildungsroman novel. This larger scope allows for more depth, both in terms of character and themes. Birdie’s world and the people who populate it are brought to life in striking detail. Senna’s prose, which is by turns scintillating and stark, makes Birdie’s story truly riveting and impossible to put down. Caucasia is divided in three sections, each one narrated by Birdie. The novel opens in Boston during the 1970s Civil Rights and Black Power movements when the city’s efforts to desegregate schools was met with white resistance and exacerbated existing racial tensions. Enter Birdie: her father Deck is a Black scholar who is deeply preoccupied with theories about race; her mother, Sandy, is from a blue-blood white woman who has come to reject her Mayflower ancestry and is quite active in the ‘fight’ for Civil Rights. Birdie is incredibly close to her older sister Cole, so much so that the two have created and often communicate in their own invented language. Before their parents’ rather messy break-up the two have been homeschooled, something that has sheltered them somewhat from the realities of the world. Even so, they both have been made aware of their ‘differences’. Whereas Cole resembles her dad, Birdie is paler and has straight hair, something that leads people to assume that she is white or perhaps Hispanic. During their rare visits to their maternal grandmother, Cole is completely ignored while Birdie receives all of her (unwanted quite frankly) attention. Later on, Deck’s new girlfriend is shown to be openly intolerant of Birdie for not being Black enough. When the girls begin attending a Black Power School, Birdie is teased and bullied. While Birdie is in awe of Cole and dreams that she could look like her, she's also peripherally aware of the privileges afforded to her by her appearance. We also see how Sandy, their mother, for all her talk, treats Birdie and Cole differently (there is a scene in which she implies that unlike Birdie Cole should not be worried about paedophiles/serial killers). Sandy also struggles to help Cole with her hair, and soon their mutual frustration with each other morphs into something more difficult to bridge. When Sandy gets involved in some 'shady' activities her relationship with Cole sours further. Birdie’s life is upended when Sandy, convinced the FBI is after her, flees Boston. In pursuit of racial equality Deck and his girlfriend go to Brazil, taking Cole with them, while Birdie is forced to leave Boston with Sandie. Sandie believes that the only way to escape the feds is to use Birdie’s ‘ambiguous’ body to their advantage. Not only does Birdie have no choice but to pass but it is her mother who chooses her ‘white’ identity, that of Jesse Goldman. The two settle in New Hampshire where Birdie struggles to adjust to new life. While the two spend some time in a women’s commune, they eventually move out and into a predominantly white town. Sandy’s paranoia leads her to distrust others, and secretiveness and suspicion become fixtures in their lives. Being forced to pass and being forced to pretend that her sister and father never existed alienate Birdie (from her own self, from Sandy, and from other people). She cannot truly connect to those around her given that she has to pretend that she is a white Jewish girl. She eventually makes friends and in her attempts to fit in emulates the way they speak and act. Because the people around her believe she is white they are quite openly racist, and time and again Birdie finds herself confronted with racist individuals. other people’s racism. Senna captures with painful clarity the discomfort that many girls experience in their pre and early teens. For a lot of the novel, Birdie doesn’t really know who she is and who she wants to be, and because of this, she looks at the girls and women around her. But by doing this, she is merely imitating them, and not really figuring out her identity. In addition to having to perform whiteness, Birdie denies her own queerness. As with Symptomatic and New People, Senna provides a razor-sharp commentary on race and identity. While Caucasia is easily the author's least disquieting work, it still invokes a sense of unease in the reader. On the one hand, we are worried for Birdie, who is clearly unhappy and lost. On the other hand, we encounter quite a few people who are horrible and there are many disquieting scenes. Yet, Senna doesn’t condemn her characters, and in fact, there are quite a few instances where I was touched by the empathy she shows towards them (I’m thinking of Sandy in particular). It provides a narrative in which its main character is made to feel time and again 'Other', which aggravates the disconnect she experiences between her physical appearance and self. The people around her often express a binary view of race, where you are either/or but not both. Because of this Birdie struggles to define herself, especially when she has to pass as white. Senna subverts the usual passing narrative: unlike other authors, she doesn’t indict her passer by employing the ‘tragic mulatta’ trope. Throughout the narrative, Senna underscores how racial identity is a social construct and not a biological fact. However, she also shows the legacies of slavery and segregation in this supposedly ‘post-racial’ America as well as the concrete realities that race have in everyday life (Deck being questioned by the police, the disparities between the way Cole and Birdie are treated, the racism and prejudice expressed by so many characters, the way Samantha is treated at school). Throughout the narrative Senna raises many thought-provoking points, opening the space for in-depth and nuanced discussions on identity, performativity, peer pressure, and sexuality. The realism of Birdie’s experiences was such that I felt that I was reading a memoir (and there are some definite parallels between Birdie and Senna). If you found Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls and Dog Flowers: A Memoir to be compelling reads I thoroughly recommend you check out Caucasia. I can also see this coming of age appealing to fans of Elena Ferrante's The Lying Life of Adults. While they do not touch upon the same issues, they both hone in on the alienation experienced by young girls whose fraught path from childhood to adolescence make them aware of painful truths and realizations (that they are not necessarily good or beautiful, that the people around them aren’t either, that adults and parents can be selfish and liars, that not all parents love their children). I would also compare Caucasia to Monkey Beach which is also an emotionally intelligent and thoughtful coming-of-age. And, of course, if you are interested in passing narratives such as Passing and The Vanishing Half you should really check out all of Senna's books. The novel's closing act is extremely rewarding and heart-rendering. Curiously enough the first time I read this I appreciated it but did not love it. This second time around…it won me over. Completely. Birdie is such a realistic character, and I loved, in spite or maybe because, of her flaws. Her story arc is utterly absorbing and I struggled to tear my eyes away from the page (even if I had already read this and therefore knew what would happen next). Senna’s dialogues ring true to life and so do the scenarios she explores. Birdie’s voice is unforgettable and I can’t wait to re-read this again. edit: I will say that although Birdie yearns to be seen as Black and is generally dismissive of whiteness and western beauty standards, she inevitably, given to all the racism and colourism she is exposed to in New Hampshire and by her grandmother, struggles with internalised racism. The way she views and describes the girls and women around her might also come across as dated, especially when it comes to her mother's weight. Additionally, at school Birdie is also thrown into a microcosm where ableism, fatphobia, and slut-shaming are the norm. Given that this was published in the late 90s and that the story is set in the 70s and 80s, I saw it as reflecting a particular voice (that of a teen) and time period...so I guess if you do not vibe with books with content like that you might want to put this on the back-burner. ...more |
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1529043395
| 9781529043396
| 1529043395
| 3.86
| 75,098
| Jul 20, 2021
| Jul 22, 2021
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it was amazing
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0008169527
| 9780008169503
| B089K9KB9G
| 4.01
| 47,236
| Apr 01, 2021
| Apr 01, 2021
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it was amazing
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❀ blog ❀ thestorygraph ❀ letterboxd ❀ tumblr ❀ ko-fi ❀ This is the fifth novel that I have read by Mhairi McFarlane and it is her best one yet. I said ❀ blog ❀ thestorygraph ❀ letterboxd ❀ tumblr ❀ ko-fi ❀ This is the fifth novel that I have read by Mhairi McFarlane and it is her best one yet. I said this in my review for her previous novel, If I Never Met You, but McFarlane is always improving as a writer. While Last Night presents readers with her trademark blend of humor of realism, the tone of the narrative sets it apart from the author's previous novels. Rather than focusing on a character coming to terms with a breakup—as with It’s Not Me, It’s You, Don't You Forget About Me, and If I Never Met You—Last Night centers around grief. The beginning of the novel informs us that our narrator and protagonist have lost someone close to her but we do not who or how until further down the storyline which looks back to the time before this loss. Eve, Justin, Susie, and Ed have been best friends since they were in school and are now navigating their thirties together, still as closer as ever. Eve's feelings towards Ed however may be more than friendly which is not easy given that he has a girlfriend. After 'that night', this group of friends is no longer the same, and Eve discovers that perhaps they did not know each other, as well as they'd thought. Last Night captures in painful clarity Eve's grief and sorrow. Throughout the course of the novel, Eve is forced to confront how her life has irrevocably changed. Not only did she lose one of the people she loved most in the world but to discover that that person was hiding something big from you only complicates matters. I found Eve's narrative to be compellingly introspective, and McFarlane depicts her feelings and emotions with great empathy. I really appreciated that the story focused on forgiveness and on nuanced characters capable of change. The humor was a bit less PG than her previous novels and it honestly made the story and the characters all the authentic. The romance here takes the backseat to Eve's character growth, and in some ways, it made those more romantic scenes all the sweeter. Also, at last, this novel avoids the unnecessary 'miscommunication' that always seems to happen in this genre. Then, to be fair, unlike McFarlane other books, I would not call Last Night a romcom (even if it has both romance and comedy). I loved the cultural references, even if many of those references were lost on me, and the story's strong sense of place. Also, I am a sucker for stories with road trips and this had one so... I thought that this was a very moving and funny story that definitely resonated with me. I loved the themes the author explored in this story and I was sad to reach the last page. McFarlane has truly outdone herself. ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. ...more |
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Feb 21, 2021
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Feb 22, 2021
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Jul 06, 2020
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Kindle Edition
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B07T8YDN6V
| 3.90
| 6,100
| Jan 12, 2021
| Feb 04, 2021
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really liked it
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| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | “To heal, I would need to look inward as well as outward. I would need to examine my memories. I would need to interrog| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | “To heal, I would need to look inward as well as outward. I would need to examine my memories. I would need to interrogate the stories I told myself—about myself, about my family, about the world.” Unflinching and elegant Aftershocks is an impressive, engrossing, and deeply moving memoir by a promising author. In her memoir, Nadia Owusu explores the way in which her upbringing shaped her sense of self. Throughout the course of her non-linear narrative, which jumps from Ghana, America, England, Italy, Ethiopia, and Uganda, from her childhood to her adulthood, identity, loss, fear, madness, longing, belonging, abandonment, and Blackness are underlining motifs and, as the title suggests, Owusu uses earthquakes related terminology—foreshocks, faults, aftershocks, mainshocks—as a lens through to which she reassesses her past experiences and her shifting perception of herself. “I ached for lasting connection, for a place where rejection was not inevitable. No matter how many times I stood on bare floors, surrounded by blank walls, telling myself I belonged everywhere and to everywhere, emptied houses never stopped feeling like ruin.” Rather than providing a straightforward linear retelling of her life, Owusu’s narrative jumps from memory to memory, in a way that felt natural and far from confusing. She dwells on different periods of her childhood and her teen years, in particular, on her relationship to her father (who she idolized), her mother who after marrying for all intent and purposes disappeared from Owusu and her younger sister’s lives, and her rocky relationship with her father’s ‘new’ wife. Owusu is both observant and incisive when it comes to examining herself, her family, and the countries she lived in. As the daughter of a Ghanian father and an Armenian mother raised across numerous and vastly different countries she is time and again forced to question who she is, how others perceive, how she fits within a certain society. Those instances recounting her time in Rome were particularly hard to read as I was born and grew up there and could easily imagine the kind of way in which Italians would have exoticized her Blackness (my best friend growing up although white had dark skin and was often taunted and called ‘dirty’ because of it). I also found her relationship with her father, who died of cancer, to be incredibly moving. I truly respect how self-critical Owusu is when revisiting her childhood as she does not paint herself as the hero nor the villain of her own story. She has hurt and been hurt, she grieved and loved, she longed for a mother figure yet she also pushed her stepmother away. Owusu is also cognisant of her own privilege, for example, when she observes the poverty and violence present in Ethiopia. While the people she writes of are rendered in vivid detail, some of what she recounts is obscured, by pain or distance, so that each moment she writes appears in a unique light. Because her father worked for UN Owusu grew up in many different countries. When revisiting her memories of her many 'homes' she not only writes about her personal/family history but often delves into a country's own history. For example, when remembering her time in Ghana, she dedicates many passages to exploring Ghana, its people, its rich history, and its myths. It was truly illuminating. I also found her discussions on language and code-switching to be deeply captivating. Owusu's nuanced approached to race, racism, and Blackness makes for some thought-provoking reading material. Towards the end Owusu's earthquake metaphor does seem a bit strained, one could even say affected, but I could see why she is so obsessed by it. It allows her to understand the topography of her own mind and body, and the marks left by the trauma, grief, and abandonment she experienced growing up. Aftersohocks is a striking memoir that moved me tears. Owusu’s prose, by turns graceful and direct, combined with her distinctive storytelling (her non-linear structure, her shifts in pacing and style, her earthquake metaphor, her ability to depict time, place, and person) make Aftersohocks into a powerful and not soon to be forgotten memoir. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 06, 2021
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Feb 10, 2021
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Jun 06, 2020
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Kindle Edition
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1459746422
| 9781459746428
| 1459746422
| 4.10
| 442
| Sep 2020
| Oct 06, 2020
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really liked it
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| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | From its heartbreaking first pages, to its lump-in-your-throat epilogue, After Elias is an emotionally charged novel. “P| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | From its heartbreaking first pages, to its lump-in-your-throat epilogue, After Elias is an emotionally charged novel. “People can bring you pain, but nothing will hurt more than the pain you inflict on yourself.” Grief, guilt, regret, and fear dominate Tan’s narrative. Coen Caraway and Elias Santos are meant to have a fairy-tale wedding and live happily ever after. One week before their big day, the airplane piloted by Elias crashes into the Arctic Ocean, leaving Coen, who had just arrived on the idyllic Mexican island that was meant to host their wedding, bereft. When the authorities begin speculating whether the crash wasn’t accidental, Elias becomes a prime suspect. His cryptic final words, “Pronto dios” (“soon god”) disconcert an already grieving Coen. While his family and friends plead for him to return home, to Vancouver, Coen refuses. His stay on the island however does not keep his doubts at bay. In spite of his insisting that “he is fine”, Coen finds himself spiralling. In the passing days he tries to make sense of this unimaginable tragedy and of his own relationship with Elias. As the narrative moves from past to present, readers begin to gain a picture of both Coen and Elias. “Life is nothing more than an elaborate house. It starts out small, a simple shelter. Then we build upon it, room by room, believing in the necessity of every expansion, every renovation. By the time we realize it is no longer a shelter but a tomb, it’s too late.” Coen's grief, confusion, and uncertainties feel strikingly authentic.Tan allows his readers to witness and understand the depth and magnitude of Coen's discordant feelings. Coen’s thoughts, emotions, and impressions are articulated in a subtle yet lyrical language. I was often surprised, and spellbound, by Tan’s arresting imagery. “The only sounds in the room are my pounding heart and fitful breathing. I am Lazarus returning from the land of the dead, a corpse trapped by life.” Tan renders Coen's pain with exceptional compassion, without sensationalising Coen's—and other characters’—grief and desperation. What particularly struck me was how ‘real’ Coen felt. His fears and anxieties are depicted with incredible authenticity. The way he simultaneously wants and doesn’t want to confront the darkest aspects of his relationship with Elias, his dormant yet inherent conviction that he will never be happy, his inability to express how he feels...everything about him felt real. Other characters, such as his two best friends, Vivi and Decker, his brother, Clark, the hotel’s bartender, Gabriel, are just as believable. Decker in particular has a complex relationship with Coen, one that will undoubtedly make some readers tear up (I certainly did). These characters are flawed yet capable of change. While readers may not come to know them as well as they do Coen, they will get an impression of what kind of person they are (or want to be). There was one character who wasn't as credible as the others and plays an unnecessary role in Coen's story (but I could easily overlook her given that she is a mere blip in this otherwise stunning novel). Although Tan doesn't provide lots of descriptions when it comes to the appearance of his characters or the island itself, his narrative is remarkably atmospheric. Tan's discerning prose relays the mood or quality of a certain conversation or moment. The distinctive and deceptively dream-like setting of the island, as well as Coen's own dreams, reminded me of certain novels by Ann Patchett, in particular State of Wonder and The Magician's Assistant. The way in which Tan approaches painful themes bear resemblance to Benjamin Alire Sáenz's own approach in his more adult novels, such Last Night I Sang to the Monster and In Perfect Light. Through his prose, which is in turns lucid and opaque, Tan showcases his capacity for empathy and compassion. He offers insights into grief, loneliness, abuse, mental illness, and trauma. After Elias is an artful and heart-wrenching novel. Although it doesn’t make for ‘easy’ reading material, its cathartic narrative and underlying message of hope are guaranteed to leave a lasting impression. PS: I'm so grateful to NetGalley for having accepted my request to read After Elias. I'm not sure I would have ever read this novel if I hadn’t spotted on NetGalley’s ‘recently added’ page. Read more reviews on my blog / / / View all my reviews on Goodreads ...more |
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Apr 08, 2020
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Apr 09, 2020
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Apr 07, 2020
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Paperback
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0349701466
| 9780349701462
| 0349701466
| 4.14
| 774,858
| Jun 02, 2020
| Jun 25, 2020
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it was amazing
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| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | “At first, passing seemed so simple, she couldn’t understand why her parents hadn’t done it. But she was young then. Sh| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | “At first, passing seemed so simple, she couldn’t understand why her parents hadn’t done it. But she was young then. She hadn’t realized how long it takes to become somebody else, or how lonely it can be living in a world not meant for you.” Brit Bennett's second novel is a tour de force. The Vanishing Half gripped me from the very pages as I was instantly transfixed by Bennett's subtle yet penetrating prose. Bennett is a brilliant storyteller. Not one word is wasted, or so it seemed as I had the distinct impression that her writing was simultaneously concise and striking. Bennett's prose effortlessly moves from present to past, as her story traverses decades (from the 60s to the 80s) and transports us from the small-town of Mallard in Louisiana to LA or New York. Bennett maps the lives of many characters, who inhabit markedly different worlds, focusing in particular on the lives and voices of the Vignes women. “The Vignes twins left without saying good-bye, so like any sudden disappearance, their departure became loaded with meaning.” Most people regard twins, particularly identical twins, as a source of fascination. Bennett, fully aware of this, adds a layer of depth to the mystique of twins by making the Vignes embark on drastically different paths. After witnessing their father’s lynching at the hands of white men, the Vignes have little love for their small-town, and aged sixteen they flee to New Orleans. Things don’t go as planned however and the twins become irrevocably separated. While Stella returns with a daughter to the hometown she so longed to escape, Desiree passes for white and marries a wealthy white man. In spite of this, their bond keeps them tethered together and even as the years go by the Vignes twins struggle to reconcile themselves with the loneliness of their ‘twinless’ existence. Their respective daughters share little in common. While Stella’s daughter Kennedy enjoys a life of privilege, Desiree’s daughter Jude is discriminated for her dark skin by her peers and the adults of her community. “The hardest part about becoming someone else was deciding to. The rest was only logistics.” The Vanishing Half tells a heartbreaking and relevant intergenerational tale. While Bennett does not condone the decisions and behaviour of certain characters, mainly Jude and Kennedy, she never condemns them either, revealing instead how viciously deep-rooted racism is. While Stella can enjoy the freedoms that come with being white (and wealthy), her fear of discovery causes her to adopt racist attitudes towards other people of colour and to inculcate racist beliefs in her own daughter. Like her mother at her age, Jude is eager to leave the confines of the ‘narrow-minded’ Mallard. In college she tries to overcome the insecurities and self-hatred instilled in her after years of being othered. While the Vignes twins and their daughters may occupy opposing realities, they grapple with similar questions of identity. Stella, Desiree, and Jude, who are alienated by their society because of their race and class, long to belong. Yet, they often sabotage their own attempts to connect to others (Stella’s attempt to bond with her black neighbour ends catastrophically). “It scared her, how badly she wanted to belong to somebody.” Bennett navigates the way in which race and class shape the way in which we are seen and treated by others. Her characters are vividly drawn, and it is their contradictory feelings and desires that make them all the more real. Bennett’s narrative doesn’t favor any one perspective, and in doing so allows her readers to form their own opinion of a character’s actions. The relationships the characters have with each other are fraught. While most Stella, Desiree, Jude, and even Kennedy to a certain extent, all desire to fit in or to form meaningful connections, miscommunications abound as they are unwilling or unable to expose themselves to others. “He was always doing that, trying to coax her further outside herself. But she felt safe like this, locked away.” In Bennett's novel love isn't neat or easy and identity is an evolving process, her observations on race, class, and family are truly compelling. She touches upon a myriad of topics (poverty, abuse, trauma, unknowability) with thoughtfulness and clarity. To white people like me (I grew up in a really homogenous, racist, and xenophobic country) the America Bennett depicts is both disturbing and illuminating. While there are many horrific scenes in The Vanishing Half, I encourage readers to read this novel. Characters such as Reese, Jude, and Early alone are worth knowing. Interspersed in the various narratives there are tender moments of genuine affection and understanding (Jude's relationship to her mother and Reese are truly heart-rendering). “You could live a life this way, split. As long as you knew who was in charge.” Read more reviews on my blog / / / View all my reviews on Goodreads ...more |
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4.11
| 150,492
| Aug 31, 2020
| Sep 01, 2020
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it was amazing
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| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | “That was the thing that was at the heart of my reluctance and my resentment. Some people make it out of their stories| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | “That was the thing that was at the heart of my reluctance and my resentment. Some people make it out of their stories unscathed, thriving. Some people don’t.” In an eloquent and precise prose Yaa Gyasi interrogates a young woman’s relationship to her family, her faith, her past, and her self. Her brother’s addiction and her mother’s depression have irrevocably shaped Gifty, the protagonist and narrator of Transcendent Kingdom, who is now a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at Stanford. Her quiet and controlled existence is disrupted by the arrival of her mother, who has once again succumbed to a depressive state, barely responding to the world around her, let alone taking notice of her daughter. Gifty, who spends most of her time in her lab, where she’s researching the neural circuits of reward seeking behaviour (by experimenting on mice) finds herself looking back to her childhood, her college years and her first years at Stanford. Throughout the course of the novel Gyasi weaves together Gifty’s past and present, delineating her self-divide and her fragile relationship to her mother. Gifty’s recollection of her childhood is free of sentimentality, and she’s very much matter-of-fact when it comes to recounting her brother’s addiction to OxyContin, the racism she and her family are exposed to in America, the lack of support they receive (“They just watched us with some curiosity. We were three black people in distress. Nothing to see.”), especially from the members of their church. We also learn of her parents’ immigration from Ghana to Alabama, her father’s disconnect from his new home, her mother’s desire to fit in and adapt, the rift caused by their opposing stances (wanting to return to Ghana/wanting to remain in America). After her father’s return to Ghana, Gifty’s mother spends most of her time working in order to keep the family afloat, so it is Nana who becomes the central figure in her life. In spite of their age gap and their sibling spats, the two are very close, and Gifty looks up to her brother. An injury occurred while playing basketball lands Nana in hospital where a doctor prescribes him OxyContin for the pain. In the following years Gifty witnesses her brother’s spiralling further into addiction, while her mother desperately tries to ‘save’ him. While these experiences have affected Gifty’s relationship to her faith, and she’s somewhat embarrassed when reading her old diary entries, in which she pleads for divine intervention, as an adult Gifty finds herself craving that ardor. In college she struggles between wanting to be alone and wanting to connect with others. Her background causes some of her science peers to make scoffing remarks or prejudiced presumptions, and the few people who try to get close to her are inevitably pushed away. Throughout the course of the narrative Gyasi shows how time and again Gifty is made to feel as if she cannot possibly find comfort in both science and religion. Yet, for Gifty, the two are not in opposition: “[T]his tension, this idea that one must necessarily choose between science and religion, is false. I used to see the world through a God lens, and when that lens clouded, I turned to science. Both became, for me, valuable ways of seeing, but ultimately both have failed to fully satisfy in their aim: to make clear, to make meaning.” Given that her childhood was disrupted by her father’s departure, her brother’s addiction, and her mother’s depression, isn’t it natural for Gifty to wonder ‘why?’. Why did her brother become an addict? Why is her mother depressed? Her search for answers, for a reason, for the ability to discern cause and effect, fuels her studies and in many ways her faith. Once she finds herself once again with her mother however her resolve not to talk or reveal her past is tested. This novel tells an emotionally devastating tale about love, forgiveness, guilt, pain, and identity. Reading this novel made my heart ache. Addiction and depression have left their mark on my family, and Gifty’s experiences hit too close to home. And yet, however upsetting it was to read about the insidiousness of addiction and depression, Gyasi incisive observations and wisdoms assuage my uneasiness. Gyasi exerts perfect control of her prose as she navigates Gifty’s childhood and adulthood. Her restrained style perfectly reflects Gifty’s self-restraint. She offers piercing meditations on family, philosophy, science, and faith, and Gifty’s quiet meditations on these subjects are articulated in a meticulous yet striking way. I’m not sure what else I can add other than I was (am) in awe of this book. It made me feel seen and understood. Some of my favourite quotes: “Nana was the first miracle, the true miracle, and the glory of his birth cast a long shadow. I was born into the darkness that shadow left behind. I understood that, even as a child.” “I wanted, above all else, to be good. And I wanted the path to that goodness to be clear. I suspected that this is why I excelled at math and science, where the rules are laid out step by step, where if you did something exactly the way it was supposed to be done, the result would be exactly as it was expected to be.” “It would have been kinder to lie, but I wasn’t kind anymore. Maybe I never had been. I vaguely remember a childhood kindness, but maybe I was conflating innocence and kindness. I felt so little continuity between who I was as a young child and who I was now that it seemed pointless to even consider showing my mother something like mercy. Would have I been merciful when I was a child?” “The two of us back then, mother and daughter, we were ourselves an experiment. The question was, and has remained: Are we going to be okay?” “My memories of him, though few, are mostly pleasant, but memories of people you hardly know are often permitted a kind of pleasantness in their absence. It’s those who stay who are judged the harshest, simply by virtue of being around to be judged.” “I remember what it was like to be that age, so aware of yourself and of the theater of your private little shames.” “It was boring, but I preferred this familiar boredom to the kind I found at home. There, boredom was paired with the hope of its relief, and so it took on a more menacing tint.” ““What’s the point of all of this?” is a question that separates humans from other animals. Our curiosity around this issue has sparked everything from science to literature to philosophy to religion. When the answer to this question is “Because God deemed it so,” we might feel comforted. But what if the answer to this question is “I don’t know,” or worse still, “Nothing”?” “Thought I had never been an addict, addiction, and the avoidance of it, had been running my life” “I didn’t grow up with a language for, a way to explain, to parse out, my self-loathing.” “I used to see the world through a God lens, and when that lens clouded I turned to science. Both became, for me, valuable ways of seeing, but ultimately both have failed to fully satisfy in their aim: to make clear, to make meaning.” “I like you best when you’re feeling holy. You make me feel holy too.” Read more reviews on my blog / / / View all my reviews on Goodreads ...more |
Notes are private!
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2
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Jan 03, 2022
Sep 2020
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Jan 05, 2022
Sep 04, 2020
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Nov 19, 2019
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||||||
0525538887
| 9780525538882
| 0525538887
| 3.80
| 34,325
| Feb 18, 2020
| Feb 18, 2020
|
really liked it
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| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | 4.25 stars “Is it into this culture that he is to emerge? Into the narrow, dark water of real life?” It had been awhile s | | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | 4.25 stars “Is it into this culture that he is to emerge? Into the narrow, dark water of real life?” It had been awhile since I finished a book in one day or since I read a book that made me cry...but once I started Real Life I simply couldn't stop, even if what I was reading made me mad, then sad, then mad again, and then sad all over again. This is one heart-wrenching novel. Reading it was an immersive and all-consuming experience. I felt both secondhand anxiety, embarrassment, and anger, and the more I read the more frustrated I became by my own impotence...still, I kept on reading, desperate to catch a glimpse of hope or happiness... “People can be unpredictable in their cruelty.” Taylor's riveting debut novel chronicles a graduate student’s turbulent weekend. At its heart, this is the Wallace's story. Wallace is gay, black, painfully aware of his almost debilitating anxiety and of what he perceives as his physical and internal flaws. As one the few black men in this unnamed Midwestern city, and the only black man in his course, Wallace knows that he is in a ‘different’ position from his white friends. After a childhood disrupted by poverty and many traumatic experiences, he withdraws into studies, dedicating most of his waking hours to lab tests and projects. Yet, even if he works twice as hard as other students, many still imply—directly and non—that he was accepted into this program only because of his skin colour. “Perhaps friendship is really nothing but controlled cruelty. Maybe that’s all they’re doing, lacerating each other and expecting kindness back.” Real Life has all the trappings of a campus novel. From its confined setting of a university city—in which we follow Wallace as he goes to a popular student hangout by the lake, to his uni's labs, to his or his friends' apartments—to its focus on the shifting alliances and power dynamics between a group of friends. Yet, Taylor's novel also subverts some of this genre's characteristic. The academic world is not as sheltering as one might first imagine. Questioning 'real life vs. student life' becomes a leitmotif in the characters' conversations. Taylor's novel offers a much more less idyllic and romantic vision of the academic world than most other campus novels. If anything we became aware of the way in which 'real life' problems make their way into a student's realm. “Affection always feels this way for him, like an undue burden, like putting weight and expectation onto someone else. As if affection were a kind of cruelty too.” From the very first pages we see Wallace’s environment and ‘friends’ through his alienated lenses. While most of his friends are queer—gay, bisexual, or an unspecified sexuality—they are white and from far more privileged backgrounds. At the beginning of the novel Wallace ‘gives in’ and agrees to meet them by the lake, after having avoided them for a long period of time. What unfolds is deeply uncomfortable to read. In spite of their laughter and smiles, these people do not strike as friends. Their banter is cutting, their off-handed comments have sharp edges, and they are all incredibly and irresolutely selfish. Taylor’s quickly establishes the toxic dynamics between these 'friends'. While they might not be directly aggressive or hostile, they repeatedly hurt, belittle, betray, and undermine one other. The distance Wallace feels from them is overwhelming. Yet, even if he tries to be on the outskirts of their discussions, he finds himself having to deal with their racist or otherwise hurtful remarks. Worst still, he is confronted with his 'friends' cowardice when they feign that they do not say racist or demeaning things. If anything they usually imply that he is the one who is oversensitive. Over this weekend we see time and again just how horribly solipsistic and cowardly Wallace’s friends are. They mask their racism and elitism under a pretence of wokeness. Similarly, one of Wallace’s fellow students, believes that as a feminist she can be openly homophobic and racist, throwing around words such as misogynistic without thought or consequence in order to masquerade her own bigotry. Wallace’s friends’ racism is far more surreptitious. For the most part they pretend that race doesn’t matter, and that is Wallace who makes a ‘big deal’ out of nothing. Yet, when someone say something discriminatory out loud, they do nothing. As he hangs out with his friends he finds himself noticing just how far from perfect they are. A perfect or happy life seems unattainable. Even moments of lightheartedness or contentment give way to arguments and disagreements within this group. Even if what plagues Wallace's mind is far more disturbing than what his friends' rather mundane worries (regarding their future careers, current relationship etc) he often chooses to comfort or simply listen to them, rather than pouring his own heart out. Wallace knows that they couldn't possibly understand his relationship to his family and past. “He misses, maybe, also, other things, the weight of unnamed feelings moving through him. And those feelings were transmuted into something cruel and mean. While he may not voice his troubles while he is hanging out with his 'friends', Wallace's mind is often occupied with his own past and future. Taylor does a terrific job in giving us an impression of Wallace's discordant psyche. Moments of dissociation make him further retread within himself, escaping his uncomfortable surroundings. Like Wallace we begin to see his surroundings as unpleasant and claustrophobic. At times the people around him blur together, blending into a sea of white faces, making him feel all the more isolated. Wallace's own insecurities colour most of his thoughts, feelings, and actions. Even when I could not understand him or in his moments of selfishness, I found myself caring for him and deeply affected by his circumstances. What he experiences...is brutal. When his coping mechanism (work/studying) is threatened his mental health spirals out of control. The halting and recursive dialogue is incredibly realistic. Even when discussing seemingly ordinary things there is an underlying tension. And there is almost a stop-start quality to the characters' conversations that struck me for its realism. The way in which their arguments spiral into awkward silences, the tentative words that follow more heated ones, the impact of tone and interpretation. A sense of physicality, of eroticism, pervades Taylor's narrative. Characters are often compared to animals, close attention is paid to their bodies—from their skin to their limbs—and to the way the move and look by themselves and together as a group. This attentiveness towards the body emphasises Wallace's own insecurity about the way he looks. In one of his more brooding moments he finds himself questioning whether he wants to be or be with an attractive guy. His contemplations about same-sex attraction definitely resonated with me. Envy and desire are not mutually exclusive. “This is perhaps why people get together in the first place. The sharing of time. The sharing of the responsibility of anchoring oneself in the world. Life is less terrible when you can just rest for a moment, put everything down and wait without having to worry about being washed away.” Taylor often contrasts seemingly opposing feelings. For example, sensual moments are underpinned by a current of danger. Wallace seems to find both force and vulnerability erotic. Taylor’s narrative repeatedly examines the tense boundaries between pleasure and pain, attraction and repulsion, tenderness and violence. Taylor projects Wallace’s anxiety, depression, and discomfort onto his narrative so that a feeling of unease underlines our reading experience. “He had considered himself a Midwesterner at heart, that being in the South and being gay were incompatible, that no two parts of a person could be more incompatible. But standing there, among the boats, shyly waiting to discover the people to whom he felt he would belong, he sensed the foolishness in that.” Taylor's prose could be in turns thoughtful and jarring. There are disturbingly detailed descriptions about Wallace's lab-work, unflinching forays into past traumas, and thrilling evocations of sexual desire. A seemingly ordinary weekend shows us just how inescapable social hierarchies are. The secular world of academia does not entirely succeed in keeping the real world at bay. Depression, anxiety, dysphoria, the lingering effects of abuse all make their way into Wallace's story. We read of his confusing desires, of his 'friends' hypocrisy, of his own appetite for self-destruction...Real Life is not an easy read. There were many horrible moments in which I wanted to jump into the narrative to shake Wallace's friends. Wallace too, pained me. In spite of his observant nature, he remains detached. He picks up on his friends' horrible behaviour but with one or two exceptions he does not oppose them. Yet, I could also see why he remained passive. Being in his position is exhausting. “It is a life spent swimming against the gradient, struggling up the channel of other people’s cruelty. It grates him to consider this, the shutting away of the part of him that now throbs and writhes like a new organ that senses so keenly the limitations of his life.” Even if I craved for a more reassuring ending I still think that this is an impressive debut novel one that strikingly renders what it feels to inhabit a black body in a white-dominated environment. Real Life tackles racism, privilege, cruelty, cultural and power dynamics, and the complexities of sexual desire head on. Wallace's friends are aggravating if not downright despicable. Which is perhaps why when alongside Wallace we glimpse some kindness in them, it makes us all the more upset. Reading Real Life made me uncomfortable, angry, sad. Lines like these, “He typically brings crackers or another form of fiber because his friends are all full of shit and need cleaning out from time to time”, even made me laugh out loud. What I'm trying to say, or write is this: this is a brilliant novel, one you should definitely read (with some caution, of course). Anyhow, I can't wait to read more by Taylor. Read more reviews on my blog / / / View all my reviews on Goodreads ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 18, 2020
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Feb 19, 2020
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Aug 13, 2019
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Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
0241394503
| 9780241394502
| 0241394503
| 4.08
| 1,159
| Jun 18, 2019
| Jun 20, 2019
|
really liked it
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| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | “Are you traveling in Europe?” he asked. I caught the odd phrasing. Of course I was traveling in Europe, but I understo| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | “Are you traveling in Europe?” he asked. I caught the odd phrasing. Of course I was traveling in Europe, but I understood he meant something else; he wanted to know the nature of my relationship to Europe, if I was passing through or if I had a more permanent and legal claim to Europe. A black person's relationship with Europe would always need qualification—he or she couldn't simply be native European, there had to be an origin explanation. Helon Habila's Travellers is a searing and heart-wrenching novel that recounts the stories of those who are forced to, or choose to, migrate to Europe. Readers learn of how their lives have been disrupted by conflict, war strife, war, persecution, and famine. They embark on dangerous journeys, alone or with their loved ones, only to end up in countries which will deem them criminals, illegal, and aliens. “As far as they were concerned, all of Africa was one huge Gulag archipelago, and every African poet or writer living outside Africa has to be in exile from dictatorship.” Travellers can be read a series of interconnected stories. One of the novel's main characters is nameless Nigerian graduate student who follows Gina, his wife, to Berlin where she has been granted an arts fellowship. Here Gina works on the 'Travelers', a series of portraits of "real migrants" whom she pays fifty euros a session. Gina shows little interests in those who sit for her, seeming more focused on displaying the pain etched on their faces (turning down those whose faces seem too "smooth" or untouched by tragedy). In spite of her self-interest and hypocrisy, Habila never condemns her actions. Our nameless protagonist however becomes close to Mark, a film student whose visa has just expired, who goes to protests and believes that "the point of art" is to resist. We then read of a Libyan doctor who is now working as a bouncer in Berlin, a Somalian shopkeeper who alongside his son was detained in a prison reserved for refugees in Bulgaria, a young woman from Lusaka who meets for the first time her brother's wife, an Italian man who volunteers at a refugee center, and of a Nigerian asylum seeker who is being persecuted by British nativists. Their stories are interconnected, and Habila seamlessly moves switches from character to character. He renders their experiences with clarity and empathy, allowing each voice the chance to tell their story on their own terms. Habila shows the huge impact that their different statuses have (whether they are migrants, immigrants, refugees, or asylum seekers) and of the xenophobia, racism, and violence they face in the West.Habila never shies away from delving into the horrifying realities faced by 'travellers'. Yet, each story contains a moment of hope, connection, and of humanity. Habila writes beautifully. From Germany to Italy he breathes life in the places he writes of. Although we view them through the eyes of 'outsiders', Habila's vivid descriptions and striking imagery convey the atmosphere, landscape, and culture of each country. Habila also uses plenty of adroit literary references, many of which perfectly convey a particular moment or a character's state of mind. Travellers is as illuminating as it is devastating. Habila presents his readers with a chorus of voices. In spite of their differences in age and gender, they are all trying to survive. They are faced with hostile environments, labelled as 'aliens', dehumanised, detained, and persecuted. They have to adjust to another culture and a new language. Yet, as Habila so lucidly illustrates, they have no other choice. Haunting, urgent, and ultimately life-affirming, Travellers is a must read, one that gripped from the first page until the very last one. If you've read the news lately you will know that the current pandemic is having devastating consequences for migrants and refugees (here is a article published a few days ago: 'Taking Hard Line, Greece Turns Back Migrants by Abandoning Them'). I know that we are not all in the position to donate but I would still urge you to learn how to support local charities (here are two UK-based charities: 'The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants' and 'Migrant Help'. A few days ago I listened with disbelief and disgust as a man on the radio said that allowing the children of immigrants and refugees into British school would somehow be detrimental to the education of 'genuine children’. Maybe that person wouldn’t have said such an ignorant thing if he had read this book. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 14, 2020
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Aug 16, 2020
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Jun 25, 2019
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Hardcover
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1408865432
| 9781408865439
| 1408865432
| 4.50
| 3,453,858
| Jun 21, 2003
| Aug 13, 2015
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None
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Notes are private!
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3
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Jan 06, 2020
Dec 16, 2018
Jul 31, 2017
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Jan 10, 2020
Dec 19, 2018
Aug 03, 2017
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Jul 30, 2017
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||||
038561604X
| 9780385616041
| 038561604X
| 4.10
| 20,571
| May 01, 2011
| May 12, 2011
|
it was amazing
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| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | 4.5 Stars A challenging and emotional novel that is both engrossing and difficult to read. Boyne offers us a tale of war | | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | 4.5 Stars A challenging and emotional novel that is both engrossing and difficult to read. Boyne offers us a tale of war, love, jealousy, and the way in which one's principles can dictate one's life. It is a gut-wrenching story and it was impossible not to feel affected by what Tristan – our main character – experiences before, during and after the Great War. From the very start we know that something tragic – a personal loss – has happened to him. Tristan professes diverging feelings in regards of what has happened to Will, a young man who he befriends during his training, before his time in France. The characters are as compelling as the story itself, in a few lines Boyne is able to depict believable individuals who inspire a range of conflicting emotions within the reader: given the strenuous situations they are it is natural that their actions and words showcase all manners of complexities. I was, for the most part, taken by Tristan: I often found myself wanting to hug him or shake him. I didn't always understand his actions but I believe that is because he didn't always understand them himself. I was frustrated by him and for him, no matter what I found his voice compelling and heart-rendering. There is a feeling of growing unease that made me both eager and terrified to read on. The plotline is unpredictable, Boyne delivers a few 'I did not see that coming' moments. I read this book quickly, desperate – and anxious – to know what would happen next. And while Tristan's story is emotionally draining, I also didn't want to leave him. Terrible things happen and yet I was so engaged by his story that I kept at it. It is also a novel that makes you think by challenging your own moral code without giving us predictable outcomes and or answers. The Absolutist made me cry, it made me angry, it made me hopeful and it left me bereft. It isn't an easy read but I recommend it to those who are looking for something more substantial. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 22, 2017
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Jul 23, 2017
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Jul 22, 2017
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Hardcover
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0755383435
| 9780755383436
| 0755383435
| 3.84
| 405
| Jun 01, 2014
| Jun 19, 2014
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it was amazing
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None
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Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 16, 2016
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Sep 16, 2016
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Sep 16, 2016
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Paperback
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1925228517
| 9781925228519
| 1925228517
| 4.01
| 14,330
| Jul 26, 2016
| Aug 11, 2016
|
it was amazing
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None
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Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 16, 2016
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Sep 16, 2016
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Aug 22, 2016
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Hardcover
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0375714189
| 9780375714184
| 0375714189
| 4.11
| 6,061
| 1953
| May 13, 2003
|
it was amazing
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| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | “He was filled with a vast sense of the momentous, of unknown mysteries. He did not know what he should demand of himse| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | “He was filled with a vast sense of the momentous, of unknown mysteries. He did not know what he should demand of himself, nor did it seem to matter, for he had not chosen this music he moved to, it had chosen him.” This is the fifth time I’ve read The Charioteer and once again I’ve been swept away by it. The Charioteer is quite likely my favourite novel of all time as there are few books that I care as much about. There is something comforting about The Charioteer, which is strange given that Mary Renault’s impenetrable prose demands her readers’ full attention. There are the coded conversations, thoughts and feelings are often only obliquely hinted at, the pages are full of 40s slang, and there are constant allusions to the ancient classics. Yet, her writing also has a languid quality, perhaps reflective of her protagonist’s convalescence, which I found truly enthralling. In an almost Bildungsroman fashion The Charioteer introduces us to Laurie as a child. This first chapter recounts a significant moment of his childhood and is followed by a chapter of him at school where he has a memorable encounter with the Head of the School, Ralph Lanyon. The subsequent chapters follow Laurie as he’s recovering from a war injury at a hospital. Here he meets and falls for Andrew, a conscientious objector who is now working as an orderly. While Laurie is aware of his sexuality, and believes that Andrew reciprocates his feelings, he’s unwilling to reveal to Andrew the true depth of his emotions. By chance Laurie ends up re-connecting with Ralph. As the title of the novel suggests, Laurie’s story can be likened to the myth of the charioteer from Phaedrus. Now, I know that my summary doesn’t do this novel justice. I don’t wish to reveal too much about the story or its characters. Still, I can say that The Charioteer presents us with a beautiful narrative, one that captures a particular moment in time. The characters’ days are punctuated by Imminent Danger sirens, air raids, shortages. Laurie, alongside other patients, has to obey the hospital’s strict rules. Under Renault’s hand, the war seems almost ‘normal’, and characters will often discuss it as they would any other topic. Renault’s portrayal of the gay community feels both intimate and compelling. While Laurie himself feels uneasy towards those he deems as ‘flamboyant’ or ‘effeminate’, the narrative doesn’t share his prejudices. Renault’s characters often engage themselves in conversations relating to their role in society, often professing contrasting beliefs. The views they express may ruffle some readers, as they often speak about their sexuality as a limitation or they seem dismissive towards other gay men (partly because both Laurie and Ralph are private individuals and do not wish to be a source of gossip). Their discussion on ethics and morality were riveting, and I soon lost myself in the rhythm of their back and forth. The novel is as interested in what the characters say as it is with what they don’t say, whether this is due to self-censoring or self-denial. Although Laurie is the story’s protagonist, much of what he feels remains off page. Renault will often only allude to Laurie’s most innermost feelings. Because of this Laurie, and other characters, often seem like unsolvable puzzles. This is quite fitting given that self-knowledge and self-deception are central themes within this narrative. Laurie’s story is also one that is concerned with connection. Although he becomes fast friends with another patient, he fears being ‘known’. Yet, in spite of this sense of loneliness, he is reticent about ‘embracing’ his community (“He kept telling me I was queer, and I’d never heard it called that before and didn’t like it. The word, I mean. Shutting you away, somehow; roping you off with a lot of people you don’t feel much in common with […]”). Miscommunications abound in this novel. At times the characters make tentative attempts to form more meaningful relationships but they often betray themselves by not saying what they want to say or by saying the wrong things. Renault captures with poignancy sadness, anxiety, self-divide, awkwardness, tenderness, longing, ambiguity, confusion, honour, passion, and hope. Her characters reveal her piercing understanding of human nature. Through her expressive and elegant writing Renault demonstrates her inside knowledge of the society she depicted (Renault was both a lesbian and a nurse, which is possibly why she can so conjure up both queer parties and the daily routines of a hospital). I love everything about this novel. Laurie's quest for identity, the struggle between his desires and his ideals, is as moving as it is thought-provoking. A truly complex and multi-layered masterpiece that is both heart-rending and intelligent. Impenetrable, subtle, beautiful, touching. I can't recommend this novel strongly enough. If you are a fan of gay classics (such as Maurice, Carol, Giovanni's Room, and the underrated Olivia ), you should definitely give Renault a try. I don't think I will ever get tired of re-reading this novel. Each time my understanding for the characters, their inner-struggles and relationships, deepens (although i own a copy of this, this time around i read a kindle copy from overdrive...and i ended up making nearly 500 highlights....which, yeah, that's how much i love this story). ps: if you have anything negative so say about Ralph, I will fight you (i'm only half-jesting) Read more reviews on my blog / / / View all my reviews on Goodreads ...more |
Notes are private!
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5
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Jun 2021
May 15, 2020
Oct 09, 2018
Jul 16, 2017
Jul 06, 2016
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Jun 03, 2021
May 17, 2020
Oct 12, 2018
Jul 18, 2017
Jul 09, 2016
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May 29, 2016
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
1400031702
| 9781400031702
| 1400031702
| 4.17
| 790,404
| Sep 16, 1992
| Sep 11, 1992
|
it was amazing
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| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | [image] (this was made by lucy and boy if it isn't spot on) The Secret History lives rent free in my head. It is a maste | | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | [image] (this was made by lucy and boy if it isn't spot on) The Secret History lives rent free in my head. It is a masterpiece. A thing of rare beauty. A tour de force. A literary triumph. “One likes to think there’s something in it, that old platitude amor vincit omnia. But if I’ve learned one thing in my short sad life, it is that that particular platitude is a lie. Love doesn’t conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.” Written in an incandescent prose The Secret History is a ferociously erudite and delightfully mischievous work of staggering genius. I have read it twice now and each time it has blown me away. Reading this novel makes for an all-consuming, almost feverish, experience. It is impossible for me to precisely articulate or express what The Secret History means to me. To speak of it as a work of fiction almost pains me. But, as I have chosen to review all of the novels that I read, I will give it a shot. Bear with me (and my ramblings). “Four boys and a girl, they were nothing so unusual at a distance. At close range, though, they were an arresting party—at least to me, who had never seen anything like them, and to whom they suggested a variety of picturesque and fictive qualities.” The Secret History begins with a murder. Richard Papen, our narrator, looks back to the events that lead him and four other students to murder Bunny, a fellow student and ‘friend’ of theirs. That Tartt’s prologue reveals the identity of the victim and perpetrators of the murder. As Richard looks back into this defining period of his life (the only ‘story’ he “will ever be able to tell”) Tartt slowly unravels the events and motivations that led five people to murder as well as the ramifications that this murder has on their lives and their relationship with each other and themselves. In Plano, California, alienated from his parents and his peers, twenty-year-old Richard yearns to leave behind the trappings of his working-class existence. One day he comes across a prospectus for a liberal arts college in Vermont and, against his parents’ wishes, goes on to enrol himself there. At Hampden College, a painfully class-conscious Richard lies. A lot. He fabricates a ‘better’ kind of past and identity for himself, hoping that people will perceive him as he wishes to be perceived. It almost seems inevitable that a romantic like him would fall under the spell of a certain ‘clique’. These five students are the only ones to be enrolled in professor Julian Morrow’s classes, who mainly teaches classical studies. Richard is intrigued by their shared air of mystery. They don’t tend to mingle with other students and seem to belong to an entirely separate world. And Richard wants in on it. When he eventually gets accepted into Julian’s classes he becomes further intoxicated by this clique. In this first section of Richard’s story, the narrative has this almost fairytale-esque quality. Julian appears to Richard as a mythical sort of creature, the kind of mentor-like figure that would not be out of place in a monomyth. Soon Tartt however subverts our expectations by revealing just how fatal Richard’s misperception of his new reality is. The rarefied world Henry, Francis, the twins, and Bunny belong to may not be as the Elysium Richard envisioned it to be. The college itself is not the 'enlightened' haven he'd thought it would be. The more time he spends with his new acquaintances the more he becomes aware of just how dangerously disconnected they are from their everyday modern world (they certainly seem to belong to another time). As the narrative progresses, we learn just how disillusioned all of these characters are by their realities. This disillusionment leads them to apotheosize bygone eras, and, in the case of Richard, idealise their surroundings. Fraying alliances, secrets, and betrayals increase the tension between the characters, heightening the drama. As we learn of the circumstances that led to Bunny’s murder our view of Henry & Co. will begin to change. Their hunger for the inaccessible and desire to transcend their reality, perhaps to access sublimity or a higher plane of existence, leads them to cross—jump over even—quite a few lines. Yet, however flawed they reveal themselves to be (let us say, they seem to have more vices than virtues), I remained transfixed by them. Their lifestyles, while certainly extravagant, are not all that desirable. Considering their poor diets, their heavy drinking and smoking, and, at least in the case of Richard, that they are sleep deprived, it is a miracle that they don’t get scurvy or worse. Tartt doesn’t glamorise their actions and Bunny’s murder takes its toll on them. Between the anxiety of being discovered and the guilt that they (some of them) experience it seems inevitable that things take a turn for the worst. The disintegration of their friendship is hard to read but I was unable to tear my eyes away. That Richard remains on the outskirts of this group makes Henry & Co. all the more intriguing. Henry and Camilla make for extremely ambivalent figures. Because we know as much as Richard does, we often don't know what truly motivates these characters, yet, despite how ambiguous they could be, Tartt is capable of capturing those idiosyncrasies that make them who they are. We learn more about Francis, Charles, and even Bunny, because Richard spends more time with them. While Richard’s relationship with them is far from straightforward I found their interactions to be utterly engrossing. I definitely have a bias when it comes to Francis and I could probably spend hours talking about how much I love him. Really. Just thinking about him makes me emotional (i am aware that he is far from perfect but that is also why i like him so much). Richard, unreliable narrator par par excellence, is an interesting character in his own right. He reminded me ever so slightly of the narrator from Tobias Wolff’s Old School and he even seems to have a touch of the 'dreaded' Emma Bovary (longing 24/7). Tartt demonstrates extreme acuity in the way she conveys Richard’s inner turmoil, his loneliness and his desires. He, like the others, has his fair share of flaws but I found his voice utterly relatable. The boy really has very few people that care about him. His parents seem to act as if he doesn’t exist, his professors ignore or are wholly unaware that he is teetering on the very brink of mental and physical collapse (think of his hellish winter break). Another reason why I find him so compelling is that he's surprisingly supportive of those who have made him feel like an outsider (i am an extremely petty person so, kudos to him). Given the 'otherness' he feels—and is made to feel—I thought it quite fitting that after he cuts his hair he compares himself to Arthur Rimbaud (“Je est un autre” & all that jazz). The love he believes he feels for Camilla seemed very much a result of his “fatal flaw”. That she remains a mystery to him enables him to project his own vision of ‘Camilla’ onto her. Richard seems to regard her as an Estella of sorts, the kind of ethereal beauty that so frequently appears in Victorian novels. Also, is this boy in denial about his sexuality (he’s attracted to her androgynous appearance, her “boy-feet”, her “slightly masculine grace of posture”). In many ways, Camilla is the classic object of unattainable desire (or as our boy lacan would have it "objet petit a"). As long as his love remains unrequited Richard can remain in a perpetual state of longing. Weirdly enough, he finds fulfilment in the perpetuation of his non-fulfilment. This novel is populated by morally dubious characters who frequently transgress social norms. Not everyone is happy to do so and much of the narrative is about the guilt, anguish, anxiety, and sorrow that result from these ‘bad’ choices. The dialogues are by turns sharp, funny, illuminating, and obscure. Many of the exchanges that occur within this narrative filled me with unease, apprehension. Thanks to Richard's foreshadowing we often know that someone is hiding something or that things are going to take a turn for the worst. The unflagging tension created by the ongoing drama between them kept me at the edge-of-my-seat (even during my re-read). Their chemistry is off-the-charts. From their moments of kinship to their devastating fights. Witnessing the slow dissolution of this group filled me with dread. But how real these 'characters' feel to me! Just thinking about them makes my heart ache. Tartt enriches Richard's story with plenty of literary and mythical allusions. From the narrative's underlying Apollonian/Dionysian dichotomy to those beguiling descriptions of the ancient world. The constant blurring of reality and dreams and of truth and illusion makes this novel all the more enigmatic and the kind of book that can be read time and again (i already want to re-read it). The Secret History is a sharp and achingly beautiful novel. Tartt presents her readers with an unforgettable examination of morality, self-knowledge, loneliness, and privilege. The Secret History is a propulsive psychological thriller, a piercing examination of the folly of youth, a cautionary tale against falling for Beauty, for splendid illusions. Tartt’s scintillating style, which is at once elegant and playful, is truly hypnotising. I love how detailed she is in describing Richard's states of mind as well as her vivid descriptions of his surroundings. She often hones in on seemingly small details that end up making a certain scene or moment seem all the more real. But I also loved those moments of almost surreal humor, those brief reprieve in an otherwise unrelentingly intense narrative. What makes this novel all the more intoxicating is that readers end up falling for what the narrative is warning us against. We idealise the characters and their circumstances, we are distracted by the sharp imagery and dazzling aesthetics, so much so that we end up overlooking just how prosaic and depressing certain portions of the story are (pretty sure richard snorts "an awful lot of cocaine in the parking lot of burger king"...yeah). Anyway, as you may have guessed if you are reading this review, I fucking love this novel. Tartt spent 9 years writing it and it sure paid off. I am, and likely always be, in awe of it. SMALL ASIDE: It was my mother who first spoke to me about Donna Tart. Her rather battered paperback copy of The Secret History was a fixture on her bookshelves. She first read it in 1994 (since then she has read it many many many times) when she was about to give birth to my older brother (to quote her: “it got me through labour”) who is exactly the kind of person you imagine him to be. Case in point: he is currently reading the Bāburnāmathe, the memoirs of Ẓahīr-ud-Dīn Muhammad Bābur (naturally, i asked what she was reading while she was pregnant with me and it turns out it would have likely been a children’s book...which explains a lot). A few months before I read The Secret History for the first time I recall overhearing my mum and brother talking about it with such reverence as to suggest that what they were discussing was not ‘merely’ a work of fiction but real people and events. I was intrigued, of course, but it was only after I was suffering from an acute case of book hangover (i’d just finished the raven cycle) that my mother recommended The Secret History to me. I won’t lie, I was worried that it would go way over my head. At that time, I did not have a degree. After dropping out of my Italian high school at age 16 I had managed to complete a rather slapdash qualification in an art and design course, which was based in Swindon—a place described in this novel as being the ‘arsehole’ of the UK—and mostly consisted in us—the students—being left to our devices in order to create whatever art or non-art we wanted to create. Unlike my brother, who spent his childhood and teens reading historical tomes or learning about historical figures or ancient cultures, I never had much interest in those things. All of this is to say that I had very little knowledge of ancient history or the western literary canon, let alone anything related to philosophy. So, I was amazed by how little my lack of knowledge in these things proved to be a hindrance in my reading experience of The Secret History. 1.5 degree and 5 years later I am able to understand certain passages or motifs better but to be honest I can't say that this has affected the way I feel about this novel. I also used google a lot because I don't know latin and while I may know more about Nietzsche that 20-year-old me did I still know next-to-nothing about Plato and the other Greek lads and zilch about Buddhist traditions. SECOND ASIDE: Look, I like a lot of books and films that fall into the dark academia subgenre but I have come to despise the whole 'dark academia aesthetics' trend. If you read this novel and all you get out of it is tweed jackets and libraries...you are as bad—if not worse—than Richard (let's glamorise this extremely elitist world...yay). ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jun 10, 2021
May 26, 2016
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Jun 12, 2021
May 28, 2016
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May 14, 2016
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Paperback
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luce (cry baby)
>
Books:
tears-were-shed
(34)
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my rating |
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4.53
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it was amazing
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Jan 30, 2023
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Sep 03, 2022
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4.26
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it was amazing
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Apr 06, 2022
May 03, 2021
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Apr 23, 2021
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4.32
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it was amazing
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Apr 18, 2021
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Apr 14, 2021
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3.97
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it was amazing
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Mar 28, 2022
Apr 29, 2021
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Mar 05, 2021
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4.12
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it was amazing
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Jul 19, 2021
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Mar 03, 2021
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4.06
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it was amazing
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Jan 03, 2024
Jan 02, 2023
Jan 15, 2022
Apr 16, 2021
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Jan 13, 2021
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3.86
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it was amazing
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Feb 15, 2023
Apr 11, 2021
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Dec 18, 2020
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4.01
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it was amazing
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Feb 22, 2021
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Jul 06, 2020
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3.90
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really liked it
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Feb 10, 2021
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Jun 06, 2020
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4.10
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really liked it
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Apr 09, 2020
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Apr 07, 2020
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4.14
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it was amazing
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Jan 25, 2022
Apr 13, 2021
Jun 03, 2020
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Mar 18, 2020
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4.11
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it was amazing
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Jan 05, 2022
Sep 04, 2020
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Nov 19, 2019
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3.80
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really liked it
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Feb 19, 2020
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Aug 13, 2019
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4.08
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really liked it
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Aug 16, 2020
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Jun 25, 2019
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4.50
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Jan 10, 2020
Dec 19, 2018
Aug 03, 2017
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Jul 30, 2017
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4.10
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it was amazing
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Jul 23, 2017
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Jul 22, 2017
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3.84
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it was amazing
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Sep 16, 2016
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Sep 16, 2016
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4.01
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it was amazing
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Sep 16, 2016
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Aug 22, 2016
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4.11
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it was amazing
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Jun 03, 2021
May 17, 2020
Oct 12, 2018
Jul 18, 2017
Jul 09, 2016
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May 29, 2016
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4.17
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it was amazing
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Jun 12, 2021
May 28, 2016
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May 14, 2016
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