This novel is consistently well-written and imaginative but there was something missing for me. I think the missing something was “humanity.” Even an This novel is consistently well-written and imaginative but there was something missing for me. I think the missing something was “humanity.” Even an allegory, or maybe especially and allegory, needs to keep a connection with human feeling. I’m trying to think of an example now of what I mean and what came to mind was the story of Boxer the horse in Animal Farm. Every time I get to Boxer’s death in Animal Farm, I cry. An allegorical story doesn’t need to make me cry, but I guess I do want the allegory to work not just on a symbolic level, but also on a felt level. The author’s decision here to make the child protagonists devoid of emotion—they don’t even seem to feel physical pain appropriately—left me distanced from the story, and disinterested in its allegorical implications....more
This novel is written with a supernatural attention to detail. It's as if Crummey has taken it upon himself to inhabit the interior spaces of the brotThis novel is written with a supernatural attention to detail. It's as if Crummey has taken it upon himself to inhabit the interior spaces of the brother and sister that he conjures up from his imagination. He inhabits their daily lives. He channels them onto the page for us, until I could see and feel what these characters see and feel. Never mind that the world he imagines for these two is like nowhere I could have imagined on my own--I'm there. At just this moment, I can't remember another novel I've read that so fully imagines the lives of its characters the way Crummey does here. The novel is bleak but full of beauty. It's a remarkable achievement....more
First published in 1996, this collection is every bit as contemporary-feeling and feminist as Machado, Bender, Link, except that they're also clearly First published in 1996, this collection is every bit as contemporary-feeling and feminist as Machado, Bender, Link, except that they're also clearly written by someone who has lived through the war and its aftermath. The titular story "Toddler Hunting" is the most disturbing but each of these stories managed to affect me deeply. Seek this one out--it's well worth your attention....more
I don’t know how Poschmann did it but this novel captures with exquisite perfection the disorienting experience that living in Japan can be, for an atI don’t know how Poschmann did it but this novel captures with exquisite perfection the disorienting experience that living in Japan can be, for an attentive non-Japanese person who comes to Japan with no agenda and with some time to look around.
There is such an extreme level of discernment here in this novel...every scene nails it. I would guess most people who have not spent a lot of time in Japan—enough for instance to know about the deeply strange and almost obligatory love every Japanese person professes to feel about Matsushima—would feel like this book is exaggerated satire, when actually it just is the way Japan IS.
I’m kind of in awe and a little woozy from the experience of having just finished this excellent and very funny book, so maybe I will come back and try to be more coherent in my review in a few days. I lived in Japan for years and this novel hit me hard with a lovely nostalgia for a place I still love so its impossible for me to know how anyone else without this experience will react to it. ...more
This book demands a re-read from me. Because I need to admit here at the beginning of my review that this book was too erudite for me, the first time This book demands a re-read from me. Because I need to admit here at the beginning of my review that this book was too erudite for me, the first time through. Not too complex or too experimental or too literary--what I mean is that this novel demanded an intellectual, humanistic and historical knowledge from me that I didn't have.
Insurrecto by Gina Apostol is another novel I read recently that made me feel like my prior knowledge wasn't up to what the story demanded of me. In the case of Apostol's book, though, I could just power through, without worrying about what I was missing. I found Insurrecto to be a magnificent read in spite of my shortcomings. I was not that book's perfect reader by any means, but I still loved it.
In the case of Scego's novel, though, the historical layers are more complicated, and I feel as if the parts of the story that I didn't intuitively understand were more critical to the whole, to the point where I spent a fair amount of time looking up historical and biographical and geographical references as I read along. This necessary interruption of my reading made the novel feel somewhat mediated, and it was less powerful to me because of this feeling.
This novel was nonetheless a gorgeous reading experience, especially for its deep, liquid-y female-ness--for all the parts where the story revealed its humanity, without demanding that I know all the facts. And I'll look forward to reading it again, now that I have more of an understanding of the shape of this novel than I had the first time through....more
I just learned that Susan Gubar has a new memoir out, Late-Life Love, which is great news on so many levels.
About this memoir, I wrote in 2015:
What aI just learned that Susan Gubar has a new memoir out, Late-Life Love, which is great news on so many levels.
About this memoir, I wrote in 2015:
What an extraordinary achievement. What an astonishingly clear-headed book. What a hard book to read and how glad I am to have read it. It's never 'brave' in the facile sense we use that word for, to describe other memoirs about impossible circumstances. And yet, Gubar is "brave" in the purest sense, for having written this book with her eyes so completely open to her experience.
I was grateful not only for this stark explanation of the physical changes Gubar and other ovarian cancer patients go through, but also to learn how much she was sustained by her love of words--how her vast reading, throughout her life and during the course of the disease described in this book, gave her a special solace, and allowed her to connect with what's good and real about being alive. While she writes lovingly of the support she receives from her extraordinary husband and family, it seemed to me that her inner strength, her ability to write this book at all, came from a lifetime of using language in a very precise way, both to understand and to describe her world.
I am one of those rare weird statistical outliers, a woman whose oncologist told her all about the debulking procedure and the many organs I was about to lose (who among us has heard of an "omentum" before being told she's about to lose it?) but in my case I woke up from the operation to learn I was cancer-free, a false positive, with a doctor who didn't seem to know how to handle this good news ("a first-year resident could have done your operation" was all he said, and gruffly). Even though my experience with that operation and Gubar's veered drastically apart at the moment we each opened our eyes, I am so grateful to her for writing down what it's like to be put to sleep, helpless and ignorant of whether you'll wake up ok, or wake up to find you are missing many internal organs and you're going to die soon anyway.
Gubar also completely captures the (apparently universally) appalling way that gynecological oncologists treat their patients. For this reason alone I would wish for every gynecological oncologist to read this book carefully, to think about the way they treat their patients, and to strive to improve at least the way they deliver their news, even if they can't seem to get better at treating the disease....more
Reading this novel is something like watching the most talented pastry chef ever born as he meticulously gathers the most exquisite, delicious, expensReading this novel is something like watching the most talented pastry chef ever born as he meticulously gathers the most exquisite, delicious, expensive ingredients ever--and here you are, thinking that he’s about to make the world’s most perfect dessert--but instead he throws all the ingredients into a big bowl and walks away. ...more
As damning and excoriating as ever, the second time through. Fearless. Unassailable. Meant to be hated, in a way. I hated it more and enjoyed it less As damning and excoriating as ever, the second time through. Fearless. Unassailable. Meant to be hated, in a way. I hated it more and enjoyed it less this time through, knowing where I was going, and that really seemed to be the point of it.
First review:
This novel is exorbitantly, lavishly violent. It's a sordid kind of violence, violence done to and by characters with a pathological level of cruelty. It was impossible to not feel assaulted by it as I read. It jolts me right out of my complacency about the past. This is a novel about Native American genocide, about American genocide. It's about a holocaust that has been more or less lost to history in terms of its overwhelming magnitude, and where what is remembered has been kitsched over and transformed into popular entertainment. Silko set out to shatter the past as it has been preserved in our collective culture and to replace it with something far more damning and sad.
Much of the writing is staccato, scattered, shattered, and at times nearly incoherent. Silko tells a story of lives brutalized. It's a story where proper sentences would prettify and thus lie. The stylistic punches built up a level of dread in me as I read. There are scenes of such brutality and lack of humanity that they left me sick. I also frequently felt lost, and irritated by a prose style that felt deliberately blunted and ugly. ANd then I would think: this is right, this is the right way to tell such an ugly history.
Now and then would come chapters of soaring lyricism, interstitially spaced between the chapters of violence and cruelty. They fortified me. They allowed me to keep reading.
It's maybe my highest praise of a book when I can honestly say "I've never read anything like this book before." And I admire how ruthless Silko is, even though there are passages I wish I could un-read....more
Breathtaking, vivid writing but it almost didn't feel like the writing belonged in a novel. It felt like it should have been music, instead. As I readBreathtaking, vivid writing but it almost didn't feel like the writing belonged in a novel. It felt like it should have been music, instead. As I read I got the same feeling I get when I listen to Barber's Adagio for Strings. As with the Barber piece there are beautiful incantatory phrases that build to piercingly beautiful and very sad resolutions. But the resolutions are lyrical and thematic, rather than providing narrative closure. The language does not build to a resolution as a novel typically does. There is almost no sense of narrative momentum. So I'm not sure if I love this work as a novel, to be read silently. I'd love this story set to music, as a choral piece, maybe--words to be sung aloud in a holy place. ...more
I enjoyed reading Negroland very much. It left me wanting more though in almost every category it touched on. There are extraordinary thoughts here buI enjoyed reading Negroland very much. It left me wanting more though in almost every category it touched on. There are extraordinary thoughts here but they didn't cohere for me into a whole. There is a pan-historical thread, for example, that considers, too briefly, how a handful of African Americans navigated racism and extreme hostility to become educated and prosperous prior to the 1950's. There is a thread that speaks in the voice of "we" and is roughly defined throughout the book as economically successful, well-educated African Americans in the separate-but-equal era of the 1950's. There is also a personal story, but the anecdotes from Jefferson's own life seem picked to show a moral or make a social point rather than rising organically or providing a complete sense of Jefferson's life experiences. So while deeply readable it left me wanting.
Maybe my sense of incompleteness from the book is completely perfect though. Margo Jefferson makes frequent interjections in her story to examine her own, hesitant feelings about her subject; to acknowledge her ambivalence to speak about "Negroland" at all, after being drilled as a child to never complain, to always be an example for others, to always put her best foot forward. This ambivalence about how much to share becomes a subtext in the book that both enriches it and prevents it from being a completely open and honest look at an era, and a way of life, that is no more....more
Job and Ifi are living breathing three dimensional characters who are somehow dropped into a plot that feels like a piece of Ikea furniture still disaJob and Ifi are living breathing three dimensional characters who are somehow dropped into a plot that feels like a piece of Ikea furniture still disassembled and in its box. Is it a table? Is it a bookcase? the two central characters are so strong and believable, so I had high hopes, and even though I'm being harsh here I'm glad to have met these fictional characters. But their story is a muddle full of contradiction, melodrama, and coincidence. The ancillary characters behave in ways that completely baffled me. It reads like a terrific first draft....more
These essays frequently hit the same combination of extreme beauty with detailed observation that the best of Loren Eiseley's essays do (and Savoy quoThese essays frequently hit the same combination of extreme beauty with detailed observation that the best of Loren Eiseley's essays do (and Savoy quotes Eiseley in the first essay in the collection). Reading these, I felt exalted, and instructed, and more often than not a little weepy too--as with Eiseley, there is an underlying sadness and the tone of an elegy in many of these essays. They leave me with a feeling not unlike being sad to see your child grow up however happy you are about the way they've turned out.
The excellent writing would be reason enough to pick up this collection and read it, but also, read it for the subjects it covers, for the unique way Savoy blends observations about "memory, history, race, and the American landscape." Savoy draws on many disciplines, as well as from her own experiences, to reveal new ways of looking at the world....more
As I read I felt I was listening to an extremely intelligent person tell her story, a person who has the perception, and the bravery, to remember her As I read I felt I was listening to an extremely intelligent person tell her story, a person who has the perception, and the bravery, to remember her childhood as the chaotic and helpless time it was. Political upheaval in Mexico and throughout South America during Nettel's childhood comes slantingly through this autobiographical novel, told the way a child would perceive it. I feel made aware of events like the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre in a very different way from what I'd learn from reading non-fiction, or from reading fiction written from an adult point of view. There is a lot to experience in this slim book. I enjoyed the company of Guadalupe Nettel as I read it. ...more
I found this novel to be a delightful surprise, possibly because I've never before read a novel by Eco. I felt well taken care of by the story teller.I found this novel to be a delightful surprise, possibly because I've never before read a novel by Eco. I felt well taken care of by the story teller. The narrator, Colona, a mostly unsuccessful hack worker in minor publishing jobs without any glamour whatsoever, was someone I wanted to listen to, especially for the length of time it took to listen to this brief novel. David Colacci, the narrator, does an excellent job. I did not mind that this wasn't the book that other people seem to have expected it to be--I found it witty and charming....more
This is an extraordinary, sad work of a kind that could only have been written by a man of Hilbig's unique era: born in 1941, growing up in the rubbleThis is an extraordinary, sad work of a kind that could only have been written by a man of Hilbig's unique era: born in 1941, growing up in the rubble of East Germany, and already in late middle age when the Germanies reunified, when he was too old to change much about his life view or habits or to do anything other than chronicle his times with extreme, even painful truthfulness.
I disagree with those who find this work surreal, or who compare it with Kafka or even Poe. Anyone who had the experience of spending any time at all in pre-1989 East Germany would remember how reality itself was surreal, in the DDR. The stories in The Sleep of the Righteous capture the paranoia and the surreal nature of living in that culture of paranoia and defeat.
But this isn't a nihilistic book. It's full of humanity, and that's what makes the tragedy it chronicles so deeply affecting. Every one of these stories is heartbreaking in some way, from the first in the collection, about a boy growing up in a world defined by unexploded ordinance and industrial waste--a world so natural to the boy that he doesn't think to complain--to the last, extraordinary story, narrated by an older man, post-unification, who tells of his chance meeting with the Stasi officer who had been assigned to spy on him for decades.
Novels about war there have been plenty of, but never one before now, I guess, that is told from the point of view of an agoraphobic woman who walls hNovels about war there have been plenty of, but never one before now, I guess, that is told from the point of view of an agoraphobic woman who walls herself in her apartment even as Angola erupts in civil violence outside her doors. The story is a fantastic one and yet it has so much detail, recounted in the form that almost resembles journalism, that it slips back and forth between feeling like a bizarre tale, and feeling completely plausible. A very enjoyable and enlightening read, one that's full of humanity....more
It's like a miniature painting, meticulous in detail, if small in scope. One Out of Two starts out in a light-hearted way and so the ending was a littIt's like a miniature painting, meticulous in detail, if small in scope. One Out of Two starts out in a light-hearted way and so the ending was a little more heartbreaking than I expected it to be. The sisters Constitución and Gloria make choices, together and individually, that force them to give up one kind of love for the sake of another. It's a lovely story....more
This novel continuously delighted me. There was something about the rhythm and scene setting in the beginning that needed getting used to, where I thoThis novel continuously delighted me. There was something about the rhythm and scene setting in the beginning that needed getting used to, where I thought characters behaved in unrealistic ways, but I kept going because I loved the narrative voice. Eventually I loved everything about it, especially the way the story altered direction more than once, and in ever more surprising ways....more
I didn't expect this novel, especially given the way it begins, to turn out to be a love story. I was surprised by it in so many ways, most of all forI didn't expect this novel, especially given the way it begins, to turn out to be a love story. I was surprised by it in so many ways, most of all for its exquisite depiction of human loneliness. Everyone is lonely in this story. Everyone tries to run away from the despair of their own lives by creating a script and playing parts they write for themselves and in which they are the hero, so that they can justify the most selfish and repulsive acts against others and to pretend for a while that they aren't lonely. Everyone, that is, except for Cheryl Glickman, who, however dysfunctional, is a self-aware human being. She is living her life. She is trying to understand her own humanity, as well as the humanity of those around her. By being true to herself, the most extraordinary love comes to her. The story is a giddy and at times nauseatuing mix of outrageous with mundane, exalted with grotesque, repulsive with tender....more
This short, wry novel can be read as a critique of the way society shuns those who are different: The protagonist Bjorn does nothing other than behaveThis short, wry novel can be read as a critique of the way society shuns those who are different: The protagonist Bjorn does nothing other than behave in an unusual way, hurting no one, and finds himself ostracized and hated by his co-workers. Or, it can be read as an indictment of the way differently-abled people might be resented in their workplace for being held to different, lower standards: In spite of missing work and behaving like a drug addict, Bjorn is protected by his boss and not fired, and the novel implies perhaps he should have been. Or it can be read as a criticism of the lack of compassion toward the mentally ill: Bjorn's coworkers and boss aren't concerned with helping him in any humanitarian way; they are instead concerned with making sure he follows the rules and stays productive.
I appreciated the novel more and more as the story progressed, and as these different ways of interpreting it became apparent....more
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