Given my strongly unhappy reaction to this book I plan to read it again soon because anything that bothers me this much is probably not done with me yGiven my strongly unhappy reaction to this book I plan to read it again soon because anything that bothers me this much is probably not done with me yet. ...more
"How I love my Mum in the bathroom with the razor blade, the desperate Mum of my past."
This novel is a harrowing and relentless and unforgiving read, "How I love my Mum in the bathroom with the razor blade, the desperate Mum of my past."
This novel is a harrowing and relentless and unforgiving read, and is not on any level a pleasant one, and in these ways it fulfills its purpose perfectly. It remains laser-focused on developing its singular theme. It not only tells the story of an obsessive toxic relationship between a mother and her estranged middle-aged child, but also forces the reader to live inside it as they read forward to the end....more
Ok, I really hated this book, but I give it five stars. Let me explain. I had to put it down a lot--sort of the equivalent of covering my eyes at the Ok, I really hated this book, but I give it five stars. Let me explain. I had to put it down a lot--sort of the equivalent of covering my eyes at the movies. Reading it did strange, bad things to my heart rate. The book is a masterpiece of oblique anxiety and despair. Events are much more unhinged than in Kafka, with whom Hawkes is sometimes compared. Disturbing and unique....more
I read The Discomfort of Evening when it won the 2020 Booker International prize and was too disturbed by it to leave a review. Reading it a second tiI read The Discomfort of Evening when it won the 2020 Booker International prize and was too disturbed by it to leave a review. Reading it a second time I found it just as disturbing but, now that I know what's coming, I can appreciate the artfulness and the relentless purpose of the novel. It's breathtaking in many more ways than I thought possible. I still dislike it very much, but it does what it sets out to do so it's a five-star 'i hate it' from me....more
One of the most relentless and ugly books I've ever read. A book that describes a society where humans are slaughtered for meat, in more detail than IOne of the most relentless and ugly books I've ever read. A book that describes a society where humans are slaughtered for meat, in more detail than I was ready for. This novel willfully refuses to allow itself to fall into any category of fiction that would make it easier to take as a reader. The flat direct style of its prose didn't allow me, as I read along, to think of it as horror, or satire, or a metaphorical representation of social injustice, or a nihilistic moral thesis about humanity. It is exactly what it is. Never boring, it managed to continue to shock me until its final pages.
I am required to award stars to movies I review. This time, I refuse to do it. The star rating system is unsuited to this film. Is the movie good? Is it bad? Does it matter? It is what it is and occupies a world where the stars don't shine.
That goes for this novel, as well. If forced to give stars, I would give it five stars, for the way it relentlessly fulfills its purpose....more
Ruthlessly gothic, but with just a dash of Jodi-Picoult-like familial feeling so that the story became somehow all the more troubling than if it had bRuthlessly gothic, but with just a dash of Jodi-Picoult-like familial feeling so that the story became somehow all the more troubling than if it had been purely gothic.
The novel reminded me of the magnificently terrifying horror film "Hereditary," which like this novel also features an artist-parent who tortures her children, plus a smidge of self-immolation.
But because this novel comes to me outside of a tidy genre framework, and because it just barely nudges into a "maybe this could happen in the real world" space, I found the story unusually disturbing. It's in something of an 'uncanny valley' for me. If the novel were pure genre then its excesses would be easier to predict. But the novel instead asks me to feel real feelings, for situations that aren't terribly realistic, and as a result it was an upending, entirely unique reading experience....more
This book totally crashes the already-ridiculous-for-me GR 5-star-rating system because honestly this is an awful, awful book, ridiculously awful, andThis book totally crashes the already-ridiculous-for-me GR 5-star-rating system because honestly this is an awful, awful book, ridiculously awful, and I loved it completely. This writing. Wow. there are weird unlikely dependent clauses all over the place, and there are so many bizarre—actually what I meant to write just then is “freakishly bizarre”—descriptions of characters and of their behaviors. There is the story itself—for some inexplicable reason the world is going to pot in a very beautiful way, in this particular apocalypse, where organic growing things are becoming crystalline structures. When people start to turn spiky, they kind of like it. It doesn't hurt and they get to merge with everything else in a kind of eternal not-death.
To top it off there is a bit of a Heart of Darkness feel to this novel, including of course a big dark river, and an odd jungle, and most unfortunate references to “natives” behaving in suspiciously uncivilized ways.
So what can I say. Why did I love it. For its absolute excess, for the purple shade of prose, for the way people arrive on ships called “steamers” and for the way they smoke: incessantly, elegantly, and with more gesture and meaning given to each puff than the cigarettes in the movie “Now, Voyager,’ here:
Here is one of a string of books I've read lately that exquisitely accomplish what they set out to do, and yet leave me feeling dissatisfied and troubHere is one of a string of books I've read lately that exquisitely accomplish what they set out to do, and yet leave me feeling dissatisfied and troubled.
I'm wondering why this novel was something Pheby felt compelled to write in the first place. Over and over again I read about horrific abuses being done to Lucia Joyce, written from the point of view of a man who is abusing her, including her brother and her father and her passing-lovers and her caregivers at the institution. It's a disturbing experience.
And I'm not sure how I feel about the absolute requirement put on the reader to research and to understand the swirl of fact and rumor surrounding Lucia Joyce, if you want to make any sense at all of what is written here. For instance, at the beginning there is a scene of a man burning letters. I get the idea of someone being erased, but it's all very oblique without the context, without knowing that Lucia Joyce's letters and papers were destroyed by the Joyce estate.
Most of all I'm troubled that Lucia Joyce is silenced in this book just as surely as she was in life. Pheby has talked in interviews about his moral choice to not act as a "ventriloquist" for Lucia--he felt that would be disrespectful to her, especially since he is a man. But the result of his moral choice is the sense that Lucia Joyce has no inner life or agency at all.
So I fully admire the exquisite craft of this novel, while at the same time wondering if I should have let the novel into my head at all....more
Two days after having read The Man Who Loved Children and I'm finally settling down. I don't think I've ever changed a 1 star review to a 5 star revieTwo days after having read The Man Who Loved Children and I'm finally settling down. I don't think I've ever changed a 1 star review to a 5 star review before, but there it is. I've moved from feeling "this is a brilliant book, but I hate it" to feeling: "I may hate this book, but it's brilliant."
This novel made me feel dreadfully insecure about my role as a parent. I've decided that is interesting and amazing rather than something to blame it for. The parents in this novel are dreadful in all the ways I dread being, I suppose.
I was so unsettled by Stead's portrayal of a father who tries to be a friend to his children but ends up doing so in all the most damaging ways, smothering them, obliterating their individuality, so that they become supports for his ego and nothing more. Sam Pollitt is a dreadful father, and yet he thrives on the attention of his children, and his children adore him, even when he is his most self-centered and cruel. Only Louisa, the eldest child, begins to see through her father. Her journey and her growing insight become the redemptive arc in this otherwise bleak story.
Henrietta Pollitt is the kind of mother who not only resents her children but also freely shares with them every resentment she feels toward them; who tells them openly how they have ruined her life; who plays with the notion of suicide in their presence; who barely acknowledges her obligations toward them. I have to confess that I am -not- one of those parents who have never wondered, however much I love my children, what it might have been like to have lived a life without them--what I might have achieved or enjoyed if I didn't have the obligation to love them and to care for them. Just having ever had that skinny daydream in my head of what my life may have been without children made me vulnerable to the horror novel that this novel is at its heart.
I applaud Stead for taking my parental insecurities to the farthest darkest place in this novel. The story is extreme, but it is accurate and educative, and true in the way only a great, classic tragedy can be.
My original 1-star review, below the line. ============================= What it does, it does extremely well.
Imagine "To Kill a Mockingbird" where every character is like Bob Ewell. "Harry Potter" where every character is like Draco Malfoy. "Picture of Dorian Grey" where every character is like Dorian Grey. That's what it felt like to read The Man Who Loved Children.
There is no doubt that this is an exquisitely written novel. Every sentence is masterful. Open any page and you'll find a sentence that amazes.
And there is also something amazing and uncanny about Christina Stead--that she could have such a pure approach, such laser-like genius of dialog and scene and setting; that she could bring to brilliant three-dimensional life these greasy, selfish, repulsive, narcissistic people.
The relentlessness of Stead's take on humanity overwhelmed me, though. If it had been a shorter book I'd probably be praising it. But eventually its meanness overcame its art for me, and my final feeling after having read the novel was one of nausea and despair....more
I'm glad I kept the faith while reading this book. The first part gives the impression that you're about to reWow! Hmm.
That could be my whole review.
I'm glad I kept the faith while reading this book. The first part gives the impression that you're about to read a confessional weepy survivor story, and then the story veers without warning into a story that grapples in the most graphic way possible with the question of what makes our lives meaningful. It plays with the idea that a few perfect moments in one's life, however brief, are all that is necessary to give life meaning...and then it subverts this idea brilliantly. If you are a skimmer you might be tempted to skim right over some of the repetitive buildup of events. I advise against this and suggest you read as linearly as possible. It's worth making the effort to experience the story fully....more
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