When I got to the end of Laurus I thought: "this is the best book I've ever read." I've had that feeling before with other novels and I hope I will haWhen I got to the end of Laurus I thought: "this is the best book I've ever read." I've had that feeling before with other novels and I hope I will have it again in the future but even so Laurus will remain one of the most perfect and memorable experiences of my reading life.
It probably changed my experience to have read "The Confession of St. Patrick" before reading Laurus. Unlike Augustine's Roman intellectualism, St. Patrick's Confession describes a chaotic reality where the spiritual and the physical worlds are so intertwined that they sometimes interact in brutish ways--as when Patrick writes:
"The very same night while I was sleeping Satan attacked me violently, as I will remember as long as I shall be in this body; and there fell on top of me as it were, a huge rock,and not one of my members had any force."
St. Patrick describes the Devil as a force that can reach through from the spiritual world and manifest itself physically in this world, and the same sort of Christianity is at work in Laurus. In both Ireland and Russia Christianity developed without the mitigating rationality of Rome. This faith is visceral and unforgiving and absolute. Demons and angels are corporate. Faith healers are real. Holy fools are venerated. Future and past events can appear in dreams, and the consequences of sin and virtue are made manifest in this life: in the health of the body, in good or bad events, in the weather and the seasons.
The world view described with such tender care in this novel is very foreign to mine, and yet the writing is so grounded in physical detail, and so consistent throughout the novel, that I bought into it completely and was immersed in it entirely as I read.
I cried a lot. Even for the donkey. It's an amazing novel. It got to the absolute heart of me....more
This was a perfect, perfect book for me. The novel is simply told, and very short, but it touches on so many critical, cut-to-the-bone themes, includiThis was a perfect, perfect book for me. The novel is simply told, and very short, but it touches on so many critical, cut-to-the-bone themes, including the most fundamental questions of identity, of gender, of responsibility toward others, and of what makes life worth living. In this novel the more outwardly stable and successful a character is, the less likely they are to have any perspective on their life choices. The more a given character becomes aware of their lived experience, the closer he or she comes to falling into the abyss. The story forces characters, and by extension readers, to think deeply about what "self" is, whether it be defined most simply as an organic body with organic desires and needs of its own, or as part of a social structure, where one's value and even one's sanity is defined by others. This was a disturbing read in the best sense possible--I was disturbed from complacent thinking and stirred up with new thoughts. ...more
The novel begins by telling you nothing in it is true:
the only real things in a novel are the sequences of letters, words, and sentences that make itThe novel begins by telling you nothing in it is true:
the only real things in a novel are the sequences of letters, words, and sentences that make it up, and the paper on which they're printed.
But what follows is told in a tone that mimics the tone of a popular history book. Never mind that the historic characters who appear in this novel are set into scenes of great ridiculousness-- history itself is ridiculous series of unlikely events, isn't it?--so as I read sentence after sentence of implausible if historic-sounding details, each so surprising and specific (and playful and delightful), I kept thinking, "wait, did that really happen?" or "could it have been that way?" until I just needed to give myself up to the story entirely and to be carried off into its world.
And through it all, somehow this feeling kept surprising me, that I could be having so much fun while reading a book that is so erudite and so well-written. No matter how playful the novel is, there is this skittering tension in it between fact and fiction, between what is known about the past, and what can never be known about the past. It's both a deep-fun book, and a fun-deep book. Wonderful....more
I finished re-reading The Blizzard this weekend and when I got to the end my feeling was one of exalted revelation. It felt like a completely differenI finished re-reading The Blizzard this weekend and when I got to the end my feeling was one of exalted revelation. It felt like a completely different book from the last time. Once more I'm amazed at the way books can mean very different things, depending on who we are when we read them.
This time for me The Blizzard was about how what one thinks is important in life turns out to be not important at all. It's about how even our most terrible mistakes in life can reveal themselves over time to be glorious and meaningful, if we've lived honestly. The novel suggests that a life lived with quiet acceptance of what can't be helped leads to peace, whereas a life lived by striving forward from one goal to the next leads to nothing.
Last time I framed the characters in this novel differently. I thought of the doctor as the protagonist and everyone else as a secondary character. This time the full nature of the relationship between Garin and "Crouper" became the focal point of the novel for me, and it led to a deeper interpretation.
The first time I read the novel I was also distracted by the flurry of events that come one after another in its pages. There is a relentless series of happenings in the story, a metaphorical blizzard of bizarre experiences and scenic wonders. This time the blizzard of happenings felt like they were written to demonstrate the way we humans allow ourselves to be trapped in strife and frustration, from moment to moment. The real story here beats more deeply, like a huge and generous heart.
Well wow. This is an interesting and captivating read and not like anything I've read before. Even as I write that I'm thinking, "yes-but..." --because this novel keeps fooling me into thinking it's exactly "THIS" kind of novel--a survival novel...a "To Build a Fire" story of human hubris...a 19th century Russian story...whaa, a ZOMBIE novel? and all the while it keeps artfully skirting the edge of multiple literary tropes, including ones that align with realism, and then something extremely unexpected happens and the story veers wildly away and plunges me back into a fantastic world where I have no idea what will happen next. The way some aspects of the story-telling mimics a dream state reminds me of avant-garde or absurdist writing. But there is a big difference: so many avant-guard novels feel like fairly static thought-pieces to me, whereas the narrative tension in The Blizzard never flags.
While "The Past" has no plot to speak of, even so I stayed up until 1 a.m. last night to finish it. I've rarely felt this invested in characters, or fWhile "The Past" has no plot to speak of, even so I stayed up until 1 a.m. last night to finish it. I've rarely felt this invested in characters, or felt so tenderly toward fictional beings. Hadley moves freely from one character's interior thoughts and feelings to the next. We never learn the full story of any one character. And yet. What we do learn is so apt, so human, that I feel very close to these people. Where the novel soars is in its exploration of private pain, of the essential loneliness of being inside a body, apart from others, thinking thoughts and having feelings that can never be fully known by another. The people in this story are rarely alone, but they're always alone. The point of view most prevalent throughout the novel is being inside the head of a person who is feeling their flaws and isolation from others, feeling these things as a private grief, even when they know they are in the midst of people who love them. This novel is not an unhappy novel, though. It's full of buoyant light, and hope, that even though each of us is frail and flawed, other people find a way to love us. ...more
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