I was so charmed by this story. I felt I was in the hands of a master storyteller, one who know how to take her time, how to entrance me, how to make I was so charmed by this story. I felt I was in the hands of a master storyteller, one who know how to take her time, how to entrance me, how to make me see the story in my mind's eye, how to delight me and keep me turning the pages. It took its beautiful elegant time to tell me a beautiful, elegant story, one that captivated me. In some places I felt--and this is a good thing--that I knew what was going to happen next--and the anticipation what I knew was coming was such a pleasure, like hearing a wonderful old tale told once more by a master storyteller, or hearing a song you know by heart performed by someone who has been practicing that song her whole life. Wonderful. I read the book while simultaneously listening to Choo's narration which was such a treat....more
Pub day for the English translation of this remarkable book. May it find the many readers it deserves.
This novel is amazing. I'm terrified to even tryPub day for the English translation of this remarkable book. May it find the many readers it deserves.
This novel is amazing. I'm terrified to even try to explain why it moved me, because I'll surely fail. So let first share the facts about the story, and see where it leads. This novel descends into the minds of three children, whose sibling, a boy, is so profoundly disabled that he will never grow beyond the capabilities of a newborn infant. Each child resonates in a completely different way to the presence of their brother in their lives. Each find meanings that are unique and mysterious, and often beautiful. The parents and their trials with raising their four children are barely part of the story--this is the story of children grappling with the deepest meanings of our lives. The voice is lyrical and true. Every word matters. Read it....more
So simple, so complicated, so breathtakingly beautiful. I'm in awe of the humanity Coetzee conjured with these words.So simple, so complicated, so breathtakingly beautiful. I'm in awe of the humanity Coetzee conjured with these words....more
This is one of those times when I'm overcome with gratefulness that I know how to read.
It is so, so rare for a book to reach this level of intellectuThis is one of those times when I'm overcome with gratefulness that I know how to read.
It is so, so rare for a book to reach this level of intellectual perfection, emotional perfection, moral perfection, all at once.
This is a deeply imagined story. Now and then I noticed that I was on the verge of crying as I read. Not in a cathartic way, and not because the story is tragic (although it is) but because of how the novel so relentlessly undid me. Here are some of the ways that it upended me. There is the delighted shock that comes along whenever Everett takes this well-known story in an unexpected direction. There is the absolute unexpectedness of some outcomes, some conversations, some turns of phrase--followed by the sense that what I just read was, perfect. There is the way Everett's novel keeps forcing me to reconsider familiar characters, who here are given a depth far beyond what they have in the original story. There is the way scenes aren't exactly reproduced from Twain's novel--instead, the same events have been folded into brand new shapes, where I'm forced to see the brutality, the reality of enslaved lives.
As I read, I felt as if every novel Percival Everett has ever written has led him to this novel. I'm so grateful to have experienced the thought and the care and the love of language and the glorious bang-up storytelling reflected on every page....more
Original, startling, captivating, hypnotic. The closest reading experience I can think of to this book is REMAINDER by Tom McCarthy--the same disorienOriginal, startling, captivating, hypnotic. The closest reading experience I can think of to this book is REMAINDER by Tom McCarthy--the same disorientation, the same need for me as a reader to pay absolute attention and to not allow my focus to waver or I'll drop the thread, the same wild leaps out-of-bounds of what I expected to read next. The same ... the phrase I'm coming up with is "existential dread" but the effect of this novel is both deeper and lighter than this phrase would suggest. I'm very glad to have read it, and I recommend it to everyone whose heart is thrilled when you pick up a book and read its first pages and you think 'oh, my, I've never read anything like this before.'...more
Of Cattle and Men is a giddy mix of poetry and brute force. Reading it feels like you just jumped off a cliff and you're a skinny second from hitting Of Cattle and Men is a giddy mix of poetry and brute force. Reading it feels like you just jumped off a cliff and you're a skinny second from hitting the water, which is very cold, and maybe there's an alligator waiting underneath. ...more
What I love about beautiful language in books is that it isn't just beautiful for its own sake. Its rhythms and pauses and propulsions create deeper mWhat I love about beautiful language in books is that it isn't just beautiful for its own sake. Its rhythms and pauses and propulsions create deeper meanings. They enrich the meanings already contained in the words themselves.
This is a beautifully written book. Its language is so lovely. Its meanings are so fully supported by the music of the words. There must be a word that defines this kind of writing. It's like 'linguistic synesthesia' to me--and heck if I know what I mean by that, but here I go, I'm trying to explain. The language is compressed in a way that one meaning pushes agains another meaning, the way sound can press against color, or taste against sound, in actual synesthesia.
"Near the end of my British grandmother's life, one memory came back to her again and again, as her appetite dwindled and she shrank into her chair."
'At night mosquitoes arrived, buzzing malaria.'
'The wind which ran its blade down the flat land seemed to scrape away all color. What I remember is bleached green, and my feet in leather shoes, moving over the ground as if through a trance.'
This is one of those rare and precious memoirs that is so full of empathy and self-understanding that it gives you as much a sense of your own self as it gives you an understanding of its author....more
I’ll begin by commenting on the translation because it’s remarkable. Polly Barton has rendered Mild Vertigo into such beautiful English. I can’t vouchI’ll begin by commenting on the translation because it’s remarkable. Polly Barton has rendered Mild Vertigo into such beautiful English. I can’t vouch for the translation’s devotion to original meanings but I can say the language here soars. It reminds me of the great prose stylist Steven Dixon’s writing—here is the same sweep of sentence, the same disdain for unnecessary paragraphing, the same reluctance to interrupt the exhilarating forward rush of words with any unnecessary punctuation.
My breathless wonder at the language began with the first sentence and the way it gallops and canters on and on until page 4 of the New Directions edition I read. By the end of that first sentence, I felt in complete empathy with the thoughts and feelings of Natsumi, the Tokyo housewife whose story is told here. It was like I was living inside of her. It’s a remarkable alchemy—empathy created through the recreation of thought-rhythms that reproduce themselves in the heads of readers. Author Kate Zambreno also seems to have been affected by the rhythms and meanders of this writing, so much so that she chose to write her afterword for the New Directions edition in the same mildly vertiginous style as the novel itself.
Natsumi is leading a life of mostly-meek social conformity and her life first felt suffocatingly pointless to me and about as fun as drowning must feel—except she is, for the most part, content. She earnestly believes she is where she wants to be in life, or at least where she belongs, and given who she is it’s impossible to imagine any other life being better for her. You could even go so far as to say that, when she is alone and not thinking anything in particular, she experiences something close to joy, no matter how mundane her life seems on its surface.
The most significant of these moments seem to come when Natsumi happens to be looking at old photographs. It’s in these moments, when Natsumi sees and reacts to photographs, that the author makes a subtle metafictional intrusion into Natsumi’s world. Two of Kanai’s own essays on photography, published prior to this novel’s publication, are printed in full within the novel. Natsumi reads them. Kanai’s essays feel like sign posts she leaves behind for her fictional character to find and to learn from. It’s as if the author herself is reaching into the pages of her novel to shake her fictional character awake and to encourage her to see the wonder of the world around her, however noisy and mundane a life it may seem on its surface.
Make no mistake, this is a challenging read. It demands absolute attention. Its syntax and diction keep surprising. You might think you know where the next phrase of any given sentence is going to take you but you’re probably wrong. You need to be vigilant. You may learn more about feral cats and captive birds than you expected. You may decide not to trust what you learn. You may become restless or bored, in the way Natsumi becomes restless and bored. You may discover this novel means something completely different to you than it did to me. Keep going. This novel may surprise you. It may change you.
My alter ego "Claire Oshetsky" also reviewed this book, for the May 28 2023 NY Times Sunday Book Review, available online here, (gift link/no paywall) and more or less agrees with me....more
What remarkable writing. This novel slides past the literal and hits straight in the middle of visceral sense experience. I wasn't always sure what waWhat remarkable writing. This novel slides past the literal and hits straight in the middle of visceral sense experience. I wasn't always sure what was going on--the writing is like a furious fever dream of sense impression--but I was led forward by a faith that any writer who can craft words this close to the bone, this free of artifice or expectation, is a writer worth following.
In terms of content Dogs on Fire has nothing whatsoever to do with the book it reminded me of most--that would be Malina by Ingeborg Bachman. I'm not sure if that comparison is defensible, the two are so different in tone and intent. But each of these books worked in a way where the primary reading experience was one of intense emotion, of being alive, of feeling one moment spearheading itself violently into the next one as I read along. The experience of reading this novel left me feeling exhausted and befuddled and abused and exalted and purified and joyful. Full disclosure: my impressions may be partly due to last night's insomnia that had me staying up to read this novel. But so it goes. A book comes to us where we are in that moment and speaks to us in that moment. Writing, and reading, can include so many experiences beyond the superficial meanings of words on a page. I enjoyed the plunge. I read it straight through and now I'm going to read it again. As in, right now, here I go....more
It’s taken me seven years of reading, and about a thousand books, to be able to say once again: “This is the best book I’ve ever read.”
Here are some It’s taken me seven years of reading, and about a thousand books, to be able to say once again: “This is the best book I’ve ever read.”
Here are some reasons why I feel this way.
Luisa Hall has written what is by far the best depiction of childbirth I've ever seen in print.
Elsewhere in her book she has perfectly captured the hollow void of grief a woman feels after the miscarriage of a wanted child, and in other pages she reminds me of the sometime-strangeness of living inside a woman's body when it refuses to get pregnant when you want it to, or gets pregnant when you don't want it to.
And yet this book holds so much more than these particulars about living inside a woman's body. I've also had the privilege of spending time with a deeply feeling, deeply observant narrator. She has gifted me with a wise and revelatory view of these times. I feel as if I can see this right-now world that we're living through so much more clearly than I did before, because of this book. The plague. The weird climate events and what they might portend. The way new technologies keep upending our lives at an ever more frantic pace. The hysterical politics.
When I read this book again in ten years I'll surely be saying to myself: "yes, that is exactly how it was."
Some people have asked in the comments to this review or in DM's which book made me feel this exhilarating feeling of "this is the best book I've ever read" last time. It was Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin....more
A perceptive little girl is at the heart of this novel. She sees everything and yet she understands so little. Telling a story from a child's point ofA perceptive little girl is at the heart of this novel. She sees everything and yet she understands so little. Telling a story from a child's point of view gives an author the chance to blend wisdom and naivité in the narrative voice and it can lead to such powerful outcomes. So few authors get it right, though. Either the child sounds like a wizened tiny old person (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close) or the voice sounds hopelessly baby-talk-artificial (Room).
The Only Daughter gets it perfectly right. It's the most beautiful rendering of a child's viewpoint, adopted for fictional ends, that I've read since The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers. ...more
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