Enjoying this book requires you to imagine that a spite-suicide can be an excellent foundation for a comic romp. I was there for it. I was hooked fromEnjoying this book requires you to imagine that a spite-suicide can be an excellent foundation for a comic romp. I was there for it. I was hooked from the first clause of the first sentence, that being: "The night Ralph's mother flayed her forearms...". This book is incredibly funny to me and I need to admit it even though I'm slightly ashamed to admit it. Only slightly. What can I say to excuse myself? Well, there's the writing, which is delightful. The sentences made me laugh. The sentences zing. I was embarrassed to be laughing at this story which is really very shocking in many ways, but I was laughing. I was snorting, actually. You may need to be in a certain mood for this book, I admit. But it may put you in that mood before you know it. It's consistently written in a manic hysterical sometimes-schizophrenic voice that takes no prisoners. I wish I'd written it. Ainslie Hogarth is the master of first sentences, and the god of surprising verbs....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
This is a book that carried me through the first time with the surprise and delight of the words themselves. What marvelous attention to language!
The This is a book that carried me through the first time with the surprise and delight of the words themselves. What marvelous attention to language!
The the second time I read the book, though, what formerly hit me as 'exuberant' now hit me as 'ridiculous.' And 'ridiculous' is fine--some of the best most beloved characters in the world are ridiculous, from Don Quixote to Yossarian--but ridiculous only works if you take your own characters seriously. I do think Williams could have given her characters more inner fire and humanity and seriousness than she does and I'm sorry she missed the chance.
Winceworth has all the makings for a great tragicomic hero but there isn't enough inner motivation here on the page for him to live up to that potential. There is something so poignant in the way he is reflecting his inner life in his mountweazals, but it's an understated theme, and, I don't know, I longed for Mallory to honor the person who had added those odd words instead of mindlessly doing her job and erasing Winceworth from existence. I wanted there to be some connection or empathy between the main characters of the two braided threads in this novel, where Mallory would want to preserve Winceworth's made-up words or try to understand them as a full message from the past. To have those words speak to her more fully and to make this odd character from the past come alive to her--the way shakespeare in his sonnets claims his words can give a person a kind of immortality.
It's a tribute to the book's strength that here I am wishing it were better than it is. It's still a very fun read. If a book wants to be ridiculous, I want it to capture the ridiculousness of human existence while still making me care very much. There is such lovely writing here that I wanted more from this author than she gave me. I'm not sure if that's fair at all.
I still believe what I wrote in my former review below about the audacious remarkable use of language in this novel and look forward to a next novel from Williams that gives the same loving attention to her characters as well.
first review:
Yay! Yay! Yay!
The Liar's Dictionary is so entertaining, so riveting, and above all so attentive to language, that reading it felt like I was in the presence of a virtuoso performer of an instrument called Language. Williams set an audacious goal for herself, here, when she made the underlying premise of her novel be the search for precision in language/meaning. With this as her premise, she needed to write in a narrative voice equal to the task--to write in precisely the right words, one after the other. Her narrator is a fascinating, perceptive, big-hearted logophile. I loved spending time with her! This novel may be a delightful comedy, but the language is breathtakingly precise. It's surprising in its incisiveness and nuance, and it's this attentiveness that makes the novel such a delight to read....more
December 2023, second read. Last time I read this novel (see review below) I was moved and amazed by it. This time I was appalled and revolted. I’m woDecember 2023, second read. Last time I read this novel (see review below) I was moved and amazed by it. This time I was appalled and revolted. I’m wondering if that means I should change my five star rating. I don’t think so. I honestly don’t know what to think about my reading life these days. Why do I read fiction? Why do I write it? How does it work? What’s its purpose? Is a book that revolts me qualitatively worse (or better) than a book that exhilarates me? Who says so? Who gets to decide? What’s going on? Why a goblin?
I am so moved by this novel. It's entirely unique and yet it flows mysteriously in the same mighty river of fiction that has sprung up in these last years, written by women from all over the world, who are suddenly writing in a fierce and visceral and entirely ruthless way about what it's like to be different.
This novel is outrageous and funny in some parts, and it's outrageous and heartbreaking in others. I never knew what to expect, but then, every time the unexpected happened on the page, I thought: "of course. I know this feeling. I've lived this feeling, even if I've never thought about it quite this way before now."
I wasn't entirely on board for Murata's previously translated novel, "Convenience Store Woman," which struck me as accomplished, but a little safe. EARTHLINGS, in contrast, is radically risky. It's likely to be one of my favorites of the year. Murata invites us readers to take a leap into the unknown with her story, only for us to discover later that we know all too well what she's writing about....more
This work is marketed as a novel, laid out as a screenplay, and requires the concentration of poetry.
On its surface the work (I hesitate to call it a This work is marketed as a novel, laid out as a screenplay, and requires the concentration of poetry.
On its surface the work (I hesitate to call it a novel) seems to be a critique of typecasting in the entertainment industry, but in reality that’s just the envelope for a far deeper exploration of identity, because the work demonstrates through this unique format the way its characters, and through extension every one of us, is a prisoner of identities imposed on us by others. When the protagonist-narrator looks at his father and sees for the first time how age and hard luck have diminished him, the author spoke to every grown child confronting that moment when the parent becomes the one in need of being lovingly cared for.
There are many such moments of intense illumination where two human beings see one another clearly in this story. I think it’s a resounding success. My 3 stars in this case has to do with how much work the author demanded of me to reach these meanings. I didn’t always have the stamina. I need more handholding maybe to fully engage with a work of fiction. My rating is likely to go up as I reflect on Yu’s achievement here, or it may work better for me as an audiobook. The blankness of some of the pages and the courier type began to wear on me eventually....more
I loved reading this book. It delighted me over and over again for its brash heroine who, even though she finds herself in a loveless marriage, and evI loved reading this book. It delighted me over and over again for its brash heroine who, even though she finds herself in a loveless marriage, and even though her entire family tells her that what she has is all she deserves, refuses to believe it. She then goes about making her life better, all on her own, following a path that is joyful, funny, bawdy, women-centered, and in every way satisfying to me as a reader.
This is a feminist book in all the best ways. Of course one of the core questions of feminism as a philosophy is how culturally inclusive it can be, before it devolves into just another kind of cultural oppression where western white women are telling everyone else what to think about themselves. It's important to honor differences in sexuality, gender identity, race, class, nationality, and religion. So as I read, I didn't want to assume I understood more than I do.
And indeed there were a lot of cultural differences that divided me from the lived experience of the protagonist as described here. Some the cultural practices are so unique that they aren't translated--for example, there is no word in my language for "the right of a dead man's brother to have sex with his widow." I have very little idea, much less experience, with what it would be like to live in a culture where men have such absolute power over women as they do in this novel--so much power that there is a running trope through this novel where any woman who eats the best part of a chicken instead of feeding it to her man is punished in some absurdly excessive way, usually involving death.
Chiziane over and over again points out the absurdity of these repressive and misogynistic cultural practices, in ways that are light-hearted and farcical and that are also disarming. Chiziane allows Rami, her protagonist, to confront these practices, point out their selfish contradictions, and to disarm them, one by one. Rami is my latest hero, for the way she takes on the bad guys fearlessly, and for the way, in spite of all odds being against her, she wins in the end. ...more
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