"Here's how it is: The country where I was born no longer exists."
Gorgeous, attentive, precise, subtle, meaningful. Every sentence carried me softly i"Here's how it is: The country where I was born no longer exists."
Gorgeous, attentive, precise, subtle, meaningful. Every sentence carried me softly into a greater understanding of not just one boy's life, but also of the turbulent tragic time through which he and his family lives. Reading this novel took concentration but the payoff was incalculable....more
I enjoyed reading this novel quite a bit. I couldn't help but compare its opening section with other novels I've read where the protagonist spends a gI enjoyed reading this novel quite a bit. I couldn't help but compare its opening section with other novels I've read where the protagonist spends a good number of pages entirely alone: Robinson Crusoe, The Martian, My Side of the Mountain, Earth Abides. It's an interesting technical problem for a writer to solve and Hale's approach is a little different from these others--a first person/present tense account that focuses on the body and its experiences, more than on the environment that Monster is moving through. This feels profoundly female in a way that I can't easily explain (and all of these preceding reads had male protagonists). The shift to a two-person world, when it comes, and then to an entirely new narrator, was ambitious and thoughtfully done....more
What a book. Is it a novel about a journey through a dystopian hell-scape? No. This particular hell-scape is in the real world and it has a veracity tWhat a book. Is it a novel about a journey through a dystopian hell-scape? No. This particular hell-scape is in the real world and it has a veracity that gripped me from the first pages. A thirty-five year old teacher in eastern Ukraine, a man who has tried his best to keep his head down and to pretend life will go on as always even as the terror of war engulfs his town, goes on a trip to retrieve his nephew from a care facility in now-occupied territory. He makes this trip not from any sense of heroism, but because, at the start of his journey, he just can't grasp how terrible things are going to get. How lawless and unnatural and uncivilized things are about to get. The accumulation of detail is stunning and harrowing, I would say the prose is "beautiful" but it's not over-pretty in any way--it's perfect, it's immersive, and it never veers from the understanding and experiences of one man as he navigates a senseless landscape and tries to hold on. The reading experience reminds me somewhat of Imre Kertész's novel Fatelessness for the way it focuses relentlessly on one person's experience, and through that narrow lens, it reveals so much more. This novel is a must read for both its literary masterfulness and its historical/contemporary significance....more
This fascinating novel practically begs for a second read. Both the prose and the social observations made throughout are complex. The novel is both cThis fascinating novel practically begs for a second read. Both the prose and the social observations made throughout are complex. The novel is both challenging and rewarding. It exhilarated me with its perspectives and characters and observations, and then in the next chapter asked me to catch up with a new perspective, a different generation, and a different set of circumstances for the characters, just when I wanted to stay comfortably in the perspective of the world Grattan had created for me in the previous chapter.
The novel weaves three story lines--that of Beate, who at the beginning of the novel defects from East Germany with her parents at the age of 12, Beate's children, raised in the US and then brought back to East Germany by their mother after the fall of the Berlin Wall and after her marriage has collapsed; and Peter, her grandchild. The writing is uniformly excellent and the scenes are full of surprise and rich with human feeling. Each of these generations and their tribulations and triumphs casts light on the others, and allows this relatively brief novel to span an incredible, complex era in history. I'm a little undone just now by the structure and the choices Grattan made to leap in a non-chronological way through his story, but now that I've come to the end I can see the purpose of his choices, and that's why I want to read it again soon....more
In 2018 I began to re-read novels with frequency and zeal. I'm not talking about re-reading Shakespeare plays and Jane Austen novels and new translatiIn 2018 I began to re-read novels with frequency and zeal. I'm not talking about re-reading Shakespeare plays and Jane Austen novels and new translations of The Iliad and all the other stuff we all agree is worth re-reading, if and when we have the time. I'm talking about turning around and re-reading a newly published book within months or weeks or days of my first reading, a practice that I've come to embrace and to even look forward to, even though (like all the other avid readers here) I have an ever-more-ominous tower of 'to-be-read' books on my list that is trying always to persuade me to call the novel "read" and move on.
The House of Broken Angels is my latest re-read. It's maybe fitting, since this is a novel about family, that three weeks ago when I first read the novel it gave me the feeling I have sometimes when members of my own extended family come to visit--'ok I love you guys, but too much of a good thing is too much of a good thing, so maybe now it's time to go home.' I got to the end of my first read of this novel thinking almost exclusively about what I didn't like about these characters. Especially the men. Throughout the novel their thoughts and actions pricked my sensibilities, and made me hypercritical, until I was very cranky by the end.
But then it felt to me, because it was true, that I'd closed my mind to the goodness of these characters, and focused on their flaws. I don't like doing that with people, so why did I think it was fine to be so opinionated about people in books?
And so I read it again, deciding that this time I'd let these people be themselves.
Let me tell you something. I was deeply, deeply moved. By getting out of my own way and my own judgments I could see the extraordinary depth of feeling Urrea has created here among the members of this fictional family. A history of choices, and of memories shared. The extraordinary careful rendering of a blended family, not only blended by ethnicity but also by nationality--here is a fictional rendition of a family living the reality of border politics for the last few decades, the way undocumented and citizen exist within the same family, their fates determined by a few miles difference between their place of birth. It gently, yet devastatingly lays out the way border-crossing experiences can be, in some years, easy memories, whereas in other years (like those closer to the present day) border crossing becomes a harrowing outrageous violation of selfhood. The second time, I marveled at the way these people forgive one another. I loved the way the author loves this family, too, flaws and all, and the way he invites me to love them. My previous irritations with these characters' faults felt like I was being that kind of a family member who refuses to forget and move on and to forgive other family members, whereas this family, Big Angel's family, was all about forgetting and moving on and forgiving.
This novel is a beautiful humane depiction of the dignity of everyday humans, and you should read it.
Sometimes a get to the end of a book and it says to me, "turn around. go back. take another look." I'm so glad this novel said that to me.
... 1/3/19: Ok, I am reading this again and I'm loving it completely and without reservation. More to come. ...
First Read/Review, 12/15/18:
I loved this book but in a quiet way. As I read I kept thinking: 'wow, that's lovely,' and 'my, that is beautifully put,' and 'oh, what a dear way to capture this filial feeling,' but even so I was also feeling a little restless, and as if I'd stayed too long in a bath, or maybe, it's that I felt exactly as if I, too, was at this big family reunion, where almost everyone is a bit noisier than I would like, and none of them are very good listeners, and, even though I love them, and even though I know they are good people who are doing their best, all I want is for them to leave me alone, so I can go find a quiet room, and close the door behind me preferably with a glass of wine and a good book to keep me company....more
what a strange, wonderful, mystical, heartbreaking, ultimately redemptive book. It was unusual serendipitous timing to read this novel immediately folwhat a strange, wonderful, mystical, heartbreaking, ultimately redemptive book. It was unusual serendipitous timing to read this novel immediately following Oreo. Both are quest novels about a young woman making her way confidently and fearlessly through a world of men, many of whom wish to do her harm, and yet the young woman prevails, she triumphs, she finds a way to be fully alive and fully happy. I realized while reading Oreo how few novels I've read where a young woman has such complete agency--Rubyfruit Jungle also comes to mind. To have read two such novels in a row felt wonderful to me.
Much of what I love about Signs Preceding the End of the World has to do with what is not explained. The human relationships and even the landscape itself keep changing, shifting, in mirage-like realignments of feeling and color. The truth is never laid out in explicit detail and it seems right for the novel to remain in many ways unknowable, just as so many things that might happen on a journey across the border can't ever be fully understood, or fully in control of those who make the journey. ...more
A novel about New York from the point of view of the most disenfranchised. A book that is never sentimental, never condescending. One of the best bookA novel about New York from the point of view of the most disenfranchised. A book that is never sentimental, never condescending. One of the best books I've ever read....more
I returned to this novel for a second read after 17 years. I thought: I really want to read Kevin Brockmeier's novel The Brief History of the Dead agaI returned to this novel for a second read after 17 years. I thought: I really want to read Kevin Brockmeier's novel The Brief History of the Dead again and looked up at the "B" section of my shelves and there it was, right between Richard Brautigan and Rita Mae Brown. I think I loved it more the second time. Maybe I was more ready for a book in which everyone dies, now that I'm living in a post-covid world, and now that I'm 17 years older. I love this book for its beautiful writing, and its empathy, and its humanity, and its thought-provoking cosmology....more
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