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
I'm only slightly embarrassed at recent my string of novels i'm rating 5 unabashed stars, and here is another, and I'm rating these novels so highly bI'm only slightly embarrassed at recent my string of novels i'm rating 5 unabashed stars, and here is another, and I'm rating these novels so highly because it seems to me that they are filled with love, every one of them. And love is what I need to read right now.
So here is Lord, the latest novel I've read; a novel that defies every possibility of a literal interpretation, and whose sentences spring off the page and fly away from any representational reality. And yet. How fundamentally human these happenings seem to me, however surreal. Each sentence leads me forward to a bright new possibility of human vulnerability, and to a bright new possibility of human connection. Each scene as it comes along (and the scenes come along, over and over and over again, intertwining and pouring forth, from one sentence to the next) is filled with the possibility that life, however fragile, and however filled with obstacles, and fear, and pain, is without question worth living. It seems that this novel is about how our gift of life is worth trying to live in the fullest way we can muster, even in those times when we feel most alone and without purpose. I don't know for sure it that is what this book means. But I do know it held me captive with each sentence, and brought me with each sentence closer to the edge of something unexpectedly human and alive....more
Wow. This novel is an utterly lush, hyperventilating, humid, and vividly rendered story, of people tearing one another apart. I loved it. It's ridiculWow. This novel is an utterly lush, hyperventilating, humid, and vividly rendered story, of people tearing one another apart. I loved it. It's ridiculously emotional and yet it never tips into the merely melodramatic, because the language is so gorgeous, and because the happenings, well, they just keep happening--one unexpectedly vivid and tumultuous scene after another.
Quite apart from the story, the novel approaches greatness because of the very different voices in which the story reveals itself--in fragments of letters and diaries and accounts, told from the points of view of many characters, each with his or her own prejudices and gaps in knowledge. The voices range from the meticulous and somewhat timid voice of "the pharmacist," to the over-the-top, gothic proclamations of Andre'. Each voice is unique and each adds to the story in unexpected ways....more
At first I dismissed the writing style as meandering whimsy but after I'd read the first few pages almost magically the book won me over completely. TAt first I dismissed the writing style as meandering whimsy but after I'd read the first few pages almost magically the book won me over completely. This novel is a lovely affirmation of the bonds of family. It's also a subversive examination of the ways women learn to cope with, and at times transcend, the restrictive roles they're expected to play in traditional cultures. Joyous....more
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