I don't understand how something so surreal and dislocated can also feel so terribly sad. The novel is a beautiful lament, an elegy to what might haveI don't understand how something so surreal and dislocated can also feel so terribly sad. The novel is a beautiful lament, an elegy to what might have been. The narrator/author evokes the Cassandra myth in a way that is so poetic and so strong that it makes me see how Cassandra's story is the story of people's lives, that we live in a world where the most innocent and the most vulnerable among us are fatefully set on a course toward an inevitable unhappy ending. Every small happening in this novel was steeped in sadness. Somehow the unexpected wild swings back and forth through time in the novel made the story more meaningful and rich. It all fit together, a little magically. The writing is gorgeous. I was moved....more
This novel is a magnificent blend of the horrific and the sublime. It begins with a mother and her two daughters anxiously waiting the arrival of HurrThis novel is a magnificent blend of the horrific and the sublime. It begins with a mother and her two daughters anxiously waiting the arrival of Hurricane Maria. The way their fear blends with their fatalism somehow captures perfectly what it must feel like when something awful, and yet inevitable, is coming for you. One daughter survives the hurricane, and the other does not, and the reason why the girl dies--her mother is being so insufferable that the girl flees to the next room, which promptly collapses and fills with mud--is all the more disturbing because of the matter-of-fact way these events are played out in the prose. Here is where the narrative voice really begins to drive home what kind of story we're in for--when the surviving sister cuts off her dead sister's little finger--the only piece of her sister not buried in mud--for a keepsake. It's the surviving sister's voice, filled with hopeless despair and child-like wonder in equal measure, that keeps propelling this story forward into ever more unexpected and creative directions.
It's one of those books you need to be in the mood for, because it's relentless. I was in the mood for it.
I'm beginning to realize how much #metoo is changing the way I read. There is a lot of sexual violence in this novel, treated in a pulp-fiction-y way I'm beginning to realize how much #metoo is changing the way I read. There is a lot of sexual violence in this novel, treated in a pulp-fiction-y way that even a year ago might not have bothered me as much as it does now. These days my tolerance for sexually violent scenes is significantly lower than before. I'm quicker to judge a scene as exploitative rather than necessary.
Objectively I can say this is a unique novel, where important themes weave through the story in witty and imaginative ways. But I felt unhappy as I read, and maybe even a little unsafe. These weren't feelings that I wanted to feel at the moment....more
Groundbreaking for its time but because of my bad French as much as the passing of years it didn't speak to me.Groundbreaking for its time but because of my bad French as much as the passing of years it didn't speak to me....more
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