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
The Magic Mountain isn't just a book to me. It's also a beloved destination.
Is it my favorite book (and favorite destination) of all time? Maybe. I juThe Magic Mountain isn't just a book to me. It's also a beloved destination.
Is it my favorite book (and favorite destination) of all time? Maybe. I just spent 6 weeks listening to the glorious new audiobook narrated by David Rintoul and it was maybe the best 37 hours, 27 minutes I've ever spent....more
This week I ended up reading Lucia by Alex Pheby while listening to the audiobook of Milkman. It was quite a punch to the literary gut. Both these booThis week I ended up reading Lucia by Alex Pheby while listening to the audiobook of Milkman. It was quite a punch to the literary gut. Both these books accurately and relentlessly (and, somehow, beautifully, which makes them each disturbing on a whole other level) portray how sexual abuse and predation fit so easily into what seems to be normal life on the surface.
The writing style here--an elliptical returning to a very similar sentence, for instance, with a different verb substituted, plus a very repetitive rhythm in sentence structure--seems to reinforce the actual sense of the story, and to reinforce the situation of a much older woman trying to review and understand her memory of being stalked as a child. The style reinforces for me the idea of a woman trying to pin down a very elliptical and emotionally fraught truth about her past.
But there is so much more to this story. It's also a story about way that the violence of "the troubles" has become so frequent that it has become casually accepted, as part of everyday life. People are walking around in fear for their lives, and also in fear one another, and in fear anything or anyone that deviates from absolutely normal, and it's just the way it is. How one young girl navigates her world is something to behold--because most astonishingly of all this is a book of hope. It's a book about joy. It's a book about how love wins in the end, even if the victories are sometimes tragic....more
I've read a couple of Virginia Woolf's novels so many times now that they have become a place to inhabit rather than a story to be told. I come upon sI've read a couple of Virginia Woolf's novels so many times now that they have become a place to inhabit rather than a story to be told. I come upon sentences like old beloved friends whose gestures and habits I already know and love. It's like music, this novel, and I can listen to it again and again without ever feeling I've heard it entirely. Now I'm trying to imagine the exact music that is this novel and what I come up with is that it's like Berlioz's les nuits d'été, as a matter of fact. okay so here is a link to what I mean--
War and Peace is one of many books that I can re-read for the rest of my life and not feel I'm wasting my time. What a tragedy that this vivid novel hWar and Peace is one of many books that I can re-read for the rest of my life and not feel I'm wasting my time. What a tragedy that this vivid novel has become the go-to meme, a stand-in for any too-long and unreadable tome. Because this novel reads outrageously fast. This novel reads like a pot-boiling, page-turning cliff-hanging wonder. Begin at the beginning: in the first pages we're guests at a party with the gentry, full of intrigue and innuendo, and then, whoosh, we're immediately plunged forward into a drunken, alpha-male bacchanal, in a scene that rivals Shakespeare's "exit pursued by a bear" line in strangeness...and after that each page and each scene builds upon the rest, in a novel that manages to be both epic and intimate at the same time. ...more
When I got to the end of Laurus I thought: "this is the best book I've ever read." I've had that feeling before with other novels and I hope I will haWhen I got to the end of Laurus I thought: "this is the best book I've ever read." I've had that feeling before with other novels and I hope I will have it again in the future but even so Laurus will remain one of the most perfect and memorable experiences of my reading life.
It probably changed my experience to have read "The Confession of St. Patrick" before reading Laurus. Unlike Augustine's Roman intellectualism, St. Patrick's Confession describes a chaotic reality where the spiritual and the physical worlds are so intertwined that they sometimes interact in brutish ways--as when Patrick writes:
"The very same night while I was sleeping Satan attacked me violently, as I will remember as long as I shall be in this body; and there fell on top of me as it were, a huge rock,and not one of my members had any force."
St. Patrick describes the Devil as a force that can reach through from the spiritual world and manifest itself physically in this world, and the same sort of Christianity is at work in Laurus. In both Ireland and Russia Christianity developed without the mitigating rationality of Rome. This faith is visceral and unforgiving and absolute. Demons and angels are corporate. Faith healers are real. Holy fools are venerated. Future and past events can appear in dreams, and the consequences of sin and virtue are made manifest in this life: in the health of the body, in good or bad events, in the weather and the seasons.
The world view described with such tender care in this novel is very foreign to mine, and yet the writing is so grounded in physical detail, and so consistent throughout the novel, that I bought into it completely and was immersed in it entirely as I read.
I cried a lot. Even for the donkey. It's an amazing novel. It got to the absolute heart of me....more
There is no interior monologue in this novel. It's all on the outside. And even so when I think how to describe my feeling about this book, the words There is no interior monologue in this novel. It's all on the outside. And even so when I think how to describe my feeling about this book, the words that come to mind are "what a lark! what a plunge!" The prose is one fresh breeze of a story after another. I loved it the way I loved Star Wars circa 1977: it allowed me to enter a world completely unlike the one I'm living in, and to know with confidence that there was going to be a happy ending....more
This small novel turned out to be one of the most moving reads of 2015 for me. It took a while for me to accept its rhythms and to realize that this bThis small novel turned out to be one of the most moving reads of 2015 for me. It took a while for me to accept its rhythms and to realize that this book has been completely misunderstood by anyone who thinks the tiger living within Margio has anything to do with making this a book of fantasy--this novel instead feels like a glimpse of the real world, from the perspective of those living in a small village on an Indonesian coastline. It feels like a place where belief in the supernatural fits easily into the natural world. It's a place full of life, where for instance a garden grows so abundantly that the village feels in danger of being taken over at any moment by the jungle; where the spirits of the dead make their demands on the living; where animals both natural and supernatural inhabit the empty places just next to civilization.
It's also the story of how one young man comes to a breaking point when confronted with the suffering of his family and loved ones. It's a story grounded in a squalid reality, for all its supernatural overtones. The lives of the women in this novel in particular are lovingly drawn, breathtakingly humane, heartbreaking. The style is digressive and yet deeply affecting, as, one by one, the author dwells on what makes each individual unique and worthy of having his/her story told. The village itself is as much a character in this brief novel as any of the people inhabiting it and the lifelong relationships between characters unfold in a pace that is somehow both languid and breathless. In the end what feels digressive suddenly becomes central to understanding its extraordinary conclusion....more
This is one of the smartest, funniest, most original books I've ever read. Wildly inventive. One of a kind. Makes me happy to be alive.This is one of the smartest, funniest, most original books I've ever read. Wildly inventive. One of a kind. Makes me happy to be alive....more
This feels like an Ur-text, for sociology, for identity studies, for African American history. It's like what Euclid is to every Geometry book writtenThis feels like an Ur-text, for sociology, for identity studies, for African American history. It's like what Euclid is to every Geometry book written since. It's clear-sighted, and it's also very sad, to realize how much momentum has been lost, and how little has changed since Du Bois wrote this book....more
How can any novel manage to be so smart and so ridiculous at the same time? In this novel, Johnson tells a story even more incoherent and open-ended tHow can any novel manage to be so smart and so ridiculous at the same time? In this novel, Johnson tells a story even more incoherent and open-ended than his source of inspiration, Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. But within his chosen framework of comedic satire, Johnson also makes intellectually exuberant arguments, a cascade of them, about literature, race, identity, feminism, love, and the historical inheritance of slavery. He even manages to explore the conditions under which genocide might be morally justified. It's a wonderful social satire, and a very enjoyable read, as long as you allow it to sweep you along, instead of permitting it to make you cranky for the way it never really acts like a novel is supposed to act. I would recommend reading Poe's novel immediately before this one as the passages of 'literary analysis' in Johnson's novel are priceless and many of the plot lines run parallel to Poe's, where an immediate experience of Poe's story, missing dog and all, will make Johnson's sendup all the more delightful....more
What an extraordinary novel! It's difficult to believe such a short work can contain so much. First there is the story itself, which includes among otWhat an extraordinary novel! It's difficult to believe such a short work can contain so much. First there is the story itself, which includes among other things a detailed and colorful explanation of the Cakewalk, the story of the rise of Ragtime, the beauty of the music of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, a rigorous defense of Gospel singing as culturally significant, an explanation of the inner workings of a cigar factory, a celebration of Uncle Remus stories before they were sullied by Walt Disney, and scenes describing gambling, fetishization of blacks by whites, and what it's like to travel overnight in the laundry closet of a Pullman car...amazing. Interlaced throughout the liveliness of the tale are ruminations about race that feel contemporary. By making his protagonist able to 'pass' for white Johnson creates a character who can move into and out of black or white culture at will. Johnson thus gives the character the perception and insight of an outsider, someone who observes and records without feeling compelled to judge. The ending is wrenching, when the protagonist realizes he has sacrificed his dreams and his ambitions and his talents, by choosing the safety and prosperity of living as a white man: "I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage."...more
I'm going to be thinking about this novel for a long time. I don't understand its power. I'm not sure how it works. The same actions and perceptions, I'm going to be thinking about this novel for a long time. I don't understand its power. I'm not sure how it works. The same actions and perceptions, throughout the novel, can be taken as signs of mental illness, or signs of mental clarity. Time sequence is broken over and over again in the novel, and yet the movement of the story from beginning to end feels as propulsive and climactic as any linear story. The language feels simple and declarative at first, until I realize that it's highly elevated, to the extent that it resembles poetry--and then it becomes actual poetry on the page. Characters seem simultaneously real and mythological. There are no sharp edges between the characters, either--rather than having any sense of autonomous 'self' they are defined instead by their relationship to one another. What is real and not-real is likewise not sharply defined. Dream bleeds into memory into a fictive reality and back into dream. I didn't feel this novel was written to explain something to me. I felt instead that Silko wrote exactly and uniquely to her purpose. She wrote something entirely new. I've never read anything like it....more
Every once in a while a book comes along that is so unexpectedly perfect that it feels as if I just learned how to read. I'm grateful that this novel Every once in a while a book comes along that is so unexpectedly perfect that it feels as if I just learned how to read. I'm grateful that this novel exists, that Hurston wrote it, that Alice Walker rediscovered it. I'm so grateful to have read it. There is something so exuberant and strong about Janie, about her refusal to be a victim or to be cautious or to be told what to do and feel. She is so unexpectedly modern which of course reminds me that we humans really don't change that much from generation to generation--we just forget and need to re-remember.
I love the book for so many things. The conversations feel real. The people feel real. The way Janie first discovers she is black and therefore different--from looking at a photograph and seeing her difference from the rest of the children in the photo for the first time--feels real. I also love that the main setting of the novel is a self-built, self-sustaining community of African Americans--it captures the reality of segregation but also the resilience of the people who lived it. I love and am disturbed by the conversation Mrs. Turner has with Janie, a conversation full of self-hatred and brimming with the unrecognized racism that Mrs. Turner feels toward her own people, because this too feels real, how systemic discrimination can seep into one's self-identity and poison it--and Hurston was brave to have written it.
Quite frequently when I read something I try to think of other experiences with books or other media that have felt related. In the case of this novel I was strongly reminded of Spike Lee's film "She's Gotta Have It," more than I was reminded of other novels by African American women--a similar exuberant, strong, sensual woman at the core of the story, one who loved men, but who didn't allow men to define her....more
Possibly my favorite sentence ever written in the German language:
"Eckbert lag wahnsinnig und verscheidend auf dem Boden; dumpf und verworren hörte ePossibly my favorite sentence ever written in the German language:
"Eckbert lag wahnsinnig und verscheidend auf dem Boden; dumpf und verworren hörte er die Alte sprechen, den Hund bellen, und den Vogel sein Lied wiederholen." ...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
Mailer's writing here takes my breath away, the audacity of it, the scene building, the way in this book it mirrors the fight it describes--a few wildMailer's writing here takes my breath away, the audacity of it, the scene building, the way in this book it mirrors the fight it describes--a few wild swings of sentences, sure, but so many magnificent punches landed. Wonderful....more
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