A pregnant woman answers a knock on the front door; it's a younger woman, who tells the pregnant woman that the father of her unborn child has raped hA pregnant woman answers a knock on the front door; it's a younger woman, who tells the pregnant woman that the father of her unborn child has raped her. It seems like a promisingly charged premise for a story beginning, but the novel is set in a place so clinical and abstract that reading it felt more like I was reading a case study than a novel.
I'm also reminded (once again) that I can no longer tolerate reading stories written from the point-of-view of a skeezy man, which alternating chapters are, here. I'm done with that....more
Jamie Quatro sets for herself the enormous task of wanting us to believe in a character who feels equal passion for her faith, her intellect, and her Jamie Quatro sets for herself the enormous task of wanting us to believe in a character who feels equal passion for her faith, her intellect, and her pursuit of erotic fulfillment. Does Quatro succeed in her task of making Maggie believable, her struggles real? She did for me.
I was raised in a deeply religious household and Maggie's choices felt right to me. Because my view is through the lens of childhood upbringing, it's impossible for me to say whether this story will work for someone without that background. Without that background I imagine it's hard to reconcile how the religious passion in Maggie relates to her intellectual passion, for instance, since people of faith often seem more interested in dogma than in intellectual questioning. And it will also be a leap for some readers to accept that her religious passion can translate into erotic feeling--the idea that both faith and erotic love require a similar surrender to a feeling greater than reason, so that the 'sin' of adultery can feel terribly similar to faith itself.
As I read this novel I thought about two other novels that placed similar demands on the reader, to take a leap of faith, so to speak: Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen, which asked readers to accept a world where religious miracles are attended to; and On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan, which asks readers to believe that a grown woman in the 20th century could be completely ignorant of sex on her wedding night. Some readers won't connect with these books, whereas other readers will feel, "yes, I totally believe that could happen."...more
Bright Air Black requires and rewards rapt attention. Like every other Vann novel the writing is a unique mix of poetry and viscera. There is really nBright Air Black requires and rewards rapt attention. Like every other Vann novel the writing is a unique mix of poetry and viscera. There is really no one else who writes like this. There is no one else who could have so deeply imagined Medea murdering her brother on the deck of Jason's ship, as she flees with Jason from her father's wrath. The moment where she cuts her brother's throat, which she does without hesitation but while looking into his eyes, loving him, is moving and also very disturbing. Chapters later she scrapes her brother's remains from where they have congealed on the deck, and Vann's meticulous care in describing this scene would be remarkable all on its own, but these scenes and their remarkableness just keep coming, one following another.
It felt like Sinisalo began with an idea rather than a story. Possibly my enjoyment of this novel was inhibited by the truly weird, one-of-a-kind, nevIt felt like Sinisalo began with an idea rather than a story. Possibly my enjoyment of this novel was inhibited by the truly weird, one-of-a-kind, never-at-all-careful novel Troll: A Love Story by the same author. In contrast The Core of the Sun felt like The Handmaid's Tale lite to me. The peripatetic writing style--a combination of the personal reflections of two characters, epistolary entries to a probably-dead sister, and examples of propaganda from this dystopian society--gave the story a detached air for me where the characters never quite gelled and I never quite cared about them. The society depicted here felt a little vague and bland and lacking in vivid detail. The core relationship of the story was strangely sterile. The idea of chile peppers as an outlawed, addictive drug is interesting but it didn't tie for me into any larger theme. ...more
Wow. I simultaneously feel that this is a very good novel, and a not-good-enough novel. My struggle is with the narrative voice. If you're going to wrWow. I simultaneously feel that this is a very good novel, and a not-good-enough novel. My struggle is with the narrative voice. If you're going to write satire about such a terrible subject then you need to write EXUBERANT satire--Tin Drum or Catch-22 or Slaughterhouse Five or The Orphan Master's Son-level exuberant. Otherwise the tone becomes too mean, and you end up obscuring what you are meaning to enlighten. The protagonist here comes across as inscrutable as the most painful stock-character idea of an Asian male, a character you'd find in any spy thriller from the sixties. Well, not that bad. But it veers that way. I'm being hypercritical because there is so much promise here. It's an amazing first novel and I wish the author every success and I hope he continues to explore this same rich territory in subsequent novels, which I expect to read with increasing delight as Nguyen matures as a fiction writer....more
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