I was energized, and I was loving it, I mean this writing is so amazing, and it's surreal in the best way possible, original, unexpected, wow...
anyoneI was energized, and I was loving it, I mean this writing is so amazing, and it's surreal in the best way possible, original, unexpected, wow...
anyone who has ever lost a limb knows that on occasion, for a few brief titillating seconds, you feel as though it has returned...
and of course because this is a surreal masterpiece, the limb in question is a head. The next page, it gets smushed back on a neck again. And all at once on that page, page 6, is where I'm, like, hey, I'm really tired of "surreal." I've had enough of it. I'm done for now with these dismembered women and their reattach-able heads and so on, in fact, I'm sick of innovation and experiment. I'm done. I'm retrenching. Gimme some realism. Gimme some Hemingway. Gimme some Thornton Wilder. Gimme some Theodore Dreiser! I've spent six years or so in the thrall of experimental fiction and I need a break. It's like realizing you're really tired of curry and you're in desperate need of something with ketchup on it. I have no idea how long it will last. Until tomorrow maybe....more
Profound and simple, both at once, and what a delight, what a joy to read this strange unpredictable mashup of life-and-death matters (mostly, death mProfound and simple, both at once, and what a delight, what a joy to read this strange unpredictable mashup of life-and-death matters (mostly, death matters). The novel has such a waiting-for-godot-like sanguinity in its pages. Everything and nothing matter equally. An indescribable read. Sorry. I'm trying to describe it, a little, but it's impossible. Daniell is a joyous confident writer. Jennifer Croft is a genius. I say "genius" because of the adverb "Britishly" on p. 37. Honestly doesn't it make you wonder what the word was in the original Spanish if you can't go read the original and find out for yourself? It made me wonder. I thought it wondrous, as words go, and it's just one out of a whole book of words that make up a story that's as gripping and historical as Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World only without the despair; and as riveting as Binet's Civilizations only without the galloping plot. Don't worry. You will never miss the plot. Or maybe you will, I can't say how you read, but for me however plotless the book seemed to be, I leapt forward eagerly and was delighted by every page. This is what literature is all about. Something new. Something true....more
Hurricane Season compels me to examine my own belief system about literature and to make sure it's defensible, and to conclude, probably not.
The prosHurricane Season compels me to examine my own belief system about literature and to make sure it's defensible, and to conclude, probably not.
The prose is gorgeous. The story is ugly. The author relentlessly degrades and debases her characters. Their moments of respite from their lives of squalor, violence, and brutishness are nearly non-existent.
Even so, this story, written in neat letters across the pages, is so much less awful than the reality of women being murdered and mutilated in Mexico at an accelerated rate each year and without any consequence meted out to their murderers. The squalor and horror in this book are the faintest echo of the truth, about something happening far away from me. The beauty of the sentences shields me from the facts. However ugly the story, it's just a story. I'm sitting in my comfortable chair as I read it. The effect is harrowing, but temporary. It's like those precisely lit photojournalistic images of war and famine victims--I'm moved, and then I move on.
I disliked how much the novel disturbed me, though, even if this story is so much less disturbing than the nonfiction version of this story. I wanted more beauty. The beauty of the sentences themselves wasn't enough. I wanted a glimpse of what's lost, when human life is valued so cheaply. I hated that there is no air or hope or light in the novel. The characters behave like wild animals trapped in a vicious lab experiment where they are deprived of all love and hope until in desperation they start chewing their paws off to comfort themselves.
So I end up realizing that I need some sort of redemptive moment in my fiction--even if it's a lie....more
“That feeling of inexplicable horror certain places provoked in him could have been caused by whatever it was the doctors and psychiatrists were strug“That feeling of inexplicable horror certain places provoked in him could have been caused by whatever it was the doctors and psychiatrists were struggling to name: the aftermath of trauma, epilepsy derived from the accident, some kind of mental illness…”
This novel has little resemblance to Enriquez’s short fiction. It’s straightforward storytelling, without much mystery, and without the unpredictable weirdness of her stories. The narrative is disciplined. Every word on the page has a narrative purpose. As such it was a little disappointing to me, because I’m in love with Enriquez’s inexplicable meanders and dead ends, and I'm in love with all of the open-ended questions that her short fiction poses.
The sentence above is a good example—it does the job, but there is no verve or surprise about it. Maybe Enriquez felt she needed to rein in her smoky wanderings, of girls hiding meat in mattresses, and weird baby teeth, and self-immolating women, in order to give this longer work the structure it needed to not collapse in on itself.
Naked glorious storytelling. Even though the story itself is full of violence and pain and loss, the words weave their way forward exuberantly, where Naked glorious storytelling. Even though the story itself is full of violence and pain and loss, the words weave their way forward exuberantly, where even in this novel's starkest moments--and there are plenty of them--the narrative voice always keeps alive the possibility of human connection. It's fair to call this book bleak--and yet it left me with the hope that love overcomes despair, and that kindness exists even in the midst of poverty and squalor.
I will have a lot more to say about this novel, but I want to think on it more. It's worth reading for its glorious prose style alone--let me also credit the translation of Kit Maude--but it also is a wonderful literary contribution to the growing library of trans stories told by trans authors....more
I'm left feeling much like I felt at the end of One Hundred Years of Solitude. Gabriel Garcia Márquez cited this novel as the most important influenceI'm left feeling much like I felt at the end of One Hundred Years of Solitude. Gabriel Garcia Márquez cited this novel as the most important influence on his own writing so I guess my reaction is not surprising. As I read along, one breathtakingly imaginative sentence after another, I kept thinking--wow--wow--wow--but then my breath had been taken away so consistently that I discovered I was fatigued and that I had totally lost track of myself because there are so many threads to this story, and they aren't really woven together, so much as they are thrown down along a path into the woods, and the path keeps growing more and more tangled and overgrown, and then it stops, and here you are: in the middle of the woods with no way out....more
There are a lot of authors experimenting just now with ways to combine the real, and the fictional, and the historical, and the personal all together There are a lot of authors experimenting just now with ways to combine the real, and the fictional, and the historical, and the personal all together into a narrative. What I've vividly discovered for myself, now that I've read When We Cease to Understand the World, is how much I adore those authors who plumb the depths of history, and then weave a unique mythology of subjective meanings from the facts. Sebald, Labatut, Stepanova all do this. It's quite a different kind of thing from the kind of writing called "auto-fiction' just now, which dives deep into just one person's history, the author's personal narrative, and adds fictional or subjective elements to that very narrow personal experience. Unlike the auto-fictioners, who put themselves at the center of their stories, Labatut and his counterparts efface themselves almost entirely from their stories. They're interested in a bigger picture. Each detail they choose adds exquisitely to the whole and the result is a Bayeux Tapestry of a novel. I love this way of writing, this way of storytelling. It's a gift to read this book....more
Oloixarac keeps her narrative style at a fairly extreme emotional distance from her characters in MONA. The style almost reminded me of the tone of PaOloixarac keeps her narrative style at a fairly extreme emotional distance from her characters in MONA. The style almost reminded me of the tone of Paul Theroux's (seriously great) train-travel books--perfect observational detail at all times, and yet just a little mean.
"Mona slumped back into her seat and massaged her neck. Her nearest neighbor was across the aisle. He resembled a giant toad."
It was the perfect tone frankly for this story of a talented yet disaffected writer who is negotiating a literary scene--at the beginning of the novel she's on her way from California to accept a literary prize in Europe--that she can see is vapid, and yet wants to honor her. It's hard for me not to read this novel at least partly as a cynical but healing self-exorcism of the sudden fame Oloixarac was vaulted to after the publication of SAVAGE THEORIES but a nearly-redemptive, almost-hallucinatory ending raised the novel up for me into a memorable study of a character at odds with herself, her past, and her fame....more
"The sheets were impregnated with the smell of chicken cutlets."
"The girls had opened the casket to fe"Coca ate her cat, and then she killed herself."
"The sheets were impregnated with the smell of chicken cutlets."
"The girls had opened the casket to feed on Espina's remains with devotion and disgust; around the grave, pools of vomit bore witness to their efforts."
I love these sentences. There are so many more I could have chosen as examples of Mariana Enriquez's unique storytelling style, which (in English translation, at least) is straight-forward, literally gutsy, and completely bare of ornamentation. Also, somehow, there is a nearly jolly tone in the storytelling, a casual fatalism in the way each of these horror stories spools out, where no matter how horrific the story becomes along the way to its end, what's happening on the page still seems perfectly normal, somehow.
It's a perfect style to continuously disarm me. There is such a fearlessness here, in imagery and message. I'm a little grossed out by these stories, but also, I'm dazzled.
The stories here in this newly published collection are less layered, and more direct, than those in Enriquez's previously published collection in English, "Things We Lost in the Fire." The stories here go straight for the jugular, with very little meander along the way. I didn't love all of them, but I loved the audacity of all of them....more
"I'm alive and in my underwear and my skin is yellow."
A magnificent, disturbing novel, about a family that can no longer take care of itself, and that"I'm alive and in my underwear and my skin is yellow."
A magnificent, disturbing novel, about a family that can no longer take care of itself, and that is trying to survive in a society that has left them with nothing to believe in. The inciting tragedy that the family must endure is the precipitous mental and physical decline of the matriarch, Mariana, whose story unfolds in these pages with heartbreaking detail. The narrative voice is staccato-perfect: a barrage of short declarative sentences gives the story a relentless forward motion, where from the first page I could feel the promise of tragedy and loss.
These characters are deeply human, even when they're at their worst, and this is great storytelling, about the most true things that fiction can reveal. A big yes....more
This remarkable novel gives voice to a character unlike any I've ever met before. The young woman at the center of the story is unnamed and impoverishThis remarkable novel gives voice to a character unlike any I've ever met before. The young woman at the center of the story is unnamed and impoverished, and she has a terrible skill thrust on her: After her mother dies violently, this young woman develops a compulsion to eat earth, and the ingested earth gives her a true vision of how her mother died. Soon everyone has heard about and believes in her eerie skill. As she's living in an Argentinian slum where loved ones regularly disappear, and where violence toward women is an everyday fact, she is inundated with petitions for help. How she navigates a world where she is both shunned and respected is an extraordinary reading journey. The first-person voice of the protagonist is what makes the story so compelling: uncomplaining, clear-sighted, compassionate.
Remarkably vivid and replete with sensual detail. As I read, I saw the scenes and the people to a degree that I never do. The book urged me to read itRemarkably vivid and replete with sensual detail. As I read, I saw the scenes and the people to a degree that I never do. The book urged me to read it slowly. It invited me to take in each page. It persuaded me to allow myself time to look around before I moved on.
I'm not sure what I think of this novel yet in terms of emotional resonances...what I'm feeling from it right now is a blobby wonder, and a fuzzy feeling in my fingertips. I'm noticing things around me in real space in much the way I do, for a little while, after visiting an art museum.
One of the most relentless and ugly books I've ever read. A book that describes a society where humans are slaughtered for meat, in more detail than IOne of the most relentless and ugly books I've ever read. A book that describes a society where humans are slaughtered for meat, in more detail than I was ready for. This novel willfully refuses to allow itself to fall into any category of fiction that would make it easier to take as a reader. The flat direct style of its prose didn't allow me, as I read along, to think of it as horror, or satire, or a metaphorical representation of social injustice, or a nihilistic moral thesis about humanity. It is exactly what it is. Never boring, it managed to continue to shock me until its final pages.
I am required to award stars to movies I review. This time, I refuse to do it. The star rating system is unsuited to this film. Is the movie good? Is it bad? Does it matter? It is what it is and occupies a world where the stars don't shine.
That goes for this novel, as well. If forced to give stars, I would give it five stars, for the way it relentlessly fulfills its purpose....more
Heroine was a contradictory and exuberant and utterly unique read for me. In one way it made me sad, for the way a 30+ year old feminist novel remindsHeroine was a contradictory and exuberant and utterly unique read for me. In one way it made me sad, for the way a 30+ year old feminist novel reminds me that so little has changed...that what looks like social progress is often just a good patch that we happen to be living through, before the conservative forces return. In another way it exhilarated me, because it's formally so new, even after 3 decades. It reminds me of how writers constantly find new ways to express the inexpressible, and to overcome the limitations of language. I frequently had no idea what was going on! And yet each sentence was so captivating that I just kept being okay with it. Each sentence I could honest think: "I've never read that sentence before." This is stream of consciousness writing with a writer who might be the most exquisitely sensitive human being ever to have thought a thought. Beautiful images and a sense of frothy knowing-ness bounded along from page to page in a way that left me happy and satisfied to have spent time with Gail Scott....more
Finally Teresa was experiencing...one of those unlikely moments that saved her life from absurdity.
This is a hard novel to pay attention to, to the leFinally Teresa was experiencing...one of those unlikely moments that saved her life from absurdity.
This is a hard novel to pay attention to, to the level it demands to be paid attention to, and yet it rewards your attention absolutely. On a sentence level it's beautiful. On a story level it's fragmentary, snatching you away again and again from a story line you want to stay in and leaping away into another scene, other characters. Thematically it tackles a fundamental question in life: how a person faces death, and makes sense of his/her own mortality. It's a brave book because Comensal never allows the least bit of romanticization, or faith in the world to come, or any other thing to distract the reader from the fragmentary, absurd way we humans go about dying. A tough, rewarding read....more
An Orphan World is written in a tone that I would call playful, absurd, post-modern, and surreal. The story itself, on the other hand, is ugly, violenAn Orphan World is written in a tone that I would call playful, absurd, post-modern, and surreal. The story itself, on the other hand, is ugly, violent, and extreme. Tone and story clash jarringly for me here, making this a difficult book for me to interpret. The novel reminds me a great deal of Chilean-French director's Alejandro Jodorowsky's 2013 film "The Dance of Reality," for the way it combines fantastic absurdity with horrific reality. It's not a comfortable combination for me as a reader. So this novel is going on my "reread" list, because I feel like I didn't understand it, and also, that it deserves a more open-hearted reading next time, when I'll know what to expect.
In some places the scenic renderings are so visceral, and so full of smell and touch and need, that I had that delightful feeling as I read along that we readers get sometimes, too rarely, when we read something unlike anything we’ve read before. There is a father and son in this story who show their love for one another in goofy and particular and touching ways. The sea in this story offers up clocks that still work. A kelp-festooned couch on the beach becomes an absurd and effective representation of the poverty of the main characters. The writing throughout is poetic and pleasingly cryptic, with the exception of a passage that seems meant to bore me, as it demonstrates at length the inanity and emptiness of online sex.
While the story's thematic undercurrent is serious—homophobic violence, and the degradations of poverty — the tone is so detached and absurd that these serious themes disturb me and unsettle me and distance me from the horrors. I felt little emotion as I read other than delight about the prose, and curiosity and puzzlement and occasional boredom about the story itself, especially when it turned to these darker themes. The second chapter, for instance, describes bodies after a horrific mass lynching. The bodies have been mutilated in what should have struck me as revolting ways, but the tone is so detached and absurd that my feeling was muted.
Maybe that was the point. Lately I’ve been having conversations elsewhere on GR about the way a writer might choose flat affectless prose to get to the truth of horrific themes, rather than trying to amp up the reader’s empathy artificially by writing emotionally. Colson Whitehead in The Nickel Boys for instance writes in a flat tone when describing the most horrific of realities in his novel. The tonal detachment here, though, was in the direction of a exaggerated surrealism, and not in the direction of trying to render a reality that allows readers to experience their own emotions. It will take some acclimation and hence my plan to read this novel again....more
This novel is small in scale--just four characters, on a single day--but in spite of its small scale, it's full of human experience. With just a few pThis novel is small in scale--just four characters, on a single day--but in spite of its small scale, it's full of human experience. With just a few perfectly chosen details Almada sets a scene, and reveals her characters' imperfections and humanity. I could see this place. I could see these people.
This is a very quiet book. The writing is extremely disciplined. There isn't a single unnecessary word. After having read many baggy monsters in a row recently, reading Almada's short novel felt like an encounter with a miniature perfection. I'm very happy to have read it....more
Nearly every sentence in this novel offers up an image that was either grotesque, or alarming, or disturbingly violent. I haven't been so repulsed by Nearly every sentence in this novel offers up an image that was either grotesque, or alarming, or disturbingly violent. I haven't been so repulsed by a story since reading Kathy Acker. And that's the point. This novel brilliantly accomplishes what it sets out to do. And the translation I can only call masterful, because the precise words and phrases chosen here for the English transformation of the original Spanish consistently surprised and disgusted me, which is the aim of this work. Can words on a page be so disruptively disturbing? Yes, they can be. Even now that I've read the novel I can open to any page and some sentence will brim over with a brilliantly grotesque nugget of turdish perfection.
I'm mulling over why this novel is so much more disturbing and frankly more nauseating to me than the author's previous novel, Die, My Love, when these two novels reach for the same territory of alienation and female fury. All I know is I felt soaring release when I read Die My Love; I identified with the postpartum alienation of its protagonist and rejoiced at her rage. Whereas with Feebleminded I felt like the author was holding my head under and I was drowning in a fetid pool of nihilistic and unhinged madness.
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