The novel is small in scope--we are in the mind of a single smart woman who observes everything, and has nothing--but it is a mind so full of wonder aThe novel is small in scope--we are in the mind of a single smart woman who observes everything, and has nothing--but it is a mind so full of wonder and intellectual meanderings and truth that it feels like an epic story. Every sentence gave me a zing--zing--zing! of surprise. Surprising precision of thought. Surprising wisdom. Surprising humor.
I love Geek Love but I loved this novel so much more because it doesn't rely on strange unlikely people, or on events that would never happen--everything Dunn wrote here is both uniquely imagined and yet completely believable. And perfect. The perfect noun, verb, adjective, over and over. I was continuously upended and surprised by the perfection.
He had no neck. If he'd had one, it would have been pink and covered with exzema.
I read via audiobook, narrated by Christina Delaine, and she has given an extraordinary interpretation, a perfect mix of bleakness, exhilaration, and wisdom. I recommend it....more
However circumscribed this novel seems in scope (it's about a young single woman with very few prospects, and fewer friends, who finds a way to transfHowever circumscribed this novel seems in scope (it's about a young single woman with very few prospects, and fewer friends, who finds a way to transform her life in simple, yet miraculous ways), it is filled with grand themes, and says a great deal about life choices, and self-determination, and society. It's a marvel how such a small story could grapple with such big metaphysical questions. But it does. I loved it. This will be a perfect read for people who loved reading Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin (tr Aneesa Higgins), Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au, and Brood by Jackie Polzin.
I also blurbed this book as Claire Oshetsky. So all of the me's love it....more
Fuccboi is like watching someone tilt their chair so it's just two legs on the floor and it's not a stable situation and you keep waiting for them to Fuccboi is like watching someone tilt their chair so it's just two legs on the floor and it's not a stable situation and you keep waiting for them to fall over. It's not their fault....more
I didn't like this book so well, because every word, phrase, sentence, paragraph pulls out all the stops. To my way of reading it could have been dialI didn't like this book so well, because every word, phrase, sentence, paragraph pulls out all the stops. To my way of reading it could have been dialed back significantly so that the high points of the story could really sing out and differentiate themselves.
For instance:
"Dee wailed and squeezed and trembled until my mama's hums drowned it all out and then the tribe of us saw the hair, saw the tiny round that crawled from her body, turning her inside out. The squeals began and the humming turned to changes and we all watched that child swim out his mama, head poking out more blood than hair, and my mama took him into her arms and laid him on Dee's breast and this was the sweetest, most whole thing to ever take place in our building, and the rain poured and poured and poured until Dee began to beg again and her birthmarked baby squirmed and Ronda gave up, passed Dee the pipe, and she faded into sky like she didn't hear her own baby crying."
Isn't that something? The rhythm, the forward motion of the language? But not for the whole book, please, and also, to my ear, it's trying too hard to be amazing, even in this brief passage, where the amazingness gets distracting. The run-on sentence, while a feat, obscures the subtle, rapidly changing emotions and moods in this scene, things that could be brought out by a full-stop along the way. You may disagree. I'll look forward to reading Mottley's next novel. ...more
The novel reminded me of what matters, and it did so in a slow, careful, irrevocable way--a way that both acknowledged the smallness of our lives, andThe novel reminded me of what matters, and it did so in a slow, careful, irrevocable way--a way that both acknowledged the smallness of our lives, and also made room to celebrate the preciousness of our individual life experiences, including our sufferings. As a reading experience, this novel reminded me less of any other novel I've read, and reminded me more of what it was like to read The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, in that it's a lament, but that it is also somehow full of hope....more
My Annihilation hit me as an interesting mix between The Decagon House Murders and The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare. It resembles The Decagon HouMy Annihilation hit me as an interesting mix between The Decagon House Murders and The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare. It resembles The Decagon House Murders in the way the author puts most of his energy into creating a puzzle to be solved. It's like The Man Who Was Thursday in the way the rug keeps being pulled out, where the unquestioned axioms that make up this fictional reality keep shifting and evolving, and what seems 'true' in one chapter no longer feels 'true' in the next chapter.
What this novel wasn't, for me, is in any way disturbing. The characters behave like abstract place markers to be moved along their paths, rather than feeling like three-dimensional stand-ins for real people, and so their sufferings felt correspondingly abstract. On the whole a very different feeling from my last Nakamura novel, Cult X, which was so disturbing and so filled with misogyny and sadism that it brought up questions in me about whether I could read it as a critique of these things vs. as a celebration of these things. So in a way I'm relieved that this novel reminded me more of Nakamura's first novel, The Gun, which like this novel is simpler, and less confronting....more
This was a strange read. I was looking forward to a synthesis of European history, a quick overview that would glue my patchwork understandings into aThis was a strange read. I was looking forward to a synthesis of European history, a quick overview that would glue my patchwork understandings into a comprehensible pattern. I had a few very specific goals, too: I wanted a better understanding of European Jewry across the centuries, and I wanted enough knowledge to put Charles V's sack of Rome in 1527 in context, and maybe someone would finally explain the Thirty Years War to me...But what is meant to be an overview and correction of European history felt agonizingly superficial. It felt like I'd been handed a box that had all the pieces of a million-piece puzzle in it but it was still up to me to put it together. There is a strong chronology but Davies can't help interrupting his own story to make ahistorical connections with other eras and by the end I was very irritable....more
I'm puzzled by this book. I think those who love it are able to leap over the structural haziness of the novel, and appreciate it for the lushness of I'm puzzled by this book. I think those who love it are able to leap over the structural haziness of the novel, and appreciate it for the lushness of the prose and also for the startling originality of some of the scenes. That's why I'm puzzled about why there are an equal or greater number of boring unnecessary scenes, of people meeting over coffee and having conversations that go nowhere.
This novel is like a handful of unset gemstones in a black velvet bag....more
The experience of reading Sterling Karat Gold felt very similar to how I feel when I'm trying to read a novel written in Dutch. I've never studied DutThe experience of reading Sterling Karat Gold felt very similar to how I feel when I'm trying to read a novel written in Dutch. I've never studied Dutch. ...more
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
As I read Checkout 19 I felt something like how I might feel if I'd happened upon an old photograph of my beloved mother in a drawer, a photograph I'dAs I read Checkout 19 I felt something like how I might feel if I'd happened upon an old photograph of my beloved mother in a drawer, a photograph I'd never seen before, and in that instant I saw my mother the way she had been before I was born, and before she had children, or met my father, where she was completely herself and knowable to me as my mother, but she was also beautiful in a way I didn't know. This book felt familiar, and yet completely strange to me, both at the same time....more
I'm sorry, yes, I need to apologize for loving this grotesque upsetting novel.
I'm also rolling around the idea in my head that I may be guilty of acceI'm sorry, yes, I need to apologize for loving this grotesque upsetting novel.
I'm also rolling around the idea in my head that I may be guilty of accepting this level of disgusting writing more from a man than a woman bec. I just gave Lapvona 1 star and how is this any different?
Ok now I'll explain to myself why it's different. Every single sentence felt inspired. The language cultivated admiration in me and I was never bored. The violence and repulsiveness never lets up--and yet I somehow feel great humanity and sympathy for these characters who all seem like thinking, feeling people even when they are surrounded by a flurry of sadomasochistic happenings.
After i finished reading, I spent a fairly long time just opening the pages and reading sentences at random and each time what I read exhilarated me, or shocked or surprised me. It's an incredible feat. It's a bracing thudding assault of language that never lets up. It's an alchemistic mixing of the minds between Sorokin and his translator Max Lawton and it invited me to participate in a one-of-a-kind reading experience.
"Ha-HA!" Shtaube yelled, bit into a lemon, and started to chew.
"She croaked, Buttercup," Mikola blew his nose loudly and wiped his hand off on his short sheepskin coat.
While waiting for desert, Olga began to play Napoleon's Tomb solitaire on the table, Rebrove smoked while looking out the window, Seryozha fiddled with his Rubik's cube, and Shtaube read out loud from Alexey Tolstoy's The Silver Prince.
Such a pummeling of semantic vigor elevated the absurd violence into a kind of ecstatic prayer.
Zing, zing, zing...this novel gripped me in exactly the way I love in a book. Every sentence was like an exquisite story all by itself. I guess I don'Zing, zing, zing...this novel gripped me in exactly the way I love in a book. Every sentence was like an exquisite story all by itself. I guess I don't need conventional plot to be completely captivated, when a story feels so true. I loved it....more
The book evoked a deep unease in me and yet in the end felt redemptive. It honors the strangeness-at-the-edges of everyday family life. It magnifies tThe book evoked a deep unease in me and yet in the end felt redemptive. It honors the strangeness-at-the-edges of everyday family life. It magnifies the terrors of trying to keep a child safe when the world is incomprehensibly strange. The images are startling and breathtaking, however stark and simple the prose.
Then from the darkening sky leaves fell without cease, like mutterings of broken words which, apart from their rejection of meaning, made no attempt to commune. For the most part they were drawn to fallen comrades lying dead on the ground. Some, perhaps unaware that from the moment they left the branch they themselves were dead, took their time falling, scrabbling at the air. Those leaves, due to the weight of the air they scraped away, might make a sound when they struck the ground.
I would say that the combination of unease and redemption was unique but I've read exactly one other book that gave me this precise feeling: Night Theater by Vikram Paralkar. Love them both....more
Hmm, hmm, hmm. Reading this novel was a rubbernecking experience with many metaphorical pileups and head-on crashes and sometimes the cars just decideHmm, hmm, hmm. Reading this novel was a rubbernecking experience with many metaphorical pileups and head-on crashes and sometimes the cars just decide to run inexplicably off the road. ...more
Maybe a better question to begin with though is "What did I feel?"
Answer: curiosiOk, I have read, seen, listened.
Goodreads asks: 'What did you think?'
Maybe a better question to begin with though is "What did I feel?"
Answer: curiosity. anxiety. impatience.
In this way Chasing Homer was a triangular sort of read, where my feeling gravitated toward one of those three corners of feeling--curiosity, anxiety, impatience--and back to another one as I read along, and it never bust out of that triangle and into some greater connected feeling or purpose.
This book felt a little emotionally bare and simple, in other words. In its style, it also suffered from my recent read of Interstate by Stephen Dixon, an author who writes in a very similar breathless, paragraph-less style, and yet somehow manages to evoke an entire spectrum of emotions in me.
And now, I'm specifically asking myself how I feel about the inclusion of percussive audio tracks which are online and available to listen to as I read each chapter, and accessible by QR code. At first I was quite excited and intrigued. The percussion definitely added an interesting dimension. And then I began to think about how the book has been made less timeless, less of a book, by the inclusion of digital links out into a file stored out there somewhere beyond the book.
The most amazing thing about a print book is that it has every possibility of surviving 1000 years. Nothing we read, hear, see on the internet will last 1000 years. Or even 100 years. So I was thoughtful about that--that QR codes have made this solid immutable thing, a book, a thing capable of surviving against the wrackful siege of battering days, has been made mutable. I also felt interrupted by my phone and fiddling with my phone in a way that felt a little sad, like, my screen time is poking itself into my book time quite literally in the case of this book.
So I don't really feel this counts as a Krasznahorkai novel. It's more like an interesting experiment. And as such I think I'm essentially still Krasznahorkai-less....more
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