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
"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
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