I've had great luck with short story collections this year. I've only read 3 so far, and all have been 4 or 5 stars. This one wasn't perfect, there weI've had great luck with short story collections this year. I've only read 3 so far, and all have been 4 or 5 stars. This one wasn't perfect, there were stories I just didn't get (Yeti Lovemaking) and also many of the stories ended right when it could have gotten a lot more interesting. But still, I think there's a lot here that resonated and felt poignant. I felt like her surrealism came from a place of authentic emotion. Some felt metaphorical but not overly so.
Some have complained that all the narrators have been a similar person, but I actually really liked that about it. It felt almost like connected short stories, the way Oranges picks up where Los Angeles stopped, with the character of Adam. And the way the last story reminded me of the first stories with its protagonist named Eve (Adam and Eve). Just tiny little things like that made me connect them, but not in an overly literal way. My favorite story was definitely 'Returning'. It's one of those stories with many smaller stories inside of it but also an undeniable emotional core.
Los Angeles - 4.5 (loved the atmosphere of these first two stories, the surreal angst, the trauma of relationships and their long reaching effects made real through an un-real conceit that seems very emotionally real) Oranges - 4 (abuse, responsibility, how do we reconcile outwardly and inwardly, how do we get over trauma, how do we warn others, a powerful story) G - 3.75 (a drug that makes you invisible, what it means to truly be seen, what it means to be not seen) Yeti Lovemaking - 2.5 (didn't get it, should probably re-read it) Returning - 4.75 (definitely my favorite, the idea of transformation being a kind of death, the mood of it, displacement and the immigrant experience, the many mini-stories within the bigger story, but all having a similar theme, the sense of not knowing where the narrator stands in relation to her husband or the people around her kind of felt like The Unconsoled a bit) Office Hours - 3.5 (many of these stories end right at the cusp of something happening, many of which I didn't mind. This one, I kind of did, and wished I knew what happened afterwards.. I do like the idea of stepping into a secret otherworld, the premise for many works of fiction, but I'm not sure what she adds to that trope here) Peking Duck - 4.25 (brilliant use of story within story, and the idea of questioning whose story belongs to whom, like how it could happen to someone else but still be your story, and anticipating the criticisms of the story itself (it's kind of like the story teaches us how to read it) before finally revealing the story, also the one that most speaks to the immigrant experience, along with Returning) Tomorrow - 4 (a story of motherhood anxiety that kind of reminded me of the themes of B&E and I'll Go On, but done in a way more surreal way)...more
She's clearly a good writer, and the beginning chapters were evocative, moody, mysterious, intriguing. But as it went along, it became more in your faShe's clearly a good writer, and the beginning chapters were evocative, moody, mysterious, intriguing. But as it went along, it became more in your face. I don't think Jenny Hval meant this to be a laugh out loud funny book, but there were parts where I definitely laughed. Also, if you're gonna name your book Paradise Rot, and include apples in it, we know you're what you're getting at already. It's pretty obvious. You don't need to spell it out by naming the garden of eden or anything. Overall everything was a little too spelled out and heavy handed for me....more
"For a long time, after her escape and the notice about the search for her that was printed in Paris-Soir, I knew nothing about Dora Bruder."
A book in
"For a long time, after her escape and the notice about the search for her that was printed in Paris-Soir, I knew nothing about Dora Bruder."
A book in which what's NOT known is maybe more important than what's known, which is not much. The author repeatedly reminds us what he doesn't know. The whole book is more a meditation of what's unknown, and even of what cannot be known, having been lost to time.
“I remember experiencing for the first time that sense of emptiness that comes with the knowledge of what has been destroyed, razed to the ground.”
Time creates an aura, much like the one silence creates. The silence of history mirrors the silence of anonymity. The years are the many layers of padding muffling the voices of the past. The past becomes inaccessible--lost in noise.
“I feel as though I am alone in making the link between Paris then and Paris now, alone in remembering all these details. There are moments when the link is strained and in danger of snapping, and other evenings when the city of yesterday appears to me in fleeting gleams behind that of today.”
For a long time, I wondered about this idea that the universe is a computer, one whose hard drive contains all the data of what happened, even when noone was looking. And nothing is ever lost to time, and all mysteries can be solved. You just have to know how to access it.
“It is said that premises retain some stamp, however faint, of their previous inhabitants. Stamp: an imprint, hollow or in relief.”
The best he can do, like fans visiting a rock star's childhood home, is to walk in her footsteps, to cross paths with her through time, and imagine. To experience what she might have experienced--to try to relate to anything that doesn't change. But everything changes. Even the map of the world changes, the continents shift.
“One way not to lose all touch with Dora Bruder over this period would be to report on the changes in the weather. The first snow fell on 4 November 1941. Winter got off to a cold start on 22 December. On 29 December, the temperature dropped still further, and windowpanes were covered with a thin coating of ice.”
A cruel reminder: there will always be days of fog and days of rain. Seasons come back, there will always be cold days. But never exactly the same cold day. One cannot reach through these illusive commonalities.
“Nevertheless, you can read: DEPARTMENT OF E . . . INSPECTORS Underneath, an arrow: “Passage on Right. Door number . . .” We shall never know the number of this door.”
I should mention that this book is really about the holocaust. That tragedy hangs like a fog over the prose. If you enjoy the melancholy of Sebald, you might enjoy this one. I felt the beginning and premise were excellent, and it really put me in a mood. But I don't believe it delivers on that promise, never arriving at any new or surprising insights. Still, a pretty good read overall....more
15% memoir, 45% biography of George Eliot, 40% discussion of Middlemarch's plot and themes. A pleasant book for me to stay in the world of Middlemarch15% memoir, 45% biography of George Eliot, 40% discussion of Middlemarch's plot and themes. A pleasant book for me to stay in the world of Middlemarch after spending most of the summer reading it. I definitely appreciate it more now than when I was in the middle of it, and I even thought about re-reading it. But let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet....more
Just couldn't connect with this. I thought the premise was good, but then some of the prose was needlessly obscure, the references to twitter culture Just couldn't connect with this. I thought the premise was good, but then some of the prose was needlessly obscure, the references to twitter culture I mostly didn't get or didn't find funny at all. There were some gems of insight in here about Twitter culture, online love and rage and fame, but just not enough, and I didn't feel like the insights built into anything bigger or more coherent. But maybe I'm expecting too much from it? Sometimes her prose felt needlessly poetic. I love poetic language, but coupled with obscure twitter references, it made it almost unreadable at times.
As for the second half, when tragedy strikes in real life, I think I get what she's doing, but I cared for this part even less than the first half. Maybe this comes across as cruel, but I didn't feel anything when the baby died or afterwards. I never felt a connection with the baby. Sure it sucks he died, but for a while I didn't even know it was a he and not a she, because she kept referring to him as "the baby". Like I'm sure it was traumatic for her, but she wasn't able to make me feel it as a reader....more
The voice is quite enticing and relatable, especially for writing from the 60s. Most of it sounds like it could bNot really a review, just some notes.
The voice is quite enticing and relatable, especially for writing from the 60s. Most of it sounds like it could be written yesterday.
"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story."
First half: Interning at a fashion magazine in NY with a dozen other girls, Esther can't choose which life to lead, like the branches of a fig tree, each is mutually exclusive. She ends up "sitting in the crotch... starving to death"
Last half: Back home, with no prospects, she falls into depression and gets institutionalized. Now instead of which life to lead, she can't choose which death she wants... toying with razor blades, jumping from a building, drowning... etc
I thought the first half was written very engagingly and with a touch of humor. You can see the depression in the background, but meanwhile, you get to see a lot of societal attitudes towards women and what a young talented woman at that time had to deal with.
The last half started delving into her depression... however, I felt disconnected to it and wasn't really that moved by it, even though I know many do. But to me, it felt a little blah and I was a bit bored while reading it. I did like the metaphors she uses though, the glass bell jar, the stale air, etc.
Also, Plath is quite racist in parts, which made it a little hard to stomach (not just the use of epithets, which is par for the time it was written, but how they were always associated with ugliness, stupidity, etc.)...more
There's Frankenstein as a cultural force. And then there's Frankenstein as source material, as an actual book written by an 18 year old Mary Shelley iThere's Frankenstein as a cultural force. And then there's Frankenstein as source material, as an actual book written by an 18 year old Mary Shelley in 1818.
I knew of only the former, and it's interesting to have that version color my perception of the source as I read.
Thus, some silly things to get out of the way: Frankenstein is not the monster, but the scientist who created the monster. The monster is not green and doesn't have a bolt on his neck. The monster isn't even a monster but a very relatable, sympathetic, human character.
It seems the book is infinitely analyzable. If it's an allegorical condemnation of technology, then it's also a condemnation of:
1. Bad/absent/neglectful parenting: his creator was immediately repulsed by his creation and ran for the hills. Wikipedia tells me "On 22 February 1815, Shelley gave birth prematurely to her first child, Clara who then died two weeks later."
2. Our over-reliance on appearance as judge of character: apparently the only reason the monster is not loved is because of his frightful appearance. No one will hear him out or give him a shred of human dignity because of the way he looks.
3. Our inability to share our burdens with others: The "monster" has no relations, and thus is disconnected from the world. This disconnection makes him the way he is, creates the evil in him. However, Victor also has no relations, since he has refused to confide in anyone about his discovery or his personal problems (until the very end), preferring to bear the burden himself, as a secret. Because of this, Victor and his monster are truly alone together. Both are equally monstrous in their aloneness.
4. Our inability to reflect on our mistakes and learn the correct lessons from them: Victor whines throughout the book as if he were the victim. Even at the end he says "During these last days I have been occupied in examining my past conduct; nor do I find it blameable." Even when he does admit to wrongdoing, he misattributes this wrong to playing god and being too ambitious, when in fact the mistake was him abandoning his creation and not following through responsibly.
The book is better in the abstract than in execution. The writing is too flowery and Victor is way too whiny and repetitive. The mental development of the monster is so rapid as to be unlikely. The framing device of letters and accounts seemed unnecessary. But all this doesn't really matter. It has really transcended all that in the cultural imagination. I'm glad to have finally read it....more
I love how these stories (form and content) are all very different, while the themes and concerns are very cohesive. So you don't feel like you're reaI love how these stories (form and content) are all very different, while the themes and concerns are very cohesive. So you don't feel like you're reading the same story over and over again (like some collections) while at the same time, each story deepens your understanding and enjoyment of the whole... women in the church, mother daughter relationships, lesbian relationships, absent/unreliable male figures, dealing with grief, etc.
A really great collection, took me a couple stories before I totally appreciated it, but my favorites were Peach Cobbler, When Eddie Levert Comes, Jael, Dear Sister, Snowfall, and Instructions for Married Christian Husbands....more
Some writers can see something about the world that's so stupidly obvious that what they write sounds ridiculous at first. But upon further thinking, Some writers can see something about the world that's so stupidly obvious that what they write sounds ridiculous at first. But upon further thinking, it's just ridiculous because nobody's ever said it before, not because it's not true.
Sheila Heti is one such writer, as when she writes:
A person can waste their whole life, without even meaning to, all because another person has a really great face.
The book is filled with such simple observations. Some may resonate more with you than others. Many of her observations are so personal and particular, that you just have to accept that it is a truth, her truth, rather than the truth. But even a truth, when sincerely felt, is a rarity worth saving.
The book is written unlike any other novel I've read, in that it presents a vision of the world almost biblical in scope and sometimes in voice. She provides an origin story for the universe and an alchemy of humans. Within this soup, a single human is perceived more than others, one called Mira, who is probably a stand in for the author.
Art is a constant theme, art as opposed to reality. But if God were an artist, everything we see in this world including us would be His artwork. So reality IS art, or is it?
Heti explaining the title on a podcast: "If we on earth are artists we paint with paint or charcoal or pencil crayons, but if God is making the earth, then God would use pure colour, not colour in a medium, such as paint,"
Distance is necessary, as when God stands back to see his art more clearly. Distance separates people, both physical and metaphorical, like Mira and her father, or like Mira and Annie. When Mira's father dies, the distance collapses into the fibers of a leaf, and this too seems to be a very personal truth. Heti's father died while she was writing this.
There's also distance in the way this entire book was written. It is an omniscient perspective that creates distance from what is written about, yet at times it feels very intimate. There's intense vulnerability in this book.
Heti often takes the temperature. The temperature in the water where the fish eggs must hatch. The temperature of Mira's father, whose bear fur is warm, almost too warm as to be suffocating for Mira. Mira and the other bird-like art critics who must remain cold (also distant) in order for the art to survive.
The forces in Mira's life are acting upon her almost as if she were the subject of their arguments. The importance of family vs. of art. Whether we should fix the world or follow tradition.
By the way, though God is a character here, it is not a religious book. At no point did I think of the God mentioned as a Christian God or another religion's God. Rather, the God here is simply a fact, a given, and one that does not carry with it the weight or connotations of organized religion. I read it as more of a personal relationship that Heti/Mira has with something bigger than her, something ineffable.
Heti's first book (and one I loved) was called How Should A Person Be, and I feel like the same spirit permeates this work but in a different way. Heti is always asking the essential questions in her fiction, the BIG questions that nobody dare ask, like how should a person be? And she asks it boldly, straight on, without worrying about conventions.
I would even say that there's something "artless" about her approach in this book, but that's kind of what I like about it. It's refreshing to see that sort of open-mindedness in pursuit of something beyond the conventions of art, something as evasive and elusive and unthinkable as the meaning of life....more
If a writer could use words the way an impressionist artist uses paints, then this would be as close to that as I can imagine. Many of the sentences dIf a writer could use words the way an impressionist artist uses paints, then this would be as close to that as I can imagine. Many of the sentences don't even have verbs, but evoke a scene and a mood that slowly builds up like layers of thick paint does on a canvas. I'm still not sure what I read, but it was moody and it was unique....more
MEN AND WINDS HAVE THIS IN COMMON: NEITHER HAVE THEIR FEET ON THE GROUND. NOMADS, THEY COME AND GO LIKE THE PAIN OF SHATTERED LOVE, NERVOUS TENSION, I
MEN AND WINDS HAVE THIS IN COMMON: NEITHER HAVE THEIR FEET ON THE GROUND. NOMADS, THEY COME AND GO LIKE THE PAIN OF SHATTERED LOVE, NERVOUS TENSION, INDEPENDENCIES, WARS OF LIBERATION, THE URGENT NEED TO DEFECATE IN THE STAIRWELL OF A BUILDING BETWEEN TWO BLACKOUTS.
the viscerality of the text
the urgency of the text
the propulsive rhythm of the train tracks
the atmosphere of the City-State spilling off the page
All nights have this particularity: they are long and popular. They teem with the rabble. They stifle awareness and accrue neurosis. They bind a straw mattress and a clock into an unrecognizable muddle. They come from the heart, improvise, and facilitate multiple partnership agreements between foreign bodies.
the prose is loud and soft simultaneously, somehow
a petri dish where nothing much happens plot-wise but you look closer and notice all these organisms screaming and fucking
the way the voices interweave into the text not to be snuffed out
"Do you have the time?"
voices disembodied from speakers, interrupting all thought
with no help from Fiston as to who's saying what but it's still clear if you relax, let it wash over you
even a description is broken up by voices asking if you have the time and other such things, do you?
RULE NUMBER 64: let them play the hardmen, for they paper over society’s dregs. RULE NUMBER 67: the mightier crush the mighty, the mighty defecate in the mouths of the weak, the weak sequestrate the weaker, the weaker do each other in, then split for elsewhere.
the underlying tragedy of a place plundered
but not without enjoyment of the ephemeral present if you call this enjoyment
RULE NUMBER 46: fuck by day, fuck by night, fuck and fuck some more for you know not what tomorrow brings.
i disagree with those that say the book is sexist... it shows a sexist society, but that is different from it being sexist. in fact, it shows the reality of the situation for many of these women in a very tragic light, and i do feel there is an empathy here, a subtle but definite editorial angle, the same way he shows the inequalities in other sections of his City-State
The City-State works like this: the girls are emancipated, democratic, and independent. Poverty does away with shame and your courtesies.
if you call this enjoyment... except enjoyment here is debased, twisted, not really enjoyment, more like a form of escapism, denial thru base desires, the pleasures of the underbelly
The main character in the African novel is always single, neurotic, perverse, depressive, childless, homeless, and overburdened with debt. Here, we live, we fuck, we’re happy. There needs to be fucking in African literature too!
BTW i'm not reviewing this as african lit, just lit AF
afterall isn't life shit everywhere? the nihilism at play here feels very of the moment
one where we plunder our own earth for resources, tear down our own house for big money, sell our own bodies and our own minds...for what?
actually, i think you either live in a world where this is a daily reality, or in a world of comforts that allows you to ignore this reality (but is still fueled by this reality)
and the lowest of the low survive to make a quick buck because they don't have any other option
ignoring all the rules, all sense of perspectives
He felt guilty at fiddling with history. Is there a limit to the imagination of a writer who takes real facts and uses them to construct a world where truth and fiction coexist? What right does one have to play around with collective memory? Is there any credibility in getting these sometimes-disparate characters in tune?
sometimes 'you' is lucien. sometimes 'us' is the collective of City-State. sometimes there is just a 'they'
the high highs are exhilirating, but sometimes the lows are necessary to tie them together, to string along an explanation or a backstory. sometimes the book falls back to this human-level prose, which is understandable, yet still slightly disappointing
the rules of the game are clearly defined, and that the main thing is to live off anything that falls into your hands. The tragedy is already written, we merely preface it.
ps if you're still unconvinced, please watch Fiston read one of his poems to white men https://youtu.be/beATnkDlX68?t=208 (starting at 3:28) it is hilarious and poignant and also you'll understand everything you need to about where his writing comes from even if you (like me) don't understand a single word of french...more
“The pain of losing something precious – be it earthly happiness or material wealth – can be forgotten over time. But our missed opportunities never l
“The pain of losing something precious – be it earthly happiness or material wealth – can be forgotten over time. But our missed opportunities never leave us, and every time they come back to haunt us, we ache. Or perhaps what haunts us is that nagging thought that things might have turned out differently. Because without that thought, we would put it down to fate and accept it.”
Simple story but really well told. Loved the pacing. Loved the writing, the way he sketches these characters out with economy, and the understanding of their psychologies. Loved the inner/outer story device. Loved the way we first see Raif from outside then get to read his backstory from inside his notebook. Loved that the relationship was quite unconventional for its time (this was published in 1943) with a more traditionally masculine woman and a more feminine man. At least in their attitudes towards life. Not sure I buy their love though, at least I couldn't see Maria really falling in love with him. For a while, she had friendzoned him, and I thought that was it. It felt more like wish fulfillment for the author to make her change her mind so late in the game. Also, some interesting bits in here historically, being set before WW2, a few characters expressing thoughts that in retrospect seem telling.
“From what I could piece together, they were of the view that Germany would only be saved if another man with Bismarck’s iron will came to power to rebuild the army and avenge the injustices of the past with another world war.”
Definitely not the focus of the story, but still, I found that setting interesting, especially considering Maria was a Jew. In the end, as far as love stories go, it's not earth shattering stuff, but it connected with me. It really expressed that ache well....more
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