first of all, lucy, you had no idea. you thought things were bad at the beginning of 2021. you had no idea (i'm writing this on the day the supreme cofirst of all, lucy, you had no idea. you thought things were bad at the beginning of 2021. you had no idea (i'm writing this on the day the supreme court overturned roe v wade, and in the week in which it dealt lethal blows to key civil rights).
but also, lucy, you did have an idea, and i thank you for saying so clearly and so lucidly how tough our lives have been since march 2020.
the normal things, the normal sadnesses of life, are all deeply magnified, because so much else is sad, so much fucking else. then people drift apart, common grief becomes personal grief, memories find a crack through which to intrude and soon they flood you, and present grief is compounded by past grief.
but then this is elizabeth strout, and she is no one if not a finder of hope, redemption, connection, light. come to have your last three years xrayed for you, stay for the hope.
finally, an observation: i had to remind myself, over and over, that lucy barton does not = elizabeth strout. one's views are not necessarily the other's views. this is important. you will see why....more
i want to say something about this book. i want to say that it's the best erdrich i've read. but see, i've been reading erdrich for thirty years, and i want to say something about this book. i want to say that it's the best erdrich i've read. but see, i've been reading erdrich for thirty years, and in thirty years so much changes, plus memory is deeply unreliable, so is it possible Love Medicine was better than this? The Antelope Wife? this i can say: i used to admire erdrich, but some things in her books were things i tolerated. the magic, for instance. i tolerated it. but then she wrote The Round House, which doesn't have magic, and i didn't like that. things turned for me at The Plague of Doves. it's a large, sprawling, disorganized, meandering book (in my memory), but i loved it viscerally. that was the first time when i found nothing to tolerate in an erdrich book. the second time was The Sentence, which is more recent than Night Watchman. i loved The Sentence viscerally. and now this one. i loved it. viscerally.
i can't quite draw a history of the evolution of louise erdrich's novels, because, like i said, it's been 30 years, but it seems to me that she is becoming more and more adept at meshing multiple narratives some of which are deep and important (like, in this case, going up against the US government to save the community and the reservation), some other of which are ordinary -- memories, work, relationships, housekeeping, ceremony. so, for instance, in Night Watchman, the potential love story between patrice and barnes, or patrice and wood mountain, or whether patrice loves anyone at all, take the same space as thomas's effort to save his people. the minutiae of thomas's job as night watchman take the same space as his political responsibilities.
and this gives the book a calm, a peacefulness, that i treasured. how could i not? these are difficult times. and here is louise erdrich, a literary genius, telling me, telling us, live your life well, live your life calmly and minutely, do your little daily things, love the people you are with, lend a hand when you can, and if you are called to save your people, whoever your people are, pencil it in and do that, too, well and meticulously....more
i read this book without knowing a thing about it and i think this worked best for me. if you are like me, maybe do the same (and stop reading this rei read this book without knowing a thing about it and i think this worked best for me. if you are like me, maybe do the same (and stop reading this review).
the first interviews read like prose poems. in fact the entire book reads like a collection of prose poems but once you start getting a sense of what is going on the plot naturally takes over and you lose (at least partly) the sense of the language in favor of the narrative. there is a longing, in these early prose poems, for intimacy, for touch, for smell. lots of smell. then memories kick in, beautiful memories of things lost, not sad, just gorgeous memories of things no longer accessible. but is memory of things beautiful and lost not intrinsically sad? i am struck by the newfangled trend about "making memories," think, wait, you have this thing now, don't make memories, enjoy the thing! there is such a sense of the inevitable passing of (good) things in the urge to make memories. how sad.
but we are a sad humanity right now, aren't we? we are catapulting toward extinction, and we are doing it gracelessly and with rage toward each other. one could have expected some coming together but there is instead a decided growing apart. a refusal to live. a refusal to love enough to survive.
this book examines corporeality, the sensory things that make us vibrate. it examines joy, intimacy, connection. it also examines our relation to time, to each other, and, above all, literally (this is a little giveaway), what it means to be and become fully human. ultimately, The Employees is about how the humanity in us grows and expands in all its unruly ways, wild and irrepressible, even when we try to be good employees, good citizens, good members of the machine. (view spoiler)[the other big takeaway of this book is that corporations cannot deal with our being human. it's an intolerable existential threat, a genuine existential menace. unionize starbucks. unionize amazon. destroy the machine. (hide spoiler)]...more
re-upping this bc it came out today! this book really stayed with me. --------------------
I found this connected series of short stories nothing shortre-upping this bc it came out today! this book really stayed with me. --------------------
I found this connected series of short stories nothing short of exceptional. Even though this is the author’s first published collection, it shows great expertise in its delicacy, concision and emotional impact. The circumstances of my childhood could not have been more different yet I recognized myself in David. This for me is the mark of an author who can describe a unique situation so well that it becomes universal. This is a book that builds slowly inside you. By the time you get to “Safe Harbor” Talty has worked you so deeply you are ready to be undone. Pretty fabulous work of Native literature, American literature and just literature....more
all i'll say about Matrix is that it starts slow but with incredible language, then builds into a vision of femininity, ci am astonished by this book.
all i'll say about Matrix is that it starts slow but with incredible language, then builds into a vision of femininity, christianity, female solidarity, women's love, women's power, and the destruction of the planet that makes of this novel about 12th century nuns (all of it fictional, very little is known about marie de france) both a manifesto and a prophecy. all hail the genius of lauren groff....more
like All's Well protagonist miranda (whose name i read as an homage to Margaret Atwood and her similarly theater-centered novel Hag-Seed), i suffer frlike All's Well protagonist miranda (whose name i read as an homage to Margaret Atwood and her similarly theater-centered novel Hag-Seed), i suffer from a gravely debilitating chronic illness. unlike the protagonist, my pain is not too bad and i easily control it with sweet CBD (other problems are not so easily addressed and resolved, alas). but of course the similarities are many, most noticeably: how we become the people no one wants to be with; how we internalize this sense of burden and become "difficult" (or do we?); how we get dismissed and belittled by doctors with startling regularity; how we lie on floors and cry.
whether miranda is indeed difficult is a central theme of the novel, maybe its central theme. she is not a sympathetic character, i think because we see her through a lens that is the product of the combination of how others see her and how she sees herself (when you are so very sick you tend indeed not to look or act your best). awad, who suffered for a while from the same chronic pain as miranda, gives us this "being difficult," this being alienating in all its tawdry glory. you become difficult because you cannot but be so. you cannot take time off because then you lose your insurance. you require accommodations others perceive as asking for too much. and no, you cannot meet anyone half way, cuz their half way is a place you simply cannot reach. people become angry and annoyed and irritable around you. you become angry and annoyed and irritable back. suckingness ensues.
awad doesn't make us pity miranda, or empathize with her, for the most part. in fact, we (i?) tend to sympathize with the others, those who are impatient at her refusal to get better on command, those who have to deal with her strangeness.
then the play happens. the book moves into hallucinatory territory, partly i think as a manifestation of miranda's own wishful thinking, partly as a result of her exhilaration (oh the magic of oxytocin!), partly because shakespeare plays have magic in them so why not bring magic into the novel?
from this point on all interpretation becomes treacherous, and i am not sure i can say what is what. what i can say is that new, magically healed miranda is not a bit more sympathetic than ill miranda. she is euphoric, manic (oh, thank you thank YOU oxytocin), unstoppable. she can be mean and inconsiderate. she still alienates people.
near the end, in a tour-de-force set piece, she has three intensely hallucinatory nightmares that i believe are meant to symbolize the tolls of chronic illness: the sense that we are killing those we love; the terrors of medical intervention that does not take us and our wishes into account (the straps are reminiscent of psychiatric incarceration, and how many of us chronic sufferers are indeed considered some kind of "mentally ill?"); the loss of motherhood.
the doctors, alleged saviors with the name of the evangelists, are men. the husband who leaves miranda because her illness becomes too burdensome to bear is a man. those who stand by miranda are women who do the best they can, with more or less grace (miranda's best friend and colleague is called grace), with more or less capacity to bring healing. there is so much this novel indicts: the medical establishment, the patriarchy, our society's unwillingness to make room for the disabled, corrupt higher ed, the carceral system. there's a lot it celebrates: the resilience of unpleasant women, the bond of women, the tenderness of women for each other, gentle men, and, above all, the heady power of art and performance....more
there is something about recent latin american literature. maybe an effortlessness. maybe a lightness. even when the topics are not light, the tone isthere is something about recent latin american literature. maybe an effortlessness. maybe a lightness. even when the topics are not light, the tone is light. and i say this having read the far-from-light and in fact quite brutal Hurricane Season. there is a playfulness, a delightful lack of ponderousness. it's literature that doesn't take itself too seriously. this is the gift of postmodernism, at least when not in the hands of white guys.
i loved this novel, which i read in english in the fabulous translation by katherine silver. it starts off with an experiment. the protagonist, mara, decides to spend a year talking as little as possible. in order to succeed, she moves to a small town where she doesn't know anyone, and chooses to be a museum guard. at first things move along quite as planned, then they, hmm, don't. hilarity ensues.
behind this funny, breezy novel there is a powerful critique of consumerism, of colonial appropriation and of the arrogance of men. it is also a super smart investigation of language, what it does, what it doesn't, when we need it, when we don't. it's all intriguing and clever and fun and it's amazing that all this takes barely more than 100 pages. i recommend it highly....more
this is incredible. the talent, the depth, the smarts. incredible. short stories of the same magnitude as alice munro's and flannery o'connor. this is incredible. the talent, the depth, the smarts. incredible. short stories of the same magnitude as alice munro's and flannery o'connor. ...more
there are brilliant writers who, for some reason, don't quite get all the readership that seems appropriate for their brilliance. tananarive due is onthere are brilliant writers who, for some reason, don't quite get all the readership that seems appropriate for their brilliance. tananarive due is only one of them, meaning i can think of others, but HOLY SMOKES does it sadden me that this book is not read and assigned in classes all over the great US of A, where the narratives of african american life that are typically favored are those of slavery and brutality.
this is not an unbrutal book, because part of it, the scott joplin part, is set during a time in which african americans suffered endless discrimination and humiliation (and worse of course). the book doesn't dwell on the material segregation much (there is a bit about a painful train ride but not much more) but rather on the fact that joplin's music was roundly rejected because Black musicians were confined to really narrow genres. his rags were fine, everything else, not so much. joplin, a massively talented composer with a sweeping vision, spent his life being thwarted at every step of the way.
so this is partly about racism and partly about the creative personal damage of being unable to be heard because you don’t fit pre-existing narratives about what your art should be like (another book that is painfully about this is Siri Hustvedt's The Blazing World, though one must say that the real-life suppression of a genius of the quality of scott joplin because of worldwide racism kinda hurts in a singular way in this here miserable 2020 year of the lord).
joplin’s work is presented in this novel as a visionary precursor to jazz and later forms of african american music. since i didn’t know anything about joplin i appreciated being introduced to him by tananarive due, an author whose dedication to historical accuracy (with obvious exceptions cuz after all this is a ghost story) i trust.
on the other side of the temporal continuum is phoenix, a young musician who is also being pushed by various (well meaning, in her case) forces into tried and true modes of Black music.
due does storytelling magic with the story of how these two people mesh into each other’s lives. it’s really amazing. every time i thought i had it down there was a new twist and a new deepening and more complexity and richness and i was like damn.
ghosts are a bit of a recurring presence in the african american literature i have read (i don’t dare say african american literature in general cuz i am not an expert). i am thinking now of the incredible use of ghosts Jesmyn Ward does in Sing, Unburied, Sing. ghosts show up to tell of their pain and pass the baton of history. ghosts tell those who live in the present not to forget. ghosts comfort and encourage. ghosts are history and also history’s urgent push into the present.
in the afternote to the book due says that she painstakingly researched ghosts by talking to serious psychics who work with them regularly. i am sure there is some storytelling license here but the delicacy of dealing with the souls of people who have died, the expertise required to do it right and to honor our ancestors kept me rather enthralled. (here’s a spoiler: ghosts don’t hurt us).
due is a heck of a storyteller. her novels are blessedly long and when you finish them you wish there were more. there is a ton of depth here, but it’s hidden in a enthralling package and i don’t know how she does it. here are some of the themes: what do people owe their past when that past clamors to be honored; what do they owe themselves; how can they honor their history while also not being dragged down by it; how can groups that have been historically brutalized do right by their ancestors and how can they continue their struggle for liberation and voice.
there is a ton here about music. if you love music, you will love this.
lastly, the audio version is performed by lizan mitchell and she is great!...more
i find it hard to find words for books during this apocalyptic time but this is, well, this is like no poetry collection i've read (i have read so veri find it hard to find words for books during this apocalyptic time but this is, well, this is like no poetry collection i've read (i have read so very few so this means nothing really except that it is extraordinary). the poems weave a story, and the story is about exile, forced migration, colonialism, the sea, death hurt death hurt, beloved eritrean bodies, beloved black bodies in america, forgiveness, love, tradition, and the bonds of humans to humans and neighbors to neighbors and ancestors to descendants and people to all of nature. since a lot of it takes place in italy, NOT IN A GOOD WAY, it was a bit hard for me to read. italians have this abiding fantasy of themselves as "the good ones" and aracelis girmay tells us hmm no, no, darlings, you are letting humans drown and starve and be slaves in your own homes so no, nope, not good at all. and this is SO MUCH *NOT* THE STORY I HEAR FROM ITALY, which is all about the sainted people of lampedusa (no love lost for lampedusa in this book) who save EVERYONE and WELCOME EVERYBODY and you know what? at first i didn't believe girmay, at first i believed the storytelling of goodness i get from italy and from my mom. and then i had to tell myself, jo, believe those who die. because also, you see, italy invaded eritrea during WWII and while the history books tell us it was no big deal, italians were out of there in no time, no harm done, the eritrean people have a totally different version of this story. so i grew up with italian bumbling and incompetence and then i read this book and was confronted with italian evil. and i had to reorganize my mind and believe those who die.
but this book is full of water, food, bread, green, air, stars, planet, salt and love, and this is what girmay gave me beside gut punching sorrow and humble pie, and i am a bit of a better person because of this wondrous book. i also wanna say that it took me more than 2 months to read it. you don't want to rush through these poems. girmay's words read like scripture. you don't want to rush through scripture....more
as others have noted, there is no way to review this book without spoiling it, so i'm putting this plot-light, mHoly smites. My heart is in my throat.
as others have noted, there is no way to review this book without spoiling it, so i'm putting this plot-light, mostly thematic review under spoiler tags.
(view spoiler)[ Reviewers have read this as the story of a self-absorbed young man, but it is seems to me instead to be an investigation of the ways trauma disrupts time.
Saul, the protagonist, is a bisexual man who carries a hefty load of queer trauma. After his mother’s death his father and his brother torture him for being “inappropriately” masculine, and if you know about gender/sexuality trauma, you know that it never, ever goes away Society will never stop being heteronormative, and every fresh reminder of your unfittingness will break the wound wide open.
When we encounter him, Soul is startlingly beautiful and universally attractive. His girlfriend has turned down his marriage proposal and, since he’s a scholar of the GDR and, fittingly, also a scholar of male dictators and their attitudes toward women (is he himself the women dictators abuse?), he goes to East Berlin to do research. In East Berlin traumatized, queer Saul lives that most heady of all times: the miraculous point in one’s youth when suffering and delight are equally acute and plentiful, and life feels like a torrential, delicious flood of pathos, lust, and love.
No one can stay long in such time. People prolong it with drugs but it inevitably ends. The mind cannot take all that intensity, and life doesn’t work that way.
The non-traumatized mind (or the not-too-traumatized mind) moves on, looks back with nostalgia or embarrassment, incorporates the past into the present through memory, and finds a way to create satisfaction and contentment (and joy!) in adult living. The traumatized mind remains stuck in the past and the past is the present and its presence and absence equally torture us.
Levy is doing two things here:
the first is the thought experiment, would you survive a trip into your headiest days? Could you carry on after the acute re-experiencing of what you had and lost?
The second is an investigation of the mind of those who cannot but live in two places at once — the suffering and excitement of their past, the inevitable disappointment of their present.
I think the thought experiment is not really the point here. I think the point is that saul needs to go back, and back, and back, and both fix the terrible things that happened to him and also relive the grand things that happened to him and, this time, make them last, make them not go away. He needs to be back there and make it all override the way his life has become.
I love levy’s portrayal of the free, whirlwind, reciprocated desire Saul experiences in East Berlin. It’s beautiful and queer and delightful. Saul is innocent and kind, forgetful and selfish; he gets to have a second, less troubled childhood. He is hurt and he smothers this hurt in sex, as queer people sometimes do. Queer sex connects Saul to himself and heals, to an extent, or for the moment.
We don’t really know what the rest of saul’s life is like. We know he is loved, at least by some, and we also know that he fails massively at being happy.
Time is a kindness. Queer-traumatized people, most of us, find some relief in the dulling that time brings. How can one survive reliving freshly the moments when everything was still possible? Maybe one can’t. (hide spoiler)]...more
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