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1846553709
| 9781846553707
| 1846553709
| 3.68
| 789
| 1987
| Dec 09, 2013
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liked it
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The early awakenings to the nuances of life can be a confusing time. To discover that people contain multitudes, that complexities abound, or the cree
The early awakenings to the nuances of life can be a confusing time. To discover that people contain multitudes, that complexities abound, or the creeping cognizance of the ceaseless passage of time and finding oneself inextricably bound to its progress barrelling towards aging, decay and death. It is a journey of awareness and acceptance we all must travel and starts with the first rocky steps of pre-adolescence. Ashes in My Mouth, Sand in My Shoes, the debut work from Norwegian novelist Per Petterson is a brief bildungsroman sheathed in the perspective of young Arvid Jansen between the ages of 6 and 8. There is a sense of minimalism here, with an austere prose and limited perspective of a young child’s consciousness that perfectly embodies the authorial maxim of “show don’t tell,” with Petterson refraining from philosophizing and allowing the reader to watch across 10 sparse vignettes. These miniature snapshots arrive like ripples on the pond: small, serene, yet a disruption of stillness in the life of the small child. From nightmares and bed-wetting to awareness of the needs and nuances of others or the frailty of life and parental relations, Ashes in My Mouth, Sand in My Shoes, shows how simplicity can still capture complexity. ‘I don’t want to get older. I want to stay like I am now! ’ Originally published in 1987, Ashes in My Mouth, Sand in My Shoes, kickstarted Petterson’s career with a character he would later revisit in I Curse the River of Time, though this time set in 1989 with an adult Arvid in his late thirties as his marriage crumbles. Here we find a young Arvid living a decent life and, as is often for young boys, his factory-working father is at the center of it. There is a tenderness of father/son relationships at work—inspired by the authors own childhood and relationship with his father—that is quite lovely in this book, something that is evinced right away in the opening sentences. ‘Dad had a face that Arvid loved to watch, and at the same time made him nervous as it wasn’t just a face but also a rock in the forest with its furrows and hollows, at least if he squinted when he looked…Those that liked to comment on this kind of thing said that the two of them looked a lot like each other and that was perhaps what made Arvid most nervous, but when he glanced in the mirror he didn’t understand what they meant for Dad was blond, and all Arvid saw in the mirror was two round cheeks and plainly Dad did not have them. But a new awareness of his father grows across these short stories. Death creeps in and he is aware his father will someday pass, time changes everything and he cannot stop it. The boys desire to remain 6 forever reminds me of the poem Now We are Six from Winnie the Pooh author A.A. Milne: When I was One, I had just begun. When I was Two, I was nearly new. When I was Three I was hardly me. When I was Four, I was not much more. When I was Five, I was just alive. But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever, So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever. Yet it is more than a desire to just stay 6 years old but to stop time, to stop his parents and himself from aging. ‘The palms of his hands were quivering and he tried to resist time and hold it back. But nothing helped, and with every pop he felt himself getting older.’ There is a wonderful childlike simplicity and logic to these stories, such as how here he decides it is the clock that causes time to pass—’ time withdrew to the large clock on the wall in the living room and went around alone in there, like a tiger in a cage, he thought, just waiting’—and smashing it reveals he cannot stop time. It is an early brush with futility. Beyond the erosion of time, Arvid moves through numerous other realizations in his coming-of-age teeming with a ‘determination that couldn’t determine where to go.’ A conversation with a troubled youth leads Arvid to realize others have dynamic interior lives and the panic around the Cuban Missile Crisis opens a window into the awareness of a larger outside world filled with dangers beyond his or his family’s control. Arvid has a sense of fragility around him, yet one that is still intact in comparison to many of the adults around him who have cracked or broken under the weight of a weary world. It gives a sense of hope and empowerment that, despite the harshness of reality, we can fortify ourselves and bear it. A small and quiet little book, Ashes in My Mouth, Sand in My Shoes is steeped in nostalgia and and a somber yet serene atmosphere that adds a tender weight to these interconnected stories. While occasionally it is a bit too light to not simply sail from the mind at the slightest breeze, the blend of humor and melancholy as Petterson explores social and familial dynamics through the eyes of a boy stepping tepidly into adolescence is still a lovely read. 3.5/5 ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jan 15, 2025
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1943735042
| 9781943735044
| 1943735042
| 4.51
| 2,738
| Jul 19, 2016
| Jul 19, 2016
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really liked it
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‘In this version, Everyone we love is still alive.’ A great song sticks in the mind, it’s melody pulling memory along behind it. Do you have any favori ‘In this version, Everyone we love is still alive.’ A great song sticks in the mind, it’s melody pulling memory along behind it. Do you have any favorite songs like that—the songs that transport you back to the time and place when you first loved it? Songs that taste of autumn rain, choruses that crash into your mind like waves on a now faraway beach beside a former love or lost friend? Moving to the rhythm of music and aglow in bittersweet nostalgia comes the poetry of Hanif Abdurraqib in The Crown Ain’t Worth Much, a powerful collection chronicling a coming-of-age amidst jukeboxes, crumbling neighborhoods paved over by gentrification, crushes, concerts, ‘basketball courts & the older brothers / who never found their way back home.’ Through narrative poetry full of linguistic acrobatics that bounce across the page like song lyrics and pluck the heartstrings of readers like a guitar amped for stadium rock, The Crown Ain’t Worth Much is a moving and unforgettable read. We, the war generation. The only way we know how to bury our dead is with blood, or sweat, or sex or anything pouring from wet skin to signify we were here, and the wooden floor of a basement belonging to an old house on Neil Avenue makes as good a burial ground as any says the small boom box now playing DJ in the center of this room, and the Whitney CD inside, pouring out of the speakers just loudly enough to let everyone in this room get a small taste of Whitney alive and young… —from At the House Party Where We Found Out Whitney Houston was Dead Hanif Abdurraqib is best known for his riveting essays that wind through research and narratives to deliver a message amalgamated through the emotional resonance of various anecdotes but the same power and poetic storytelling is found succinct and soulful within his poetry. The Crown Ain’t Worth Much finds reflections on music ricocheting against memories and intimate personal investigations of an upbringing in a place where ‘everyone who lives there misses someone they thought would live forever.’ Death and loss are around every corner like the lyrical rhymes balancing the moments of joy and tenderness in each poem as ‘people have to mourn the shatter of anything that they can look into and see how alive they still are.’ These are poems that dive deep into ‘what it is to grow up poor,’ to repeatedly face a new death in the neighborhood, or ‘the destruction of all things too beautiful to endure an untouched life.’ These poems are an elegy to his upbringing in Columbus, Ohio, to the friends and family there, to the desires to leave it all behind and why music is such a necessary escape thinking ‘maybe if we stack all of the speakers in this town as high as we can and begin to go up,we can escape even this.’ Though it is also an elegy to those who were never given the chance to escape. ‘in the winter danny lost track of time shooting free throws & we had to bury all of the parts of him that the night had left, still brimming with bullets & then none of the black boys got new basketballs for christmas’ While these poems are awash in grief and sorrow, there is also a rather infectious humor and warmth to them as well. We have poems in defense of the word “moist,” jokes on aging out of parties and into NPR, memories of writing misheard lyrics ‘on the wall of places where people emptied themselves of everything they challenged their insides to own.’ There is also a lovely litany of music references, with Nick Drake, Jay-Z, Elliott Smith, Fall Out Boy,Taking Back Sunday, Kanye West, A Tribe Called Quest and more harmonizing along with personal reflections. He is at his best when the songs touch him in ways that spark personal revelations or trigger memories of concerts or parties that inspired deep reflection. A Halloween party, for instance makes him realize: ‘I am becoming more and more like my father every day, the way we both swing into the darkness like it is our birthright, the way we both crave the moon and the breeze dancing…’ Family is always around each poem and he makes us consider how we look in their eyes. ‘I wonder if this is how our parents see us now,’ he muses, ‘promising gifts birthed & pulled from a loving shell only to grow into another disaster uninvited & spreading itself along the streets with a slow crawl.’ But family extends beyond blood and even friendship into a general community here. There is a brilliant series of poems, Dispatches from the Black Barbershop where the voice of Tony the Barber chronicles the decline of the neighborhood and the gentrification that follows. But always brilliant as well are his poem titles which half the time could be poems themselves. In Defense of that Winter Where I listened to the First Taking Back Sunday Album Every Day Until the Snow Peeled Itself Back from the Grass and I Found My College Sweatshirt Again There is a warm creativity reverberating through these poems, such as one titled as a draft of wedding vows created as an erasure poem from Virginia Woolf’s suicide note to Leonard Woolf, where we find him ‘doing what seems…will give me the greatest possible happiness…’ reversing death into a declaration of love with: ‘What I want to say is You…have…saved me. … Everything has gone from me… … But the certainty of your goodness.’ There is a real tenderness to many of these poems. I love the moments of early crushes, the vulnerability of saying ‘I just learned how to make room under my tongue for the name of someone who loves me,’ or moments that touch memories of childhood like stepping out into the snow where ‘I watch the skyline huddle and shiver / like I was seeing it from my mother’s backseat for / the first time.’ It is such lovely imagery and each poem contrasts the dark with the light, the heaviness with lightness, the death with life. I walked home in three sweaters and two pairs of pants, shivering in the darkness asking myself how long it would be before I could finally peel back all of those layers and become a new, unbreakable device. Harrowing, haunting, humorous and deeply human, The Crown Ain’t Worth Much is a fabulous collection of poetry. Hanif Abdurraqib blends musings on Blackness, memory, music, misery and more into each gorgeously crafted poem that is sure to strum each emotional chord in your heart. An incredible writer, an incredible poet, and an incredible collection of poems. 4.5/5 ...more |
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1
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not set
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not set
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Oct 24, 2024
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Paperback
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0785252991
| 9780785252993
| 0785252991
| 4.32
| 1,049,950
| Jan 01, 1908
| Aug 31, 2021
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it was amazing
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‘Dear old world,’ says Anne Shirley, ‘you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.’ Books like this, the long beloved Anne of Green Gables b
‘Dear old world,’ says Anne Shirley, ‘you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.’ Books like this, the long beloved Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, make me feel this sentiment deep in my bones. Despite it all, how can I not love a world and a humanity that brought this into existence. This book is perfectly splendid and I only wish I had read it as a child. Yet, traveling across Canada recently with this book, I was pleased to discover it could still build a bonfire in my adult heart to warm me with joy, still bring a frequent smile to my face and outbursts of gleeful laughter. ‘Anne with an ‘e’’ is an early ADHD icon who’s poetic ‘thoughts rove all over creation’ whom—as the rest of Avonlea soon discovers—is impossible not to love and I saw so much of my younger self in her. A coming-of-age tale wrapped in a sweet innocence that champions being yourself and embracing mistakes as an opportunity to learn and grow, what really brought this novel to heart for me were the ways in which Anne’s offbeat personality cracks the stale and rigid expectations of a community and allows everyone to grow along with her. Community and shared growth are central to this story and this is as much a story about Avonlea as it is the Anne who makes it her home. Still touching hearts young and old since it was first published in 1908, Anne of Green Gables is an endearing and enduring classic. ‘ I shall give life here my best, and I believe it will give its best to me in return.’ There is a lot to love about Anne of Green Gables, but also a lot of messages to take to heart. An aspect I am particularly fond of in literature aimed at children is how the most successful ones can distill important themes in accessible ways that can enter our hearts to bathe us in pure shining light that always feels so pleasantly positive and empowering. There's multitudes to learn from Anne. For instance: —Always embrace and learn from mistakes: ‘Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing.’ —Find the good and fun in everything: ‘Life is worth living as long as there's a laugh in it.’ —A positive attitude makes a big difference: ‘It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.’ —Pay attention to the small joys and details in life: ‘All things great are wound up with all things little.’ —Give people a chance: ‘Miss Barry was a kindred spirit after all…you wouldn't think so to look at her, but she is.’ —Always prepare for setbacks: ‘There is always another bend in the road.’ —Start over fresh and don’t let setbacks get you down: ‘Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it.’ There are many more, such as the importance of friendship, admitting faults and embracing imagination not just for oneself but to help it flourish in others. Going through these got me thinking how delightfully quotable and altogether memorable this novel is and it is no surprise this novel has continuously been endeared as an enduring classic. Even those who haven’t read the novel are likely familiar with certain scenes or lines, like the often quoted ‘I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers,’ which happens to arrive at the start of the same chapter in which the famous scene occurs where Anne accidentally gets Diana drunk on currant wine thinking she is serving raspberry cordial. The novel plays out in rather episodic moments such as this (which lends itself to the many tv series adaptations both animated and live action) with fairly contained action-consequence-resolution formats that build on each other to follow the course of Anne’s childhood into young adulthood. And it is a joy to watch Anne grow up. [image] Diana and Anne drink currant wine in the 2017 Netflix adaptation Anne With an E What makes this book truly great are the characters. Anne, of course, but Marilla and Matthew are just as charming and engaging. I love Marilla who is struggling but earnest about trying to understand Anne and comes to really love her. As Matthew tells her, raising Anne won't be difficult 'if you only get her to love you,' and watching the relationship grow between her and Anne is so heartwarming. While sometimes she just wants Anne to shut up and stop being weird she can't help but privately enjoy how offbeat she is. I suspect this is a novel where those who read it in youth will identify with Anne but those who read it as adults (and especially as parents) will have a real appreciation for Marilla much like how everyone talks about which daughter from Little Women they are until they reread it as an adult and realize how much Marmee speaks to them. That was the case for me at least. But also wow did Anne speak to my heart and remind me of my pre-teen self. 'There's such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I'm such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn't be half so interesting.' The fictional town of Avonlea is nestled upon Prince Edward Island in Canada, which was also the birthplace and childhood home of author Lucy Maud Montgomery. While not an orphan as Anne was, Maud lost her mother at the age of two and when her father remarried she was sent to live with her grandparents. So one can see a twinkle of inspiration for the young Anne who (for those who don’t know the story), due to a misunderstanding, is sent to be adopted by aging siblings Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert. ‘She’s been a blessing to us,’ they learn, ‘and there never was a luckier mistake.’ Maud was fond of reading as a child and, like Anne, loved poetry. ‘Don't you just love poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back,’ Anne states, and in Anne we find quite the poet as well with long rambling chatter that moves ‘from safe concrete to dubious paths of abstraction.’ In an essay Montgomery discusses how novels were banned in her grandparents house but she had access to all the poetry she liked, and in her own writing there is certainly an impressive and delightful sense of the poetic. Montgomery pops off with excellent consonance quite frequently with phrases like ‘the waif of the world,’ but her vibrant imagery is certainly pure poetry. A favorite moment occurs right from the start with the images of Avonlea in bloom with an enraptured Anne finally rendered speechless. It is a critical image because it is in Avonlea that Anne is also able to bloom into the amazing person she becomes. [image] Prince Edward Island ‘What good would she be to us?’ Matthew asks Marilla when she questions keeping Anne, reminding her ‘we might be some good to her.’ This idea permeates the text and we see how community is so important. ‘True friends are always together in spirit,’ Anne teaches us and there are few more lovely friendships in fiction than Anne and her ‘bosom friend’ Diana. To watch Anne grow up is also to watch Diana grow up and to watch them love and support each other (I quite agree with the more recent adaptations, such as the modern-setting graphic novel Anne that portray them as a sapphic romance, besides *nose in air*I don’t think Gilbert is good enough for my Anne). Anne also comes to think of others as ‘kindred spirits’—such as Aunt Josephine who essentially becomes her benefactor after taking a liking to Anne while she apologizes for jumping onto her in bed by accident—and that we can find kindred spirits everywhere if we are willing to get to know people. ‘Evidently she did not like talking about her experiences in a world that had not wanted her.’ Friends are also important to Anne as she never had them before, unless you count Katie Maurice (her reflection) or Violetta (her echo). Her attachment to them is rather telling because not only was it a sign of her strong imagination but also because they were simply an extension of herself–Anne only had herself and coming to Avonlea. But we also see how Anne struggles at concepts like religion, which Marilla realizes is not due to irreverence but rather how can Anne comprehend divine love if she’d never experienced love from another before (though her distaste for God for having given her red hair—a constant struggle that leads to a very humorous scene about dying her hair and also is a point of contention where Gilbert calling her “carrot” cuts far too deep—is quite amusing). Anne had to learn community in general. Over the novel we see she thrives at this due to her imagination, something she says is easy ‘if you’d only cultivate it.’ Anne perfects how to bring out the imagination in others, something that—following in the footsteps of her mentor, Miss Stacy—makes her career as a schoolteacher a perfect fit to utilize such abilities. Sure, sometimes imagination can backfire like when she becomes afraid of the haunted woods, but it is also a path through that fear. ‘Ever since I came to Green Gables I’ve been making mistakes, and each mistake has helped to cure me of some great shortcoming.’ Though one of the greatest lessons in this book, I think, is the rather optimistic approach to embracing mistakes and learning from them. Each moment of growth comes from something initially thought of as an error (getting Diana drunk, almost drowning in the river) and finding it to be a teachable moment for the self. Though this extends beyond Anne too, as some of the friction Anne comes up against in the community becomes an opportunity for growth for them as well, or even with the Cuthberts who quickly learn that adopting a child is more about the child being an asset to the farm but a person to help grow and cultivate love, and be loved in return. ‘We ought always to try to influence others for good.’ This is such a lovely novel, one that encourages imagination, friendship, love, and appreciation of the world around us. For Anne, simply being out in nature and basking in the light of life is enough to ‘feel a prayer’ and in our encounters with Anne we too can feel it within ourselves. Though this is also a story of hard work, finding joy in simply learning and not having to always be the best, and also the importance of persistence. Anne of Green Gables is a marvelous story for readers both young and old, and I greatly enjoyed my time in Avonlea. 5/5 [image] I also really love this edition of the book. ...more |
Notes are private!
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May 23, 2024
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May 29, 2024
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May 15, 2024
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Hardcover
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1782279792
| 9781782279792
| B0BTLDB81L
| 3.60
| 1,303
| Jan 2011
| Oct 31, 2023
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really liked it
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The world is rarely kind to those who are different, those who stand out from what society has deemed “acceptable” behavoir. And that can make the wor
The world is rarely kind to those who are different, those who stand out from what society has deemed “acceptable” behavoir. And that can make the world a lonely place. This is Amiko, Do You Copy? by Natsuko Imamura, author of The Woman in the Purple Skirt, positions the reader into this sort of isolated existence as the story follows Amiko, a girl who seems to float through life as equally unaware of the bullying she receives as she is to how her own actions set her apart from others. Tender yet ultimately tragic, this is a story of the spreading consequences from misconceptions all seen through the eyes of a girl who can’t quite follow the thread of emotions and events. The story is best emphasized in a pivotal scene where Amiko speaks into her walkie-talkie, calling out to the world and receiving no response beyond, at one point when she hears ‘what sounded like a faint voice amid all the grating noise.’ Addressing neurodivergence and the ways people are misunderstood even by those closest to them, This is Amiko, Do You Copy? is a moving and rather heartbreaking story beautifully presented in a simplistic style (translated here by Hitomi Yoshio) that subtly implies far more than its own words. I had enjoyed the way Imamura’s The Woman in the Purple Skirt left a lot unsaid but managed to make those omissions speak the loudest and found that this is a talent she carries over into This Amiko, Do You Copy?. The whole novella is overflowing in dramatic irony where the reader is far more aware of the interpersonal dynamics and emotional currents than Amiko herself, through whom the story is told. It is written in third person, though only offers Amiko’s perspective, and the prose is rather simplistic in order to capture the impressions of the world the way a child would (Amiko goes from being a young child to a teenager over the course of the story). Being third person instead of first gives us a sense that Amiko’s own life feels at a remove from herself. ‘She wanted to be kind. But the more she wanted to be kind, the sadder she got. She couldn’t find the words. She couldn’t say a word.’ Many of the events of the story simply pass by without much special emphasis or investigation in order to embody the way that, for Amiko, even the most dramatic of moments don’t seem to register as such to her. Aside from her brief moments with Nori, a classmate for whom she has developed a strong affection despite not reading his social cues of utter annoyance at her presence, Amiko is rather unaffected by everything around her. And, initially, rather blissfully so. ‘It’s like you’re free,’ a classmate admits before adding, ‘well, it’s also why you get bullied…’ The tragedy of the novella is that, because Amiko doesn’t pick up on social cues or socially acceptable behavior, some of her actions cause great offense and sadness to her own family. There are some deeply uncomfortable scenes, though we also recognize how Amiko meant no offense and doesn't even realize that she has offended. While a revelation about her family comes quite late in the novella, it is almost brushed aside in the text which can feel a bit frustrating as it feels underexplored. And this feeling of frustration the reader may feel should hopefully be eye opening as to why the people around Amiko act so cruelly towards her instead of stopping to think about how that is just the way she is. They misunderstand her and are cold to her instead of accommodating, they mock her behavior, and even her extremely protective brother eventually finds her to be too much for him. I also found the presentation of the narrative, winding around itself and weaving back and forth across the timeline, to not only be a great way to tease out the story but also represent the way Amiko processes her experience in roundabout ways. This is Amiko, Do You Copy? is a heartfelt yet heartbreaking story that serves as an expression on neurodivergence in a society that is not equipped to be accommodating. I'd be curious to read how those with more experience on the subject matter find the representation, and I'm also curious how the conversation around neurodivergence has changed since this was originally published in 2011. The book has been compared to Convenience Store Woman, though the two novels take fairly different approaches but both still become rather tragic social criticisms. Short, moving, and rather powerful, this book is a good reminder to have patience and understanding with others, and to show kindness instead of the cruelty Amiko finds here. 3.5/5 ...more |
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not set
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not set
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Nov 28, 2023
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Kindle Edition
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0374607583
| 9780374607586
| 0374607583
| 3.65
| 3,255
| Oct 11, 2022
| Oct 11, 2022
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really liked it
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‘We look at the world once, in childhood,’ worte Louise Glück in her poem Nostos, ‘The rest is memory.’ Winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize for her life’s
‘We look at the world once, in childhood,’ worte Louise Glück in her poem Nostos, ‘The rest is memory.’ Winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize for her life’s work full of this incredible poetry or, as the Committee wrote, for ‘her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal,’ Glück has a gift to harness words to unlock the abstractions of one’s interior life and put it on dazzling display. Writer of many collections of poems and essays, Marigold and Rose is her first book of fiction yet retains all the power of her poetry. In this way, it is deceptively simple. Being a quick 55 pages on the inner lives of two infants, Glück explores the twins differences and their perspectives on life. That they do not yet have words is both their struggle but also the purity of their impressions. With writing that feels like a forest path between prose and poetry and says far more than just the words on the page, Marigold and Rose is a charming yet heavy look at the world, language, loss and the possibilities of existence. ‘Everything will disappear but I will know many words.’ The lives of the twins feels very akin to a line from Glück’s poem, Tango, in which she writes ‘of two sisters / one is always the watcher / one the dancer.’ Here, silent, observant Marigold is the watcher and charming, sweet Rose is the dancer. Margold loves to watch the world and think about it, or look through her alphabet book despite lacking the ability to read. Rose smiles, gets the affection of all who see her. The twins have a curiosity and loving understanding of each other, seeing in the other things they feel lacking in themselves. ‘Rose felt sometimes that she lacked depth,’ we are told, ‘she felt a little one-note, like a highly decorative cave painting,’ while Marigold wishes she could interact with the world more. ‘We have inner lives, Rose thought.’ The story follows through the course of a year through a short series of impressions of the family, their garden, and all leads up to the twins' first birthday. There is a humorous confusion for Marigold that if they become one on their birthday, were they nothing before? This points forwards the impressions of mortality that permeate the story, with the non-existence before birth weighing on Marigold’s infant mind just as much as the absence after death. ‘Everything will disappear,’ she often thinks. This also leads to questions of existence, such as who she is herself, such as here when she observes herself amongst the family like a single seed amongst the hundred her mother uses for gardening: ‘Who am I, she thought to herself. Or really, which am I of the hundreds in the original packet…Marigold needed something that stood for herself as Rose stood for Rose.’ While it all seems a bit much for an infant to be thinking of, the narrative implies that none of this occurs in words but in a grappling with impressions that is always just out of reach. There is a beautiful simplicity tinged with the twin’s frustrations because nothing ever makes full sense. ‘Marigold wanted to be prepared for change, which meant you had to learn to remember before you needed to remember.’ In this way, the book becomes a look at language. There are impressions of the world we can form, yet without words to categorize and snare our ideas into something we can turn over in our mind, it is harder to understand them. It makes for a clever way to look at how the twins discover the world. ‘It was not a happy time, we are told after the Grandmother’s death, ‘this was the first the twins understood that word, happy, but they understood it because it was gone.’ Marigold learns how absence can be a great learning tool, understanding emotions only once they have passed and juxtaposing all feelings with others. Through all this, Marigold decides she wants to write a book and is always bending her mind towards that idea. No matter that she has yet to develop words. The desire for adulthood ‘with its vast cargo of words,’ becomes her desire for life, with all its aches, joys, pains and love. ‘Long, long ago: that is how she would begin her book.’ This is a lovely little philosophical narrative. I have long loved the poetry of Louise Glück (a favorite is Departure which I highly encourage reading) and Marigold and Rose feels like a natural extension of her poems. It captures the magic of words and the contradictions of life in such lovely prose and while it is bite-sized novella, it fills your mind like a meal. 4.5/5 ...more |
Notes are private!
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Nov 16, 2022
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Nov 16, 2022
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Nov 16, 2022
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Hardcover
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0394800389
| 9780394800387
| 0394800389
| 4.11
| 65,570
| 1965
| Jan 12, 1965
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really liked it
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The origin story of my intrusive thoughts. Just a normal day shelving books, keeping it real and suddenly my brain will start exclaiming “DO YOU CHOOS
The origin story of my intrusive thoughts. Just a normal day shelving books, keeping it real and suddenly my brain will start exclaiming “DO YOU CHOOSE TO CHEW GOO, TOO, SIR?! IF, SIR, YOU, SIR, CHOOSE TO CHEW, SIR, WITH THE GOO-GOOSE, CHEW, SIR. DO SIR!!” Or maybe a quiet walk in the evening. Sun is low, spirits are high. My brain: “ When a fox is in the bottle where the tweetle beetls battle with their paddles in a puddle on a noodle-eating poodle. THIS is what they call—” Shut up brain! But for real, this is a classic for a reason. It will haunt me eternal. ...more |
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not set
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not set
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Nov 09, 2022
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Hardcover
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1951142306
| 9781951142308
| 1951142306
| 3.90
| 2,337
| Feb 2017
| Feb 16, 2021
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it was amazing
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‘Every life has its own moon landing.’ It’s interesting to consider how our parent’s occupations often color our understanding of the world at an early ‘Every life has its own moon landing.’ It’s interesting to consider how our parent’s occupations often color our understanding of the world at an early age. My father designed car engines and my childhood thoughts on the workings of life had the atmosphere of machinery and grease. I wonder what impressions I am passing onto my own children who are growing up in a bookstore and library as if they were an extension of our own house. Such is the case for M, the young narrator of How to Order the Universe by María José Ferrada and translated by Elizabeth Bryer, who spends her childhood selling Kramp tools with her travelling salesman father, D, often skipping school to do so. This intimate and charming story of a father and daughter becomes a story of Chile in the 1970s and the ways life can take an abrupt and violent turn in the midst of political upheaval. Quirky and adorable with a beautifully beguiling narrator trying to make sense of the world around her, How to Order the Universe is an profound one-sitting-read gem. Child narrators can be hit-or-miss, but Ferrada pulls this off with captivating grace. Told as a reflection back upon her childhood, M’s narration only provides the scope of what her child-self was able to understand and the unspoken often looms louder than the words on the page. This technique also avoids having to couch everything the way a 10 year old would authentically write, a pitfall that even the precocious-child trick doesn’t always achieve--though M would likely be labeled precocious anyways--while still being able to dip into child-like charm, innocence and diction for effect. If this is autofiction or not is unclear but the hinted possibility gives it a weightier sense that works well and the lack of names (M, D, the mysterious E or the other salesman S) only builds the impression that this is a true story and names are redacted for what becomes obvious political necessity. ‘While D was nothing special as a father, he made an excellent employer.’ The first half of the novel is so sweet and idyllic, following M on her trips with her father as she gets an ‘alternative education’ in life. Her father sells tools for a company called Kramp and is quite proud to present the positive of Kramp tools, so much of M’s impressions and abstract understandings on life revolve around hardware store aesthetics. Stars look like tacks in the sky and her idea of god is one that is The Great Carpenter--a working-class image of god in keeping with the humble beginnings of Jesus. Her world revolves around the life of salesmen, spending her lunches in the cafes and bars frequented by salesmen in each town they travel. There is a love between father and daughter that transcends simple family structure, but one of an even partnership in life that gives M a great sense of maturity, self-esteem and self-reliance. She is also aware of the power she can have over a situation, especially learning at a young age that her ‘on-the-brink-of-tears’ gaze can be a secret weapon in winning over potential clients. I spent a chunk of my late 20s as a travelling delivery driver for a coffee company, so idyllic renderings of life on the road has always really worked for me and sifts out the positive memories and impressions from that time away from all the negatives that had sometimes clouded my joy in the moment. Books like this make me proud of my affinity with drivers and delivery workers. Here we get to witness the quirks of travelling salesmen and the way they self-mythologize themselves on their travels, their stories growing into legends as they further market themselves as much as their own products. ‘E was a secondary character in our lives,’ M says, ‘and we were secondary characters in a larger story.’ The story begins to take on the taintings of a struggle going on just beyond M’s frame of reference on life when her father begins to hang out with his friend E--a traveling cinema man who does photography on the side (with a connection to foreign newspapers, M once overhears). Something about E connects to M’s mostly absent mother and her abject sadness, for the mother begins crying the first time E comes to their house. For M, her mother’s lack of presence in her life isn’t foretelling of some great tragedy, but merely a convenience that allows her to live her life on the road with her father. The idyllic nature of the novel comes to an abrupt end and everything is suddenly scattered. M can only half understand it, though the reader will follow a great deal more particularly with any knowledge of the violent Pinochet regime in Chile and the US-backed coups across South America. Her lack of understanding makes everything so much more heart wrenching. M often uses personal terminology for emotions in her life, much like the way children often have made up terms for things. There is the ‘black-hole feeling’ (there is a space theme to much of the metaphors in this book) which is ‘a sadness that, even though you feel it, doesn’t belong to you,’ but even more heartbreaking is when an event occurs that releases ‘lucky beetles’ from a barrage of black-holes being shot into someone in front of her: ‘”lucky beetles” are not a species, but an insect that alights in the exact spot where life took a different course… It’s a fraction of a second so small that only an insect can pass through it. An insect that, when it appears, parts life in two.’ There is something akin to the structure of the film Life is Beautiful going on in this book, where the lighthearted comedy of the first half juxtaposed with the tragedy of the latter half gives each a stronger emotional pull. The narrative quickly speeds up over a few years with the advancement of M’s age coming more quickly to emphasize the way she emotionally ages due to the very adult situations befalling her. M is taken away from her father by her mother for his involvement with what happens to E, she learns the truth of her mother’s sadness, and more. The world has collapsed around M and she must find the strength to push on with the innocence of her childhood dramatically torn from her by events beyond her control. ‘I remember him saying, so many times, that it was improbable that a house constructed from 80 percent Kramp products would collapse in the event of an earthquake or a tornado, and realized that mine was one of the unfortunate cases that fell within the improbability. The novel becomes a tear-jerker with her father pretending to sell tools that no longer exist just to keep the dream alive for M when she visits, salesmen all carrying guns in case they decide they’ve had enough of life...it gets bleak. It becomes the story of Chile and the fallout from the coup, something that still has residue on the nation to the present when massive protests were breaking out in 2019 and eventually the people voted to rewrite their Constitution. This is such a lovely little novella and it destroyed me in the best way. The Tin House publishing edition is really nice, though it only contains a small space of text on each page, making a 170pg book out of what would otherwise have been probably 90. I was also very impressed her next book to be translated into English by Bryer, How to Turn Into a Bird, which I reviewed here. This is heartwarming and heartbreaking, showing both the fun and fragility of life seen through the eyes of a delightful young girl. It can be read in a single sitting, which I did and felt the whole spectrum of emotions pass through me in a really redeeming and refreshing way. Finishing the book feels like the end of a good cry, one you know you really needed. While this is a quick read, it is definitely one that will stick with you. 4.75/5 ...more |
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Mar 20, 2021
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Mar 23, 2021
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Mar 20, 2021
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Hardcover
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1782276726
| 9781782276722
| 1782276726
| 3.77
| 13,512
| Nov 2013
| Aug 06, 2020
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it was amazing
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The cusp of adolescence is a tumultuous time when everything you thought you understood about life, yourself and others is suddenly rent asunder. Ther
The cusp of adolescence is a tumultuous time when everything you thought you understood about life, yourself and others is suddenly rent asunder. There is a paradigm shift in all your relationships and you clamour to hold on and ride the changes into what you hope is a more mature You. Ms Ice Sandwich by Mieko Kawakami (beautifully translated by Louise Heal Kawai) has a remarkable grasp on these volatile moments that is prodigously told through the perspective of a young boy grappling with these changes. This is such a well crafted novella that navigates an emotional awakening in a boy dealing with change, processing information that contrasts with his own feelings as well as a charming accounting of his childhood fascination with a woman who works at the local convenience store. Ms Ice Sandwich is blissfully succinct while managing to be a highly nuanced and textured adolescent narrative that perfectly captures the chaos of growing up and entering a new awareness to the complexity of being human. This little gem of a novella covers a lot of emotional territory and does all of it to near perfection. Like life, it is a cacaphony of events that the narrator is just trying to get through, often unsure what is expected of him. At the heart of the story are the women in his life: his mother, with whom he is ‘getting used to [her] not paying attention’, his dying grandmother, his hot and cold friendship with a girl named Tutti (accidentally nicknamed this amongst their peers when he called her out once for farting in class), and, of course, his fascination with Ms Ice Sandwich. Ms Ice Sandwich (presumably early 20s) works the sandwich counter at the local convenience store and the narrator has such a fixation with her and her eyes that he stops there every day to buy an egg sandwich just to watch how deftly she places it in a sandwich bag. Her eyes are enormous, he says and compares them to illustrations of big-eyed dogs in a faintly remembered adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen story The Tinderbox, and she wears blue eye makeup that reminds him of the ice cream sandwiches sold there. This very quirky and endearing novella follows him trying to negotiate his life around these women and the changes of relationship with them that are inevitably taking place. Something that really struck me about Ms Ice Sandwich was the way it thrust me back into the painfully awkward moments of self-revelation about existing in a larger society. I remember those moments when something such as, say, when I discovered that a band I enjoyed listening to with my Dad was considered very uncool by older classmates I wanted to impress and the discomfort of trying to process contradictory feelings. Or discovering that someone might dislike a friend or that having a crush on a certain person would get you mocked by your peers. This is an age where you suddenly sense the world is not a idyllic utopia but can’t quite put your finger on why not and are left to scramble and make sense of it all as innocence crumbles around you. ‘I don’t know exactly what it is, but I do know that somewhere in this town there is something bad, and that those long shadows creeping up in the dark have come to tell me about it.’ This passage into a new maturity is difficult for most, especially when you are at an age when you don’t quite have the emotional language or experience to productively process it. Kawakami renders these moments perfectly, which is no small achievement. The translation here is certainly deserving of endless praise as well with the voice coming through so clear and fluid. Having the narrative told through the perspective of the young boy opens a lot of possibilities to examine his emotional currents. This is always a risky undertaking as sounding false will spoil the book no matter how good the plot is and trying to capture an adolescent train of thought is as elusive as trying to follow a story a child of that age tries to tell you (I have a ten year old, trust me). Kawakami manages to conduct chaos here, keeping an astonishing control over a narrative composed of a deluge of thoughts. His thoughts ramble and shift, but are always carefully steered towards a forward understanding and never drift into nonsense or waywardness. It’s honestly amazing how well she handles this because it feels so authentic to the way a child will ramble as if they, themselves, are still trying to understand what it is they are getting at without the narrative style feeling like a gimmick all the while remaining cohesive. Another aspect that really works is the way that the narrator feels all these feelings and thoughts but Kawakami details the frustration in attempting to take the helm of your own emotions when you still lack the emotional language and maturity that serves as a compass to express yourself to others. He has the impressions of it all in his head but when pressed to doing so he ‘can’t think of any way to respond,’ and when he tries he tends to ‘get stuck’ and ‘can’t finish the sentence.’ These frustrations amalgamate and create friction in his relationships, especially with Tutti from whom he so desperately wants to be understood. This is particularly because she seems to like him and they both share a common bond of the loss of a parent at a young age. Frustrated by his inability to express himself verbally, the narrator does find solace in art, which is hinted at as being an outlet he may find success within in the future. With Tutti there is also an excellent depiction of an awakening to people with more mature lifestyles than your own. Myself being a fairly timid child that had no inclination to leave behind some of my more childish tastes in games, hobbies and movies around this age, I deeply felt his discomfort when he shows up for a movie night at Tutti’s house and she puts on the Al Pacino film Heat. She is fascinated by the gunfights, which he finds to be overly violent and her glee makes him uncomfortable. There is something brilliant in the way Kawakami subtly juxtaposes sexual awakenings with violence and discomfort, as when he watches Tutti’s perfectly practiced reenactment of the gunfight scene, wanting to cry and demand she stop but also finds himself breathless ‘kneeling on the sofa with both my hands over my chest, my fingers tightly locked together.’ This scene is so rife with sexual tension without ever touching upon sexuality or sexual language and is just a masterpiece of small fiction. Kawakami also has an excellent handle on how change is processed at this period of life. The narrator is watching his old life mold itself into a new life and feels the lack of stability in the metamorphosis. For starters, he lives with his Grandma who was once a large part of his life but now is squeezing out the last ounces of life mostly asleep in her chair. ‘Are these the same Grandma’ he thinks, remembering all his fond memories of a lively Grandmother now close to death. ‘Those Grandmas and this Grandma. The Grandmas I have in my head or the Grandma lying here with her eyes closed, quietly sleeping. Which is the real Grandma?’ The uncertainty of what constitutes the impression on should have on a world in flux makes up much of this little book. Returning to Ms Ice Sandwich, he finds that his amorous feelings for her are not shared by most people around him. There is the angry customer at the store who ‘doesn’t like Ms Ice Sandwich’s attitude’ and screams at her for having ‘a painted monster face’ that ‘shouldn’t be allowed out in public’ or his classmates who mock her for having ‘botched surgery’ and that ‘her life is over. She’s a freak.’ Their impressions of her is incongruous with his own feelings, and the reader gets a sense of the floor giving way as our own mental image of her as simply someone with lovely large eyes is bombarded with new descriptions of her eyes as the ‘freakish’ consequences of a botched plastic surgery treatment. The narrator has a bit of a crisis here, hurt, offended and unsure what to feel when discovering that something and someone he cherished for beauty is seen as so offensive to others all the while lacking the emotional linguistics to make a healthy assessment of it. Ultimately, he must learn that image and looks are not what make a person and this is his first foray into the cruel and unjust standards enforced in a patriarchial society. Luckily, he has his art and a good heart. This is a breathtakingly well-done novella that knows its strengths and limits. This is an excellent depiction of childhood and all its chaotic beauty that has all the heart and quirkyness to really dig into the soul of the reader and make them empathize and reconsider their own experiences. The brilliant work of translator Louise Heal Kawai is on full diplay too, as she so eloquently retains a fluidity to the prose that feels so natural. Furthermore, Kawakami shows the possibilities of crafting a feminist novella told through the perspective of a young boy, which reminds us that feminism is not just something for women but a human goal overall. Fun, funny, and endlessly applaudable, Ms Ice Sandwich is a massive success. 4.75/5 'There's the sound of someone breathing, that's what I'm listening to. Goodbye. The stars are setting, and in their last breath somebody tells me goodbye. Someone is saying goodbye, and now I can't move at all, and all I can do is hold my breath, and silently listen to the final sound, nothing to do but listen silently to the very last echo of that sound' ...more |
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Nov 29, 2020
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1644450070
| 9781644450079
| 1644450070
| 3.96
| 4,873
| Nov 20, 2013
| Nov 05, 2019
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really liked it
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‘In dreams, as in memory, there is no agreement, nor should there be.’ Dreams and childhood memories are not altogether that different. Both are recall ‘In dreams, as in memory, there is no agreement, nor should there be.’ Dreams and childhood memories are not altogether that different. Both are recalled as fractured moments, splinters of memory bound by slippery logic, and both have a hidden, ominous quality. It’s like glimpsing through the windows of an abandoned house and contemplating the complete layout and the history that shaped it. Like an old house, dreams and childhood memories can be haunted, too. Chilean playwright, actress, and author Nona Fernandez delivers a haunting account of a childhood beleaguered by the horrors of the Pinochet regime in her novella Space Invaders. It is told through vignettes of memories and shared, chaotic dreams of a group of friends now “eons older” in adulthood as they collectively piece together the story of their classmate, Estrella. Based on one of the author’s real classmates, and using actual letters, Fernandez paints a true story as a fictional portrait. Drawing on the classic video game Space Invaders as metaphor and structure, Fernandez eloquently captures what childhood is like in violent, turbulent times and the way we bury much of our experiences so that we may dig them up and process them later in life. ‘We don’t know whether this is a dream or memory.’ Like a more intimate younger sibling to Roberto Bolaño’s Distant Star and from a childhood perspective like Alejandro Zambra’s Ways of Going Home, Fernandez uses memory to demonstrate lives masquerading in normalcy while the Pinochet regime commits horrific, violent acts against its citizens. In a November 2019 interview with Electric Literature to promote the release of the English translation of Space Invaders--poetically rendered by Natasha Wimmer--Fernandez explains that Estrella and the collected memories of her were created by contacting her own childhood friends to piece together their recollections of a classmate whose father was part of the Pinochet forces that tortured and murdered political dissidents (including the families of other classmates). ‘Trying to write Estrella meant confronting my childhood,’ she says, ‘ my experience as a student under an authoritarian regime, and my entrance into the world, the street.’ The way collective memory can dissolve and be an arbitrary collage of residue that hasn’t slipped away is the thematic pulse of the novella: the scattered and often surreal nature of memory tinted by emotional resonance. ‘They give up one life to combat, then another, and another, in a cycle of endless slaughter.’ Fernandez utilizes an effective emotional doorway through the classic arcade game Space Invaders. Not only does the game figure both literally and metaphorically into the novel, the novella is structured into short chapters with titles that replicate gameplay: First, Second, and Third Life with the concluding chapter titled Game Over. The game permeates through the novel, coating it in deep childhood nostalgia while also calling attention to the way that a seemingly innocent game is also structured around violence. Memories of sitting around playing the game with Estrella and never being able to defeat her deceased brother’s high score haunt the dreams of the characters, often showing up in surrealist nightmares involving Estrella’s father’s orthopedic hand. [The hands] are glow-in-the-dark green, like the Space Invaders bullets. The boy gives a command and the hands obey him like trained beasts. Riquelme feels them exit the cabinet and come after him. They menace him. They chase him. They advance like an army of earthlings on the hunt for some alien. Even before the boys know the truth about the father and his role in the regime, small signs and symbols send ominous messages to them that creep into their dreams for decades to come. Fernandez expertly captures the way children’s minds latch on to metaphor and symbolism to try and rationalize the world around them. As my own nine-year-old pointed out the other night while we played Space Invaders on my phone (inspired by the novella), ‘Are the aliens the invaders or are we the invaders in the game?’ The confusion of not knowing is what keeps us fighting without stopping to question the morality of it. ‘Everybody in the upper school is a leader or a fighter in the resistance. Get with it, we're not kids anymore.’ Upon dreaming of their rigid school’s structure, the narrator reflects that ‘We are the most important piece in a game, but we still don’t know what game it is.’ The school scenes reveal an atmosphere of spotlessly ironed and buttoned uniforms and marching in perfectly spaced lines. They put on plays celebrating Chilean patriotism and are taught to never question authority. In fact, the schools under Pinochet became a breeding ground for compliance and propaganda. As the characters in the book age and become more politically aware, resistance is met with swift punishment. Their worldview begins to crumble as they begin to witness parents being hauled off by the police or hear stories of torture. Objects of endearment or fascination, such as Estrella’s “uncle’s” red Chevrolet begin to appear in their nightmares as an omen of creeping violence and the symbol of American intervention in Chile that it quite literally is. This all rushes forward through hellish dreamscapes toward a brief yet jaw-dropping peak toward the end of the timeline in the final pages. Like the unforgettable ending to Bolaño’s Amulet where there is a vision of all of Chilean youth marching forward to be swallowed up in a bottomless pit, this is not a novel of innocence lost, but of innocence condemned. ‘If dreams and memories were truly different,’ Fernandez writes, ‘we might be able to identify its source, but on our memoryless mattresses everything is mixed up and the truth is that it doesn’t really matter anymore.’ Very little of the novella is openly reported to be actual memory and much of the book takes place in the dreamscape. Even moments not identified as such have a dreamlike quality--made more so by the succinct, poetic prose--that remind the reader how closely related and abstract both memory and dream are to each other. ‘Time isn’t straightforward,’ Fernandez muses midway through the book, it mixes everything up, shuffles the dead, merges them, separates them out again, advances backward, retreats in reverse, spins like a merry-go-round, like a tiny wheel in a laboratory care, and traps us in funerals and marches and detentions, leaving us with no assurance of continuity or escape. The novella approaches history as a nightmare from which we can’t quite escape. The ‘tiny wheel in a laboratory’ of history lets its citizens run themselves to death for economic experiments such as Pinochet’s sweeping neoliberalism, which still plagues the Chile of today. The timing for the release of the English translation is impeccable as this was released in the middle of mass protests across Chile speaking out against the holdover neoliberal policies from the Pinochet era. The excellent collection of short stories Humiliation by Paulina Flores was released around the same time as Space Invaders and the pair provide an insightful look at the sociopolitical landscapes that shaped modern-day Chile. ‘In my book,’ Fernandez says in an interview, ‘Space Invaders is a metaphor for the children we were, taking to the streets, exposing ourselves to the glow-in-the-dark green bullets of the military. Now that image is incarnated by today’s children.’ She goes on to add that ‘They’re a new generation of Space Invaders. And all I can do is applaud them and do my best to take care of them [and] put an end in Chile to the abusive neoliberal system that got its start here.’ This brief yet haunting novella is a shining gem of prose that captures the spirit of memory with such a delicate yet in-depth touch. Like a dream itself, it shows little but leaves a lot of resonance. A highly recommended nightmare. 4.5 / 5 ‘I wake up again. There is no television. I am alone and I’ve grown old.’ ...more |
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Apr 14, 2020
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0811216314
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| 0811216314
| 3.69
| 3,502
| 1993
| Feb 28, 2007
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really liked it
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I was the sole keeper and mistress of the impossible. Reality is the playground of the writer with memories and the artifacts of their past as the swin I was the sole keeper and mistress of the impossible. Reality is the playground of the writer with memories and the artifacts of their past as the swings and slides for their games. César Aira’s How I Became a Nun is a humorous jaunt through the life of a 6 year old boy—or girl—also named César Aira as s/he learns the magic of blending fact and fantasy to better understand the undercurrent of magic pulsing through plain reality. Through a lonely pilgrimage of childhood, César experiments with fiction in a preparation towards a life of being an author, a sacred undertaking of servitude to Stories much like entering the Sisterhood of Nuns. ‘Fiction and reality were fused at this point; my simulation was becoming real, tinting all my lies with truth.’ As in Elizabeth Hardwick’s exquisite Sleepless Nights, Aira blends biography (though very limited) with fiction to create a lush tale where the lines between reality and fantasy are not only blurred but become irrelevant. The narrator of this story is César Aira, but not necessarily the César Aira writing the story, who is also not necessarily the same César Aira when he is not writing the story. They share the same hometown of Coronel Pringles, Argentina and enough subtle similarities to trick the reader into stepping dangerously toward an Intentional fallacy of assuming the author and narrator are one and the same, but this is all for sport and elevates the playfulness of his often meta-driven novels. César the narrator often identifies as a girl (though once as a boy in the opening chapter), despite all the outsider characters referring to César as a boy. This opens up an intrigue of gender identification, and it could be inferred that César experienced an emasculation of sorts after the tragedy of the opening scene with his father. However, such an interpretation seems too concrete for a book with such playful transparency. It does not matter which gender the narrator is, and the novel works equally well if César is a son or daughter; in the art of fiction an author must be able to identify as many characters, male or female, and must do so convincingly for the story to be accepted into the soul of the reader. César Aira presents both as a reminder that the author’s own gender identification must be pushed aside to fully immerse into the realm of the character. ‘The transformation could go either way, reality becoming delirium or dream, but the real dream turned dreamlike in turn, becoming the angel, or reality.’ César the narrator experiments with blending fact and fiction throughout the novel, preparing for a life as an author. An important lesson is learned early on when sitting on a ledge above a prison in which his father is interned. All the prisoners were my dad, and I loved him...now I knew that love was more, much more than that. I had to become the guardian angel of all the desperate men to discover what love really was.The author must watch their characters from an on-high vantage point, and truly love them all in order to understand them and make them work. Later, César spends hours in the bedroom imagining teaching a lesson to a classroom of student, students based on his/her own classmates. Students are imagined with learning difficulties, such as dyslexia. However, ‘I hadn’t invented disorders so much as systems of difficulty. They weren’t destined to be cured but developed.’ It is an act of creation, developing problems not to solve them but to bring them to fruition as a believable aspect of the fictitious classroom. Like a good author, César learns to create individuals that also must serve as a universal idea: ‘they were nobody and they were everyone.’ And through creating and teaching, César also learns and watches ideas form as if on their own power. Like an author, César guides a story while simultaneously being guided by it. How I Became a Nun is a wonderful little novel in which no Nuns are present. Instead, the nunhood is a vague metaphor for the calling of an author, in which they must devote their lives to the name of art. Like the ‘voice of the radio within the radio’, in which the fictitious voice of God delivers a moral message at the end of a religious radio program, the author must become the radio while also hearing ‘the radio within the radio’ that is the natural growth of the story being transmitted through them. This is a fantastically humorous and brief book that manages to breathlessly juggle a wide-reaching allegory, many aspects of which I have left untouched here. Literature is one of the closest things to magic we have in our world, the sort of magic that dazzles the heart and imagination of a young child, and Aira is a masterful purveyor into this magical world. 3.5/5 My vision couldn’t be satisfied with what was visible, it had to go rushing on, beyond, into the abyss… ...more |
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Apr 13, 2013
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10 of 10 loaded