Every time I opened the novel Comemadre and began to read, it felt like some big hulking horrible thing had just grabbed me by the wrist and wouldn't Every time I opened the novel Comemadre and began to read, it felt like some big hulking horrible thing had just grabbed me by the wrist and wouldn't let go. I couldn't get away. Then I remembered. I could close this book. I could let it go. I could pick up Wind in the Willows and never think on this book again. ...more
Maybe after reading this book I might not starve or die of exposure if lost in the woods one day. Grubs. Plants. Fish traps. How to stay warm. How to Maybe after reading this book I might not starve or die of exposure if lost in the woods one day. Grubs. Plants. Fish traps. How to stay warm. How to avoid poisoning yourself. Why it's ok to eat a dead person but maybe not ok to kill them yourself. When it's better to sit tight and wait, and when it's better to walk out (and how to decide which direction to go, if you do decide to rescue yourself). I kept wanting to quote stuff from the book here on goodreads in the off chance I would give you, Gentle Reader, a handy tip that might save your life one day. But I suggest you go ahead and buy yourself a copy. It's not about long-term survival--it doesn't tell me how to make my own soap or sew clothes by hand, or build a permanent shelter, etc., on the off chance that the world's distribution chain collapses one day. I'm still looking for that book. But it does explain how to build temporary shelter and how to keep your feet dry, and that's something....more
I dunno. I feel like saying to the author: "Mr. Kraus, you did not understand the assignment!" If I were his writing teacher I'd send him off to read I dunno. I feel like saying to the author: "Mr. Kraus, you did not understand the assignment!" If I were his writing teacher I'd send him off to read some adventure yarns like
I do not care about your protagonist's father! You wrote a story about a man who gets swallowed by a whale and who has precious little oxygen left to figure or fight his way out of there, and you think I care about back story and melancholy ruminations about past mistakes? I do not!...more
Reading this novel was like I'm sitting in the lobby of the only downtown luxury hotel in a second-tier city, like Cleveland or San Jose, and an interReading this novel was like I'm sitting in the lobby of the only downtown luxury hotel in a second-tier city, like Cleveland or San Jose, and an internationally famous jazz pianist--I'm thinking Herbie Hancock, myself, but you may have another internationally famous jazz pianist in mind, and that's quite ok with me--happens to sit down at the baby grand over there, pushed into a corner, and he begins to riff, casually, magnificently, and seven minutes later he stands up and then walks on....more
This novel took me forever to read even though every time I picked it up it delighted me more. I kept starting over, or sometimes not going all the waThis novel took me forever to read even though every time I picked it up it delighted me more. I kept starting over, or sometimes not going all the way back to the beginning but halfway-back, or three-quarters...I read the first chapter many times and kept coming back to it like a poem, and basically read the thing more like it was a dollhouse filled with tiny perfect facsimiles of a long-ago man and his history, and about pain, too, the idea of it, and the reality of it. There is a buffoon-y exaggeration in the story--the long backstory interlude of the titular character as a boy was one of my favorite tall tales in the novel but there are so many places where the book seems to be skating along on a level of verisimilitude and then skips several levels higher into the surreal. The storytelling is a magnificent braid of metafictional wanders plus historical fact plus actual linear story, of a man of his times, remarkable, long forgotten, now re-remembered. I loved it....more
This is so, so lovely, and it's one of the very few books where I fervently wish I were friends with the author, and that the two of us were together This is so, so lovely, and it's one of the very few books where I fervently wish I were friends with the author, and that the two of us were together on a porch somewhere, with a view of some hills and some valleys, and we're sitting in the dappled shade with no plan except to have one of those conversations, you know the kind, the kind that when you come to the end of it you'll be filled up with so much wonderment, because you finally understand, maybe for the first time in your life and maybe just for a few minutes, that you're not alone--that the person sitting next to you understands you absolutely, and has felt the same lonelinesses, and the same small triumphs, and also, the same absurdities, and if this person sitting next to you understands all these things then maybe more people do, as well, and maybe we're all marching in the same dumb parade together and it's going to be all right....more
Every sentence in this novel was both very small, and very big. The novel is written as a series of small moments, which are also life-and-death momenEvery sentence in this novel was both very small, and very big. The novel is written as a series of small moments, which are also life-and-death moments. This push-and-pull, between the mundane and the terrifying, is at the heart of the novel's harsh beauty. But it also made me struggle to give each sentence the attention it deserved, because so much of what was happening was filled with routine--routines that the characters cling to, in a time of great uncertainty, but still, routine.
The end was bleak in a way that, to me, didn't fit with the relative goodness and optimism of the main character. It made me feel a little snookered. It withheld what I felt was an implicit promise.
So~what a mix of feeling and opinion I've written here. In those parts of the book when I had the stamina to pay it the attention it deserves, the novel soared. But I didn't always have the stamina. The author did me no favors....more
The subtitle of this novel could be Confessions of a Bulimic Intellectual. There are glorious wild descriptions of food on nearly every page. An obsesThe subtitle of this novel could be Confessions of a Bulimic Intellectual. There are glorious wild descriptions of food on nearly every page. An obsession with food's smells and colors and sounds and taste all like fireworks in their vividness and their cadence. Its sentences are a nearly synesthetic paean to food and its preparation. But always along with these vivid food-sense impressions comes a coupling of descriptions of grotesque foul digestion and excrement and decay. There is no nourishment in this book that comes without the cost of corresponding filth. There is no joy without illness. There is no sex without blood. No love without death.
Reading this novel is like being force-fed a feast of words all the while knowing you'll be sick in the end. I can honestly say I fell in love with each exquisite sentence after another of this feast. I could quote whole sentences and paragraphs and chapters that left me weak-kneed with their intensity and beauty. But in the end there was no joy in this read. No sense that the author was sharing something he cared about with me, his reader. Just this, in the end: an emptiness.
Profound and simple, both at once, and what a delight, what a joy to read this strange unpredictable mashup of life-and-death matters (mostly, death mProfound and simple, both at once, and what a delight, what a joy to read this strange unpredictable mashup of life-and-death matters (mostly, death matters). The novel has such a waiting-for-godot-like sanguinity in its pages. Everything and nothing matter equally. An indescribable read. Sorry. I'm trying to describe it, a little, but it's impossible. Daniell is a joyous confident writer. Jennifer Croft is a genius. I say "genius" because of the adverb "Britishly" on p. 37. Honestly doesn't it make you wonder what the word was in the original Spanish if you can't go read the original and find out for yourself? It made me wonder. I thought it wondrous, as words go, and it's just one out of a whole book of words that make up a story that's as gripping and historical as Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World only without the despair; and as riveting as Binet's Civilizations only without the galloping plot. Don't worry. You will never miss the plot. Or maybe you will, I can't say how you read, but for me however plotless the book seemed to be, I leapt forward eagerly and was delighted by every page. This is what literature is all about. Something new. Something true....more
Time Shelter is so remarkably clever that its cleverness became a distraction to me. I never felt there was a human connection to be found in the happTime Shelter is so remarkably clever that its cleverness became a distraction to me. I never felt there was a human connection to be found in the happenings on the pages--it was just a story. However witty the flourishes the effect as a whole was a little airless and self-referential. I wanted it to matter more. Just now my thoughts zinged in the direction of Saramago, an author whose books are also often dependent on incredibly clever intellectual absurdities like 'what if everyone went blind?' or 'what if everyone stopped dying?' or 'what if the Iberian Peninsula broke off the European continent?--and yet somehow these absurdities lead the author to such profound meditations on humanity. This novel amazed me just as much as those. But I wanted also to be moved....more
Aleksandar Hemon gallops right up to the line dividing "perfect" from "overwritten" but he never steps over it. Every sentence is so lush and so rich.Aleksandar Hemon gallops right up to the line dividing "perfect" from "overwritten" but he never steps over it. Every sentence is so lush and so rich. It took some getting used to. It was like falling in love when I didn't want to but in the end I had no choice. It's rococo writing. It's full of filigrees and flourishes. I fell in love with each wavy swirling sentence--the way each sentence always manage to fit in one more perfect clause before the period came along. I read this book in electronic ARC while also listening to the audiobook. I adored the narrator of the audiobook, Aleksandar Mikic--what a talent!--but I also loved reading the words on the page at the same time, so that I had a view of the hills and valleys of the sentences as they came along. I appreciated having both audio and print versions handy, as I read, where they could reflect and refract one another in my brain. This is rich writing. It required a few channels into my thoughts and feelings for me to fully engage with it.
There are so many specific scenes that took my breath away. So many varied moods. One aspect I particularly loved in the novel were the wrenchingly beautiful lovemaking scenes between men--scenes that are full of desire, but also, great gentleness. They were a little gauzy. There was a romantic sheen on the writing that fit the story so well and made me realize how rarely I've read scenes where two men get to be gentle and romantic with one another, vs having a more visceral physical experience on the page...and I thought it was great....more
This book was so far into the territory of 'not for me' that I gave up on attempting a linear read and spent a relaxing and entertaining half-hour opeThis book was so far into the territory of 'not for me' that I gave up on attempting a linear read and spent a relaxing and entertaining half-hour opening pages at random where without exception I would discover yet another sentence that baffled me and made me wonder just what the heck the author meant by it
but then
by continuously following a practice of opening a page and reading one sentence after another, I eventually entered into a Dada-esque semantic dreamscape
(one that reminded me fondly of youthful encounters with magic fungi)
(and to be honest, you should try reading like this, sometime)
and the book in my hands said this to me:
He flinches awake with all his limbs and is struck by a divine astonishment.
He lifted her into the crook of his neck and the viciousness brought on by his fatigue instantly dissolved into something else.
He smiles to himself. The food is warm. He eats.
Shrewd? Stoic? Naive?
Behind her, the car comes spilling over the lip of the flyover and drifts downward with a kind of floating grace....more
This brief fiction was too spare for me. It's not a flaw in the book--it's a deliberate choice the author makes so I can't fault him for it--but persoThis brief fiction was too spare for me. It's not a flaw in the book--it's a deliberate choice the author makes so I can't fault him for it--but personally it left me feeling unprepared and baffled about what I was reading, for longer than I wanted to be. It was like finding myself on a sports team and already out on the field and not knowing the rules. In the beginning, until I came to the phrase "she liked to f* me with a candle", I thought I was reading a novel narrated by a child because the diction was simple enough to lead me in that direction.
It's like a lattice of a story. Other readers will be able to make the correct intuitive leaps across the empty spaces and derive more full meanings and see the patterns, more than I was able to....more
The most remarkable part of this 2013 novel is its first section, "The Great Lindemann," which is without question the progenitor of Kehlmann's extraoThe most remarkable part of this 2013 novel is its first section, "The Great Lindemann," which is without question the progenitor of Kehlmann's extraordinary novel Tyll from 2017. The rest of the novel is pretty good but Kehlmann must have felt the pull of these first pages because Lindemann is Tyll--the same character in different circumstances; the same bullying mocking braggadocio of a confident and misanthropic and wise entertainer onstage, the same helplessness of everyone in the audience. What followed was a pretty-good novel but nothing like the glorious riveting story of these first pages which are almost not a part of the rest of the story at all....more
No one captures the loneliness and terror of everyday life the way Iain Reid does. I loved both of his former novels but I found this one to be uniqueNo one captures the loneliness and terror of everyday life the way Iain Reid does. I loved both of his former novels but I found this one to be uniquely moving, for the way it defines the indignities of old age. It allows me to experience the disorienting terror of everyday life when you are very old, and when you are losing your memories, and when you are completely at the mercy of those caregivers you've been assigned to, after some other person in your life decides you can't take care of yourself any longer--caregivers who may be good at what they do but who have no interest in you or history with you and who don't love you and yet they have complete power over you. They are the ones to decide how they cut your hair--do they listen to your idea, or just start cutting, assuming you're too far gone to really have an opinion? What choice do you have but to eat the food they put in front of you? How do you object to their constant infantilization of you when you are in fact helpless and losing most of your 'self' as the memories fade? There are familiar layers of non-knowingness to this novel that point in the direction of "horror story" and just maybe there is some sort of scary experiment going on and just maybe the protagonist is slowly being absorbed into a giant fungal entity ... but none of that was necessary to believe in, as anything more than a manifestation of one quiet lonely elderly mind ... I chose to read the novel as a profound meditation on what is lost, day by day, when our age catches up with us and when our minds begin to break down in ways nearly as predictable as what is happening to our bodies, as we approach the end.
A gripping story, full of mystery and love....more
A novel full of interesting ideas all of which were explained in far more detail than I required. It didn't wow me. The narrator hovers above the charA novel full of interesting ideas all of which were explained in far more detail than I required. It didn't wow me. The narrator hovers above the characters and sprays witticisms in their direction and it is not my favorite prose style. The amount of back story is weighty, and mostly unnecessary. The story reads like Terry Pratchett without the heart, and without the heart what is the point?...more
I'm left feeling much like I felt at the end of One Hundred Years of Solitude. Gabriel Garcia Márquez cited this novel as the most important influenceI'm left feeling much like I felt at the end of One Hundred Years of Solitude. Gabriel Garcia Márquez cited this novel as the most important influence on his own writing so I guess my reaction is not surprising. As I read along, one breathtakingly imaginative sentence after another, I kept thinking--wow--wow--wow--but then my breath had been taken away so consistently that I discovered I was fatigued and that I had totally lost track of myself because there are so many threads to this story, and they aren't really woven together, so much as they are thrown down along a path into the woods, and the path keeps growing more and more tangled and overgrown, and then it stops, and here you are: in the middle of the woods with no way out....more
I read this novel with such nostalgia-filled pleasure. It was like listening in on another era and being given the opportunity to understand what it wI read this novel with such nostalgia-filled pleasure. It was like listening in on another era and being given the opportunity to understand what it was like to be an intellectual thinking humane adult in the 1930's--to anticipate the rise of fascism, to ponder the relationship between one's morals and one's need to act, and most of all, to take it all so seriously--to truly believe that ideas mattered, that human relationships mattered.
Reading this novel is like falling into a time machine. It's not exactly realistic but it reflects important issues of its time. The characters behave and speak like characters in movies before Method Acting became the norm. It was almost as if there were a patina of filmic pops and cracks over the language as I read some of the dialogue.
Everyone is white. Everyone is extremely gender-pigeonholed. Men are intellectuals and women want to stay home and have babies. The one woman in the novel who has a career and dares to have intellectual ideas is talked about openly by the other characters as being mentally ill and she meets a terrible end. Somehow these things didn't bother me as I read because again there was a sense that I was viewing the past and in a way the flaws in the story were giving me a truer picture of a way of life of people of a certain class and outlook in those times.
The physical descriptions of Montreal and Canada are stunning. Absolutely gorgeous. They made me long for more contemporary fiction that takes the time to set a scene rather than assume that I as a reader won't have patience for it....more
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