Based on the protagonist’s sharing the author’s full name, and the little information about Verhulst available in English, this short, episodic novel Based on the protagonist’s sharing the author’s full name, and the little information about Verhulst available in English, this short, episodic novel appears to be autobiographical. Somewhat more than half of it focuses on Dimitri’s boyhood, surrounded by the raging drunks that are his father and three uncles. In these chapters Dimitri himself almost disappears, but one gets the sense of a narrator struggling with the tension between his affection and nostalgia for these incorrigible relatives, and his ultimate rejection of their lifestyle after they fail him in ways that are largely left to the reader’s imagination. In later chapters Dimitri appears as a not-particularly-endearing adult, and the book becomes even more episodic – it’s almost more of a short story collection than a novel – as major events are referenced only in passing. It makes sense thematically but leaves a great deal untold.
The book is set in Belgium and originally written in Dutch, but the translation is skillful and flows well. Early on some of the descriptions wallow in the muck to a fairly repulsive degree (generally related to bodily fluids), but this is less a feature of the entire book than of the early chapters. And they do speak to an eye for detail. The individual characters are not especially distinguishable, but the culture of Dimitri’s family and his community come to life (the encounters between the men of the family and Dimitri’s refined, well-off aunt and cousin, and later a cultured immigrant family, throw their mostly well-intentioned boorishness into particularly sharp relief). There’s an adept balancing of entertainment value and the narrator’s darker view of the world, sprinkled with brief, pointed references to the meaninglessness of life.
There’s certainly something to this book, and some readers will connect strongly to this ode to a dysfunctional family. But the narrator’s emotional distance combined with his often poor treatment of others once reaching adulthood, the episodic nature of a story without any unifying plot, the gross-out factor, and the rather limited, child’s-eye view of the primary characters made it difficult for me to become engrossed in the story. We’ll call this one a neutral reference....more
This is one of those books that hides lazy writing and cardboard characters behind a topic you can’t criticize: in this case, it’s sex trafficking. NoThis is one of those books that hides lazy writing and cardboard characters behind a topic you can’t criticize: in this case, it’s sex trafficking. Now, if you love every book you read with tragic subject matter you should probably skip my review, but if you are looking for literary merit, then read on.
On Black Sisters Street features four women – three from Nigeria and one from Sudan – working as prostitutes in Belgium. At the beginning of the book we learn that one of them, Sisi, will be murdered; from there the chapters alternate between Sisi and the other three women, tracing their backstories and documenting their lives as immigrant sex workers.
The story moves fairly quickly, and for the first half I had some respect for Unigwe’s avoidance of the expected stories. Most of these characters go into sex work with their eyes wide open, driven by a general lack of economic opportunity rather than grand melodramatic circumstances. And while they are sex workers, they aren’t defined by sex; the depiction of their lives is in no way exploitative. The backstories get more stereotypical as they go, however, until we reach the one full of mass killing and gang rape and with a character tricked into sex work. Unigwe’s writing isn’t up to such intense material, and it reads just like every other overly violent sequence in every other book that tried to force through tragedy an emotional connection that the author was unable to build with real character development.
And the writing style leaves plenty to be desired. Witness:
“The house itself was not much to look at. Truth be told, it was quite a disappointment, really. A ground-floor flat with a grubby front door and, as she would find out later, five bedrooms not much bigger than telephone booths. The sitting room was a cliché. An all-red affair except for the long sofa, which was black and against the wall right beside the door; a single thin mirror ran from the ceiling to the rug. Sisi often thought that had she been asked to draw the room, she would have drawn exactly that, down to the mirror. The only thing she would have left out would have been the incense, which Madam burned nonstop, believing totally in its ability to rid the world of all evil.”
I won’t nitpick the grammar or wordiness (you can judge for yourself), because the larger problem is that I don’t know what this means. If Sisi were to draw the room, she would, um, draw it, but without the smell? Scents tend to get left out of my drawings, too.
Then there are the passages that make clear that not only is the author not a native English speaker, but Random House evidently couldn’t be bothered to have someone copyedit her work:
“She hoped she would never have to cry like that again for as long as she lived. She was wrong.” This was only a hope, so she wasn’t wrong; she was disappointed.
“Sisi was shown into a sardonic room with a single bed dressed up in impossibly white sheets.” Try as I might, I cannot imagine how a room might be sardonic.
But okay, most of us can forgive some stylistic infelicities if we come to know and love the characters. Sadly, these portrayals are only skin deep. Ama is the angry one. Efe is the one who speaks in heavy dialect. That’s about all there is to differentiate these women from one another. And so, for me, the worst passage is found on the last page:
“Anyone who knew Sisi well might say that she [spoiler removed]. . . . For Sisi was not the sort to forgive.”
Clearly, this reader never knew Sisi, because despite having just read a book in which she is the main character, I had no reason to believe she was malicious or prone to grudges, nor would I have predicted the action she takes. And when a book’s characters don’t come alive, all I can recommend is that you look elsewhere....more
It’s hard to review a classic, so I’ll keep it brief. As others have related, this book is about a young Englishwoman who, following an undisclosed faIt’s hard to review a classic, so I’ll keep it brief. As others have related, this book is about a young Englishwoman who, following an undisclosed family tragedy, picks up and crosses the Channel to make her living as a teacher in the fictional city of Villette. As one would expect from a classic, it’s very well-written, and I’m sure there’s plenty to analyze that I didn’t even catch. So I’ll move on to what I liked best about it.
Above all, Villette is a brilliant character study. Lucy Snowe and the people around her (and their relationships with each other) seem real in a way that’s rarely seen in fiction. There’s a lot of variation in how readers react to these characters, but to me Lucy made a lot of sense, and was in many ways very relatable even though the book was written over 150 years ago. It’s very much a character-driven book; there’s not a lot of plot, but the book kept my attention regardless (in fact, monopolized my attention over several modern books in my to-read stack). It’s also a very melancholy book. Lucy isn’t happy, she’s disappointed by the people around her, and she definitely doesn’t get a fairytale ending. (view spoiler)[Now that I've read it I can't figure out how people think it's "open-ended" with regards to M. Paul's survival. It's not open-ended. Lucy doesn't choose to spell it out, but from context and the way she narrates the rest of the book it was very clear to me. (hide spoiler)] This aspect of the book is probably what impressed me the most: most authors with lonely protagonists give them wonderful, caring, supportive, long-suffering best friends by the end of the book, but life isn’t always like that. And Lucy’s love interest is a very flawed person as well--as is everyone in this book, really, which is what makes it good.
But while I certainly recommend the book, I can’t say I recommend the Signet Classics edition. First, there are an awful lot of typos. Second, the French dialogue is translated only in endnotes in the back of the book. I can only assume that the person who made this publishing decision has never enjoyed getting lost in a book in his/her life, or else assumes everyone who reads classics knows French (but don’t think because of that the book has only academic value and can’t be enjoyed!). Third, and I never thought I’d say this, but a few explanatory footnotes other than the translations would have been helpful. For instance, I had to Google “Labassecour” to figure out that it’s the name of Bronte’s fictionalized version of Belgium (and enough readers mistakenly think the book takes place in France that I’m clearly not the only one to get confused). So, I definitely recommend the book, but try for an edition that’s actually had some work and thought put into it, if you can....more
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