I enjoyed this funny, sad book about loss and grief. Told in first person by a young mother whose own mother is dying of cancer at the age of 59, the I enjoyed this funny, sad book about loss and grief. Told in first person by a young mother whose own mother is dying of cancer at the age of 59, the narrator remembers life in post-Soviet Poland with her eccentric mother who was strong, independent, proud, and vain in good times and bad. The mother daughter relationship is one of the most raw, intense, and honest of human relationships and that is the case with this mother and daughter who loved each other completely.
I loved the voice of the narrator and look forward to reading Mira Marcinów again. Towards the end of the book I felt it could have been trimmed down a bit, which is why I gave 4 rather than 5 stars, but I still highly recommend this book. I also recommend Heloise Press.
Héloïse Press champions world-wide female talent. Héloïse’s careful selection of books gives voice to emerging and well-established female writers from home and abroad. With a focus on intimate, visceral and powerful narratives, Héloïse Press brings together women’s stories and literary sophistication....more
I would never seek out a book about zombies, fortunately this isn’t really about zombies, it’s one woman’s search for meaning. Where do we find meaninI would never seek out a book about zombies, fortunately this isn’t really about zombies, it’s one woman’s search for meaning. Where do we find meaning, how much of ourselves can we lose and still be ourselves? If we don’t even remember our name are we still the person who was known by that name? In order for her to observe and analyze life, her life, from outside of life she had to survive death and still have a body, or at least most of her body, and so she had to be a zombie. In order for her to contemplate the loss of everything that she loved, everything had to be lost, hence the need for some sort of apocalypse.
The unnamed undead narrator is walking to an undesignated coast where she had her best moments with her now dead lover. As she crosses through a landscape of decaying structures and verdant nature she looks back at her mortal life and life before the apocalypse and contemplates grief, loss, love, of course, hunger, identity, other people, what our body is and isn’t, and our relationship to it.
I enjoy this type of novel, one in which the narrator ruminates on our mortal existence and the universal experiences of all human beings, and that the protagonist was not only undead, but also fed on living humans (only once and it’s not a gory passage) added an interesting layer.
I had mixed feeling about reading this knowing Marquez did not want it released, but how do I resist the last Gabriel Garcia Marquez book to be publisI had mixed feeling about reading this knowing Marquez did not want it released, but how do I resist the last Gabriel Garcia Marquez book to be published? I started with low expectations knowing he was already struggling with dementia while writing it, but it was better than I expected. It is not a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, but I recognized echoes of his style.
Readers unfamiliar with the brilliance of Marquez at his best will not find fault with this novella and readers who already know and love Marquez will read it with affection and appreciation for what he gave us before he was afflicted with what he often wrote about: forgetfulness and solitude.
To anyone reading Marquez for the first time, do not stop with this! Read One Hundred Years of Solitude and any of his other novels to see what a genius he was.
Another excellent book from McNally Editions. I tagged this book lgbtq and race issues, but that’s not what the book is about, in fact the most remarkAnother excellent book from McNally Editions. I tagged this book lgbtq and race issues, but that’s not what the book is about, in fact the most remarkable thing about this unusual story is its unremarkable inclusivity. Written by a Henry Van Dyke, a gay Black man, and published in 1965, the Civil Rights era in the U.S., I expected there to be bridge building or insights into race in America, but there’s really none of that. The fact that Oliver, from whose pov the story is told, is a gay Black teenager and that his Aunt Harriet’s employer, Mrs. Klein, is a wealthy, White Jewish woman, aren’t important to the story of a week in the life of this dysfunctional, functioning family of sorts.
The humor comes from the 30 year, oddly co-dependent relationship of the two old widows, Aunt Harry and Mrs. Klein, Oliver’s de facto mothers, who bicker, banter, battle, support and praise each other, they are each other’s most loyal confident and the bane of the other’s existence all in the same conversation. The other characters, Mrs. Klein’s son Jerome, his wife Patricia Jo, and the sex crazed cook, Della, who cannot understand why she fails in her attempts to seduce the poetry loving Oliver, bring added humor as the supporting cast.
When the two old women invite to the house Maurice le Fleur, a self-styled warlock, to conduct a seance in order to contact Sargent Klein, the beloved elder son who five years earlier committed suicide in NYC, Oliver alone is determined to protect the women, Della included, from this obvious con man, which lands Oliver in some outrageous situations.
I recommend this book, it’s touching, funny, a little heartbreaking, but mostly it is very entertaining....more
I’m officially a Selva Almada fan. This quietly unsettling story of 2 men grieving and feeling guilt at the death of their friend is the 3rd of a loosI’m officially a Selva Almada fan. This quietly unsettling story of 2 men grieving and feeling guilt at the death of their friend is the 3rd of a loose trilogy of explorations of masculinity. The stories are not linked other than the subject, so no need to read them in any order.
The men take their deceased friend’s son fishing on an island in the Paraná Delta in Argentina, at the site where they last saw, after an argument, the young man’s father. The men are supposed to be fishing, but at the end of the day, tired, hot, and drunk, they shoot a 100 pound stingray then hang its body in a tree at their camp. This ugly incident offends and angers the local residents of the island. This episode sets the tone for the book and gives us an initial idea of who these men are.
What follows is the back stories of the friends and some of the local people on the island, giving us a fuller picture of who is behind the masculine posturing and the long-suffering women in their lives, alternating with the present, which is increasingly tense, foreshadowing a violent encounter.
A mark of an excellent author is the ability to tell a long story with fleshed out characters in just a few paragraphs, Almada achieves this with the characters we only briefly meet in this book.
Almada’s style in this novel was at first off putting to me; she uses short declarative sentences to reference a speaker, which felt abrupt and intrusive. After reading the brilliant Annie McDermott’s Translator’s Note I now feel that Almada succeeded in giving the prose a masculine and sometimes poetic feel.
Don’t read this for plot or character study. This is novel is evocative with lots to think about and discuss.
Ignore the Goodreads summary that mentions John twice. Yes, this exquisite book begins with John and his great love Helena, but it is not the story ofIgnore the Goodreads summary that mentions John twice. Yes, this exquisite book begins with John and his great love Helena, but it is not the story of generations of their family, although all those we encounter in the book are loosely related, it is not really a story at all. It is a meditation.
In moving vignettes that flow through time and place, some surreal or dreamlike, we meet a number of people who are experiencing loss or fear of loss under different circumstances-war, post war trauma, oppression, illness, or distance. Michaels shares their private thoughts, fears, and dreams and we witness their intimate moments with family, friends, and lovers.
Through each of the connected stories Michaels explores the ways that art, science, memory, even the supernatural can keep our loved ones present to us, even after their death.
It is apparent here, as it was in Fugitive Pieces, that Anne Michaels is a poet, she uses language to elicit feelings and emotions within the reader that feel like memories, and to pose questions that we begin to feel we too have wondered about all along.
This is not for readers looking for a plot driven narrative. It is an intelligent, sensitive reflection on our shared desire to remain close to loved one who have died.
Margaret Murphy is 4 yrs old when her best friend is killed in a childhood game. Margaret, forbidden by her mother from telling the truth of what happMargaret Murphy is 4 yrs old when her best friend is killed in a childhood game. Margaret, forbidden by her mother from telling the truth of what happened, grows up under a cloud of suspicion and rumors, and even doubts her own memories of that day and the awful game.
Claire Oshetsky shows remarkable insight into the mind of child struggling to sort memory from fantasy and to make sense of mixed messages and pieces of overheard conversations. As they did in Chouette, Claire Oshetsky deftly uses magic realism to explore an innocent child’s journey from blame to understanding and forgiveness and thus is born Poor Deer, the gamey manifestation of Margaret’s guilt and grief, her relentless hoofed and antlered superego who won’t let her off the hook, interrupting Margaret’s imagined versions of events in which Margaret is the hero and all endings are happy, to insist that Margaret face the truth, tell the truth, and atone for her role in the death.
This story is cleverly, artfully told with memorable characters: Florence, Margaret’s mother, who publicly denies her daughter’s guilt while growing more repulsed by her daughter; Florence’s sister, Margaret’s beloved Aunt Dolly who shows Margaret the love she has craved; Ruby, the mother of the dead child; Penny and young Glo, who might or might not be part of one of Margaret’s created tales.
This is a quiet, slim novel that ends with a note of hope and leaves the reader with much to think about and I highly recommend it.
Poor Deer will be published January 2024 by Ecco.
Thank you, Claire, for sending me an early copy. I love it!...more
This is my second Claudia Piñeiro and I look forward to reading more by her. Elena Knows was excellent as well and while it was more cerebral, this boThis is my second Claudia Piñeiro and I look forward to reading more by her. Elena Knows was excellent as well and while it was more cerebral, this book will break your heart.
It begins when Mary Lohan, on a flight from Boston, her home for the last twenty years, to Buenos Aires to access a school’s qualifications, begins her “logbook” or journal in which she records her feelings about returning to the city she fled twenty years earlier numb from shame and guilt; her fear of being recognized, the emotional turmoil of familiar places, and the reopening of a terrible wound. When Mary is recognized the story unfolds of the horrific tragedy and the impossible choices she was faced with afterwards, and the shattering decision she made to leave and never look back.
Claudia Piñeiro and translator France Riddle made me feel the awful weight of Mary’s guilt and grief, her rage and confusion at the injustice of judgement and lies, and her pain and loneliness when she realized that she was utterly alone.
This is a 4 star book, however I gave it 3 stars because it was disorienting and I confess much of it eluded me, but I enjoyed the challenge of tryingThis is a 4 star book, however I gave it 3 stars because it was disorienting and I confess much of it eluded me, but I enjoyed the challenge of trying to make sense of the conflicting stories and memories. Memory is notoriously unreliable and whose version of the truth is the truth and unintended consequences can be devastating is what I took from this.
Edit: this book has me thinking so I changed by rating to 4 stars....more
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