When I get older and my monthly cycles started, my mother decided I should stay at home to protect my honor,. I put a covering on my head, a colorful When I get older and my monthly cycles started, my mother decided I should stay at home to protect my honor,. I put a covering on my head, a colorful hijab. I would fix it in the shape of a rose, which made me laugh and feel happy. My mother began to tie me to the bed in our room with a long rope when she was at work. The summer months we spent together.
Extraordinary, terrifying, glorious, literary, upsetting. Read it. Yazbek (whose words reach me through the magic help of her translator, Leri Price) creates such a captivating voice to tell this story--the voice of a naive innocent--and through that voice somehow captures the terror and disorder of life in contemporary Syria in time of war.
I'm extremely moved by what I read and I'm in awe of both Yazbek and Price, for allowing me as a reader of English to enter this beautiful/horrifying world. This novel is easily a candidate for my "best book of 2021" ... a short list for me, but one that also includes two other books from the NBA finalists for best translated book of 2021. This novel reminds me again of how grateful I am to the publishers who are bringing these great works of contemporary world literature to the English-speaking world.
If I search my reading past for a book that this novel reminds me of I would say A GENERAL THEORY OF OBLIVION by Angolan author José Eduardo Agualusa, which is told from the point of view of an agoraphobic woman who walls herself in her apartment even as Angola erupts in civil violence outside her doors. There is something about using the perspective of an innocent that allows both authors to explore terrible truths.
Merged review:
When I get older and my monthly cycles started, my mother decided I should stay at home to protect my honor,. I put a covering on my head, a colorful hijab. I would fix it in the shape of a rose, which made me laugh and feel happy. My mother began to tie me to the bed in our room with a long rope when she was at work. The summer months we spent together.
Extraordinary, terrifying, glorious, literary, upsetting. Read it. Yazbek (whose words reach me through the magic help of her translator, Leri Price) creates such a captivating voice to tell this story--the voice of a naive innocent--and through that voice somehow captures the terror and disorder of life in contemporary Syria in time of war.
I'm extremely moved by what I read and I'm in awe of both Yazbek and Price, for allowing me as a reader of English to enter this beautiful/horrifying world. This novel is easily a candidate for my "best book of 2021" ... a short list for me, but one that also includes two other books from the NBA finalists for best translated book of 2021. This novel reminds me again of how grateful I am to the publishers who are bringing these great works of contemporary world literature to the English-speaking world.
If I search my reading past for a book that this novel reminds me of I would say A GENERAL THEORY OF OBLIVION by Angolan author José Eduardo Agualusa, which is told from the point of view of an agoraphobic woman who walls herself in her apartment even as Angola erupts in civil violence outside her doors. There is something about using the perspective of an innocent that allows both authors to explore terrible truths....more
Top-heavy and overlong, and with too many reveals in the last flurry of pages, and not at all convincing as fiction, but you know, I still thought it Top-heavy and overlong, and with too many reveals in the last flurry of pages, and not at all convincing as fiction, but you know, I still thought it was marvelous, in the way the stage play/movie Twelve Angry Men is marvelous. The novel reminded me very much of that play where the people are archetypes and what I came away with was a message full of moral clarity....more
Petra Hůlová's Three Plastic Rooms was startling, grotesque, and revelatory--and it made me eager to read THE MOVEMENT. I didn't have the same visceraPetra Hůlová's Three Plastic Rooms was startling, grotesque, and revelatory--and it made me eager to read THE MOVEMENT. I didn't have the same visceral reaction to this novel. It didn't hit me in the gut the way Three Plastic Rooms did. It felt far more intellectual and I could hold it at arm's length and not be moved by it as I read. I think Three Plastic Rooms is one of the bravest books I've ever read, and however extreme the images and events were I never stopped feeling the protagonist's humanity. I just didn't connect the same way here. Three stars though for the absolute smartness of the author's vision.
Merged review:
Petra Hůlová's Three Plastic Rooms was startling, grotesque, and revelatory--and it made me eager to read THE MOVEMENT. I didn't have the same visceral reaction to this novel. It didn't hit me in the gut the way Three Plastic Rooms did. It felt far more intellectual and I could hold it at arm's length and not be moved by it as I read. I think Three Plastic Rooms is one of the bravest books I've ever read, and however extreme the images and events were I never stopped feeling the protagonist's humanity. I just didn't connect the same way here. Three stars though for the absolute smartness of the author's vision....more
I love the starkness of Carver's stories. They're like a half-finished house where the frame is there but the rest is open air and you can see straighI love the starkness of Carver's stories. They're like a half-finished house where the frame is there but the rest is open air and you can see straight through to the other side. "The Train" is a fascinating sequel to John Cheever's story "The 5:48" where one of the characters, Miss Dent, is introduced as a young woman who happens to have a gun in her purse, and that's about it...and one thing I loved about it was how differently the story plays in your head, whether you've read the Cheever story or not. It's hard for me to imagine anyone in this world not being familiar with the Cheever story, since it is one of his many perfect stories, but the reviews I've read of the collection seem to take Carver's story at face value, and it's possible Carver wanted it to be read cold, without readers taking information from Cheever's story to fill in the blanks in Carver's story. For me, though, it's fascinating to compare the two writers, the two stories. It was wonderful to come back to this collection after many years and still finding it so chillingly good....more
Witty, sparkly, inventive, yes all those things, at a sentence level, and at a paragraph level..but man, as the story progressed the characters began Witty, sparkly, inventive, yes all those things, at a sentence level, and at a paragraph level..but man, as the story progressed the characters began to feel like tedious blowhards, self-absorbed and self-important, and their preoccupations were not all that intellectually interesting. The conceit of the novel never felt like more than a not-too-interesting framework for Despentes to explore some ideas that interested her personally. The novel read like mini-essays written by the same person donning different personas. This novel is of the very few misses for me personally from FSG, a publisher whose books I almost always end up raving about....more
Small Rain is the best book I've read this year. The prose is gorgeous. It's a book full of love. I'm so happy to have read it. It's as if this book gSmall Rain is the best book I've read this year. The prose is gorgeous. It's a book full of love. I'm so happy to have read it. It's as if this book gave me back a part of myself I'd forgotten to remember....more
it affected me the way 'open mic night' affects me, on those nights when everyone who gets the urge to perform is in the throes of a marijuana giggle-it affected me the way 'open mic night' affects me, on those nights when everyone who gets the urge to perform is in the throes of a marijuana giggle-fit, and has never read (or written) a poem before, and there are always, always ever-so-many people in the audience who give standing ovations at those sorts of open mic nights, and so this is not necessarily a bad review, in the strictest sense of the term....more
okay this is not a perfect book, in that there is a lot of exposition, and eventually I craved less of that, and more scenes of subject-verb-object...okay this is not a perfect book, in that there is a lot of exposition, and eventually I craved less of that, and more scenes of subject-verb-object...but on the other hand the exposition was raucously joyous and forever-unexpected, and this book is so full of life and wonder that I enjoyed every page and it easily vaulted over my personal 5-star bar. It's one of those books that you get to the end and say, "wow, I have never read anything like this book before," and books like that are to be cherished and championed every chance we get....more
(Review of the audiobook, Spiegel & Grau, Sept 2024)
Juliet Stevenson's narration of this gorgeous rich novel is fantastic. It's hard for me as a reade(Review of the audiobook, Spiegel & Grau, Sept 2024)
Juliet Stevenson's narration of this gorgeous rich novel is fantastic. It's hard for me as a reader to enter this story fully, though, because Shirley Hazzard's novels feel so anachronistic for their time, and that's the way they resonate in my head--as anachronistic. I keep hearing myself thinking "why is Shirley Hazzard trying to write like Thomas Hardy, in a book she first published in 1980?--and I will continue to struggle with this question, when it comes to Hazzard's prose--her deliberate, paradoxical turning-away of any phrasing choice contemporary to her time. Her novel The Great Fire feels exactly the same to me.
Reading The Transit of Venus is, for me, like coming across a great, great practitioner of scrimshaw or tatting or caber tossing. Hazzard is a genius of her strange anachronistic craft. Stevenson's narration is appropriately lush. Despite these true statements, I can't love this audiobook....more
The NYTimes asked a bunch of people to name the top 10 books of the 21st century and I thought hmm what are my top 10 and there it was in my head. FroThe NYTimes asked a bunch of people to name the top 10 books of the 21st century and I thought hmm what are my top 10 and there it was in my head. Frontier. One of the most glorious confusing joyful reads of my entire life. Thank you Karen Gernant for translating these amazing words and making this novel available to me in my native language.
The individual sentences crackled and sang but the story never came alive for me. I’m sorry to say so. I alternated between feeling lost and feeling bThe individual sentences crackled and sang but the story never came alive for me. I’m sorry to say so. I alternated between feeling lost and feeling bored....more
Sometimes the book made me feel like it was trying to slowly suffocate me. At other times it felt like it was coming for my throat with a knife. In itSometimes the book made me feel like it was trying to slowly suffocate me. At other times it felt like it was coming for my throat with a knife. In its less confrontational spaces, it just made me hyperventilate but in a dispirited way. Its characters are sadly stuck in a fictional nightmare where love is impossible and redemption unheard of. Maybe it's a mark of this novel's goodness that I wanted better things to happen to its characters....more
I'm so grateful to Edwin Frank for writing this book. And I'm grateful to Alex Ross, in a way, too, for writing his book about 20th century music--a bI'm so grateful to Edwin Frank for writing this book. And I'm grateful to Alex Ross, in a way, too, for writing his book about 20th century music--a book I also loved--and that Frank cites in the opening pages of Stranger than Fiction as giving him the template he needed to write his book about 20th century fiction. This book isn't a stab at creating a canon; it isn't prescriptive; it isn't trying to build a theory of literature. It isn't even a history, per se, although it covers a certain time period in a sometime-chronological manner. What it is: Amazing. Never condescending, never pandering. It's like a conversation with the friend I always wanted to know, the one who loves language as much as I do and who has thought a great deal more than I have, though, about how literary language works. I've only read about 1/3 of the books discussed here by Frank (maybe another 1/3 are in my bookshelves, aspirationally acquired, and waiting for me to pick them up one day), but it didn't matter that I hadn't read every book Frank wants to tell me more about, because everything he wrote about every book made me understand better why literature is meaningful, and how writers learn from one another, and how their works relate to and enrich one another. I loved the erudition. This book exhilarated me. ...more
As a worshipper of Joy Williams’s novels and her more traditional short stories I was expecting to love it, but no. Need I go on? Probably not but herAs a worshipper of Joy Williams’s novels and her more traditional short stories I was expecting to love it, but no. Need I go on? Probably not but here I go. This book made me feel stupid. Which is a very difficult thing to do because I hold my intellect in high regard, I mean, stupidly high regard, like if some asked me to describe myself in 5 words or less I’d probably start with ‘smart.’ Or maybe I’d be feeling a little humble at the moment and I’d say it as the 4th word but in my soul it’s fundamental. Ok once I re-established my high regard for my brain and read on then the book just felt like sloppy seconds, bits of thought and leftover trash that Joy Williams found on her hard drive. I worshipped you! How can this book be? Ok I will probably erase this in a few minutes I am so ashamed by both my lack of humility before my literary god as well as my inability to see the greatness in this book....more
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