Recent Reads

[firstroad]

Short thoughts on books read from the start of 2023 to now!

Our Share of Night - Mariana Enriquez
Objectively I suppose it is a beautiful (in a way) and fantasticalfather-son story set during Argentina's military junta years. It packs a solid punch 50% of the time, but the other 50%... It read a bit like a summary of events, rather than a fiction story. I don't want to say much because it's a heavy book and I mostly did not like it (2.5/5) and I don't want to cross the line from 'this was not something I enjoyed and I did not feel like I learned something I didn't already know' to just pure disrespect for history.

Fave part:

[A]nd I ask the Darkness for compassion because now I hear it for the first time ever.

Compassion. And when the Darkness takes another bite and I smell its glee mixed with the scent of my blood, while I watch as it eats my hands, my shoulders, attacks my side, I remember how you told me once that the Darkness doesn’t understand, that it has no language, that it’s a savage or too-distant god. Will I be remembered as the man who found the medium and saved him more than once? Will they write about me, will my name be uttered in admiration? I must not think of my glory. Let it be secret if it must. I will stop pleading for compassion. There are no words from this world for the entrance into the Darkness, no words for the last bite.

Animal - Lisa Taddeo

Copying what I have already said: To start off, I think my issues with this book come down to two things: 1) all pitches about it led me to believe it was something else, 2) it could've been something else. 'This is about female rage', but I felt no rage coming off the page. There's like a summary of the rage. I felt angry at the things that happened to her, yes, the author did a great job with those -- but where's Joan's true rage? I didn't even feel indignation coming from her.

Regarding the second point: it dragged itself down needlessly. So many drawn out conversations about mundane life that led nowhere and served nothing. There were moments of greatness and they passed and moved forward so fast and instead the moments that got dwelled on were making a point about only half of the narrative it was supposed to be.

Basically, my complaint is: too much victim, not enough perpetrator. For all the supposed depravity and unlikeability and awfulness of Joan, I felt like the author was too afraid to truly deeply show it and the overall detached writing style did not help. Were we meant to dislike her moments of semi-narcissim, the way she talked about her female friendships, the way she sought men? Of course those aren't points to like, but they're things that just come with the package of being raised a woman, it is what's expected behaviour out of every woman and shoved onto every woman. How am I meant to truly hate her for it? It feels cheap.

The Pachinko Parlour - Elisa Shua Dusapin, translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins

First read I actually enjoyed! I love Elisa Shua Dusapin's sparse prose soooo much, I need to learn French immediately so I can read her 3rd book... Why is it not translated yet! Short 180 page book following Swiss-Korean Claire visiting her grandparents in Japan and teaching French to a little girl called Mieko and that's basically it - but through that we see so much about shame, displacement, obviously the history between Japan and Korea hanging over them through her grandparents' profession, Claire's own deliberate estrangement from loved ones and (on some level) society yet desire to be seen and the estrangement that comes from being, well, Swiss-Korean in Japan as well as no longer speaking Korean much and having to communicate with her grandparents in English, Mathieu learning about her family history before her... I thought it packed quite a lot!

Stargazer - Laurie Petrou

I am so basic, I see a book about toxic female friendship and I floor it. I guess it doesn't do much that's unexpected on that front, and it is quite slow to go to the full-on toxic part (as opposed to the quietly codependent part), but IMO it does raise some interesting if I suppose unoriginal questions! Where is the line for an artist? Where is the line for a friend who is one's sole friend? How do the wealthy use the wealthy, how is 'talent' pushed forward, how much do you allow the only person seeing you and not your legacy do? Nature vs. nurture, how do you end up one way when everything in your environment tells you to be another? I adored the writing in this.

The White Book - Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith

Beautiful and short and heartwrenching. Grief for what never happened. Does your life have more value than the life of someone who never got to live theirs? Would you have existed as you if they had kept existing?

In this City there is nothing that has existed for more than severnty years. The fortresses of the old quarter, the splending palace, the lakeside villa on the outskirts where royalty once summered - all are fakes.

Walking on the bones of her sister's life the same way Warsaw is built on its ruins. Can't think too hard about this or I go crazy - loved loved loved this 160 page book, full of white pages. First 5 star of the year!

When that pure cotton fabric grazes her bare flesh, just there, it seems to tell her something. You are a noble person. Your sleep is clean, and the fact of your living is nothing to be ashamed of.

Comments

[meikuree]

hello, it's late and my brain is running on low battery but thank you for sharing your reviews! you have great taste as always and it's so interesting to observe the trend of these books not living up to their promises because of fear or refrain over their premise -- to me, someone who hasn't read these books, it sounds like there's a problem of embodiment, the unwillingness to delve into the nitty gritty of fringe behaviours these books claim to depict. you're informed about the themes but never actually /shown/ them playing out. some books are agnostic about their message and it works, but Animal seems like it's agnostic because it doesn't have a clear idea of what female ugliness/rage looks like, and ... so many missed opportunities there, in sum.

also, not to fangirl on your post but I LOVE THE WHITE BOOK SO MUCH. OMG. Han Kang is one of my favourite writers. taste!! it's just such a great meditation on grief, and I love what you said here:

Walking on the bones of her sister's life the same way Warsaw is built on its ruins.

HAVING SO MANY EMOTIONS ABOUT THIS BOOK. AGAIN.

have you read The Vegetarian, also by Han Kang? it's the sort of book that needs to come with several content warnings, and it's also full of beautifully done psychological horror. as expected, because of all that, it's one of my favourite books. :p

[firstroad]

Wheeee, trying to use this DW journal as more of... well... a journal :p Want to log things!

it sounds like there's a problem of embodiment, the unwillingness to delve into the nitty gritty of fringe behaviours these books claim to depict. you're informed about the themes but never actually /shown/ them playing out.

EXACTLY. I keep seeing reviews calling the protagonist in Animal unlikeable and how the book portrays rage and I'm just...???? Was I that spaced out while reading? Where was all this rage you speak of? The character calls herself depraved but, like, when I hear that I expect more than a little murder. Gone Girl was more depraved than this!

Def planning on getting to the Vegetarian \o/ !