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
What is a pygmy hippopotamus doing in this story other than to raise the quirk factor? The initial poo-spray scene when the protagonist is first introWhat is a pygmy hippopotamus doing in this story other than to raise the quirk factor? The initial poo-spray scene when the protagonist is first introduced to the hippo is so ridiculous that it made me instantly invest less in the novel and its characters. At once I had far less patience with all the many other inexplicably quirky choices in the novel, choices that seemed to be made just to provide extra quirky-ness. It was too much. I liked the writing, I liked the tone, I liked the substance of the story, I liked the idea of two girls having a relationship like the one described in the novel...but all of these good things about the novel were continually undermined by arbitrary choices that made not-much-sense other than to provide a level of cuteness that felt superficial. It didn't work for me, at any rate....more
I picked up Baltasar and Blimunda somewhat randomly a few days ago--thinking, well, I really have meant to read more Saramago at some point--and it caI picked up Baltasar and Blimunda somewhat randomly a few days ago--thinking, well, I really have meant to read more Saramago at some point--and it captivated me from the first sentence, in a way I haven't felt for a few months at least--and now, at this moment that I'm writing this, I'm feeling that the rapt and unwavering and near-total attention I've showered on extremely newly published literary fiction releases, over the last many years of my reading life, is, maybe, misplaced, because let's face it if you're trying to read only new stuff it means that a lot of what you're reading is probably not going to be literature for the ages--
So maybe I'm going to be catching up on some things written not-this-year for a while.
Or maybe it's not going to last very long before I come back to contemporary fiction, like the way I get a hankering for marmite now and then and then I'm done with it....more
Like the author's Long Live the Post Horn!, this novel upended me. Is there something achingly direct about the Norwegian language itself, even when tLike the author's Long Live the Post Horn!, this novel upended me. Is there something achingly direct about the Norwegian language itself, even when translated into English, that makes this author's prose seem simultaneously simple and deeply beautiful? Or is Vigdis Hjorth just incredibly in tune with the music of language, no matter what language her story is presented in? I was gripped by every sentence--even when nothing in particular was happening in any given sentence, it gripped me. Each sentence felt so perfect. Each sentence flowed seamlessly to the next. Even in those passages when the story itself is upended by unruly emotions there is a presence, a mastery, guiding me through. You know that feeling when you read a first sentence and think, WONDERFUL? When you feel so ... taken care of? That's the feeling I'm talking about. What a delight. Here is another book to remind me why I read....more
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
I kept see-sawing between being utterly delighted by its absurdity, and being a little irritated by the same. Either way, it was a wonderful read, oneI kept see-sawing between being utterly delighted by its absurdity, and being a little irritated by the same. Either way, it was a wonderful read, one that opened my mind up to the ridiculous, and that gave me an appreciation for the nonsensical, and above all, that left me with an understanding of just how far a writer can go in the direction of complete nonsense before a given reader, as in 'me,' had the slightest objection to it....more
Pub day for the English translation of this remarkable book. May it find the many readers it deserves.
This novel is amazing. I'm terrified to even tryPub day for the English translation of this remarkable book. May it find the many readers it deserves.
This novel is amazing. I'm terrified to even try to explain why it moved me, because I'll surely fail. So let first share the facts about the story, and see where it leads. This novel descends into the minds of three children, whose sibling, a boy, is so profoundly disabled that he will never grow beyond the capabilities of a newborn infant. Each child resonates in a completely different way to the presence of their brother in their lives. Each find meanings that are unique and mysterious, and often beautiful. The parents and their trials with raising their four children are barely part of the story--this is the story of children grappling with the deepest meanings of our lives. The voice is lyrical and true. Every word matters. Read it....more
I loved Edith Wilson’s translation exactly as much as I expected to, which is a whole lot, but also I feel disappointed on some level, and when I askeI loved Edith Wilson’s translation exactly as much as I expected to, which is a whole lot, but also I feel disappointed on some level, and when I asked myself why I realized I’d set maybe an impossible bar for the translation. For any translation but an even more impossible bar for a poem that’s been translated so many times before. I wanted it to reveal some new truth to me that I hadn’t read before. Or, I wanted to be moved by a scene that hadn’t moved me the last time. It didn’t happen. The same sections moved me in the same way as with Fagles, Lattimore, Mitchell, others.
Above all, as always, I was undone by the meeting of Priam and Achilles, one of the great tragic scenes of all time, full of such grief and futility and common humanity, and quietness, after so much fury. As always I cried at the final words, the final sigh, not even a lament but just a recording of the burial of Hector, breaker of horses.
My feeling as I read to the end of this long poem is very close to the feeling I have when I listen to the final great lament of the aria ‘Mild und Leise’ from Wagner’s Tristan, so gorgeous and heartbreaking on its own but all the more so if you sit and listen to the four hours of music that came before....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
Original, startling, captivating, hypnotic. The closest reading experience I can think of to this book is REMAINDER by Tom McCarthy--the same disorienOriginal, startling, captivating, hypnotic. The closest reading experience I can think of to this book is REMAINDER by Tom McCarthy--the same disorientation, the same need for me as a reader to pay absolute attention and to not allow my focus to waver or I'll drop the thread, the same wild leaps out-of-bounds of what I expected to read next. The same ... the phrase I'm coming up with is "existential dread" but the effect of this novel is both deeper and lighter than this phrase would suggest. I'm very glad to have read it, and I recommend it to everyone whose heart is thrilled when you pick up a book and read its first pages and you think 'oh, my, I've never read anything like this before.'...more
I was energized, and I was loving it, I mean this writing is so amazing, and it's surreal in the best way possible, original, unexpected, wow...
anyoneI was energized, and I was loving it, I mean this writing is so amazing, and it's surreal in the best way possible, original, unexpected, wow...
anyone who has ever lost a limb knows that on occasion, for a few brief titillating seconds, you feel as though it has returned...
and of course because this is a surreal masterpiece, the limb in question is a head. The next page, it gets smushed back on a neck again. And all at once on that page, page 6, is where I'm, like, hey, I'm really tired of "surreal." I've had enough of it. I'm done for now with these dismembered women and their reattach-able heads and so on, in fact, I'm sick of innovation and experiment. I'm done. I'm retrenching. Gimme some realism. Gimme some Hemingway. Gimme some Thornton Wilder. Gimme some Theodore Dreiser! I've spent six years or so in the thrall of experimental fiction and I need a break. It's like realizing you're really tired of curry and you're in desperate need of something with ketchup on it. I have no idea how long it will last. Until tomorrow maybe....more
Of Cattle and Men is a giddy mix of poetry and brute force. Reading it feels like you just jumped off a cliff and you're a skinny second from hitting Of Cattle and Men is a giddy mix of poetry and brute force. Reading it feels like you just jumped off a cliff and you're a skinny second from hitting the water, which is very cold, and maybe there's an alligator waiting underneath. ...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
I’ll begin by commenting on the translation because it’s remarkable. Polly Barton has rendered Mild Vertigo into such beautiful English. I can’t vouchI’ll begin by commenting on the translation because it’s remarkable. Polly Barton has rendered Mild Vertigo into such beautiful English. I can’t vouch for the translation’s devotion to original meanings but I can say the language here soars. It reminds me of the great prose stylist Steven Dixon’s writing—here is the same sweep of sentence, the same disdain for unnecessary paragraphing, the same reluctance to interrupt the exhilarating forward rush of words with any unnecessary punctuation.
My breathless wonder at the language began with the first sentence and the way it gallops and canters on and on until page 4 of the New Directions edition I read. By the end of that first sentence, I felt in complete empathy with the thoughts and feelings of Natsumi, the Tokyo housewife whose story is told here. It was like I was living inside of her. It’s a remarkable alchemy—empathy created through the recreation of thought-rhythms that reproduce themselves in the heads of readers. Author Kate Zambreno also seems to have been affected by the rhythms and meanders of this writing, so much so that she chose to write her afterword for the New Directions edition in the same mildly vertiginous style as the novel itself.
Natsumi is leading a life of mostly-meek social conformity and her life first felt suffocatingly pointless to me and about as fun as drowning must feel—except she is, for the most part, content. She earnestly believes she is where she wants to be in life, or at least where she belongs, and given who she is it’s impossible to imagine any other life being better for her. You could even go so far as to say that, when she is alone and not thinking anything in particular, she experiences something close to joy, no matter how mundane her life seems on its surface.
The most significant of these moments seem to come when Natsumi happens to be looking at old photographs. It’s in these moments, when Natsumi sees and reacts to photographs, that the author makes a subtle metafictional intrusion into Natsumi’s world. Two of Kanai’s own essays on photography, published prior to this novel’s publication, are printed in full within the novel. Natsumi reads them. Kanai’s essays feel like sign posts she leaves behind for her fictional character to find and to learn from. It’s as if the author herself is reaching into the pages of her novel to shake her fictional character awake and to encourage her to see the wonder of the world around her, however noisy and mundane a life it may seem on its surface.
Make no mistake, this is a challenging read. It demands absolute attention. Its syntax and diction keep surprising. You might think you know where the next phrase of any given sentence is going to take you but you’re probably wrong. You need to be vigilant. You may learn more about feral cats and captive birds than you expected. You may decide not to trust what you learn. You may become restless or bored, in the way Natsumi becomes restless and bored. You may discover this novel means something completely different to you than it did to me. Keep going. This novel may surprise you. It may change you.
My alter ego "Claire Oshetsky" also reviewed this book, for the May 28 2023 NY Times Sunday Book Review, available online here, (gift link/no paywall) and more or less agrees with me....more
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