A reader has no favourite book

Ruth Ozeki – “The Book of Form & Emptiness”

Posted on 28 Jan 20243 Feb 2024 by Gabriela

The Book of Form and Emptiness: Ausgezeichnet: Women's Prize for Fiction, 2022 : Ozeki, Ruth: Amazon.de: Bücher

I haven’t written here in so long that you must believe the book that made me come back here and share my thoughts about it is indeed a great one.

The Book of Form & Emptiness starts with Benny Oh, a 14-year old teenager, the son of Kenji, a Korean-Japanese jazz musician, and Annabelle, whose job is to clip articles from newspapers for archival reasons (a job obviously endangered by the digital media, which is emerging as the book unfolds). After Kenji dies in a terrible accident, Benny starts hearing the voices of objects, hearing their worries and frustrations, and the whole book is written as a sort of dialogue between Benny and a book, a book about Benny’s life.

While the premise could make for a jovial and fun fantasy book, I did not think this is Ozeki’s style. She likes to poke at the edges of the status quo and make her readers question and rethink their daily reality. And I was not mistaken.

As Benny continues to hear the voices of things more and more intense, and he struggles to tell them apart from reality, he is first diagnosed with ADHD due to its inability to pay attention to classes, and later on, after he stabs himself with a set of scissors due to what they’re saying (in Chinese), he is diagnosed with schizofrenia. At the same time, Annabelle’s life feels to be falling apart – she cannot get along with Benny, she is in danger of losing her job, and her house is almost impossible to live in, as she finds it really hard to give up any of the objects she’s gathered over the years, from broken teapots to bags of newspapers no one needs any longer.

In the pediatric psychiatry hospital (Pedipsy) he spends some time in, he meets a girl whose artist name is the Aleph, and who introduces Benny to Slavoj, also known as the Bottleman, an old man in a wheelchair, almost always drunk, always talking about his life as a Slovenian poet, and to TAZ, a non-binary ferret that I wish received more space in the story. These characters, homeless residents of the neighbourhood, both struggling with addiction issues, are incredibly written. Not without humour, Ozeki portrays their desire for community, their work full of love to create spaces for this community, their anti-capitalist and revolutionary features. These characters’ dialogues are the ones stating clearly the messages this book is trying to send. As revealed in the acknowledgements, the author worked with mad activists to write this book and this is clearly seen in the Aleph, who knows without words about the bullying Benny is going though at school so she tries her best to protect him, and who is also trying to create a mental health community center for children and teenagers as a community-based alternative to psychiatric hospitals.

(As for Benny, I do not have schizophrenia and have not experienced any psychotic episode so it is hard for me to assess whether the portrayal of the mental health disorders described is accurate, but I would love to hear from anyone that has a more situated opinion and wants to chat about this book.)

Last, but definitely not least, this story is not only a beautiful tale of mental health, community, and loss, but is also a love letter to books, to stories, to language. Here, books are agents, they have will, desires, likes and dislikes, and – unsurprisingly – eloquently speak about the importance of language and perspective in telling a story.

I’ll leave you with this quote, which made me think how sad it can be to be a book:

But here’s another question: Has it ever occurred to you that books have feelings too? As you listen to this romantic tale of two ill-fated lovers, do you ever stop to wonder about what it feels like for us? Because, in truth, if skin marks the border where an I ends and an you begins, then in these moments of impassioned boundary crossing called love, we envy you. It’s that simple. We envy you your bodies. How can we not? Books have bodies, too, but ours lack the organs needed to experience the world. The skin that covers our boards and encloses our words is different from yours. Our skin, whether made from paper or parchment or cloth (or, these days, some combination of plastic, glass, and metal), fulfills a similar function of marking our perimeters, but even the most haptic and capacitive of our skins cannot experience pleasure the way yours can. We cannot feel the ecstasy, the merging of self and other.
page 36

Veronica D. Niculescu – “Pescărușul de la geam. Jurnalul unui cuib”

Posted on 5 Aug 2023 by Gabriela

Nu am citit până acum nimic de Veronica D. Niculescu. Dar la una din ultimele vizite în librărie, cărțile ei au devenit dintr-o dată foarte tentante. Am stat în cumpănă alegând între Simfonia animalieră, Quilt și Pescărușul de la geam. Acum îmi doresc să le fi luat pe toate.

Am ales Pescărușul de la geam pentru că, fiind scris sub forma unui jurnal de observație, părea că îmi va oferi o perspectivă cât mai puțin stilizată asupra acestei observații și asupra relației dintre om și pescăruș care se construiește încet, neinvaziv și cu blândețe. În paginile acestei cărți avem jurnalul aproape zilnic din anul 2021 pe care autoarea îl ține despre pescărușul Grégoire, pe care îl observă de aproape 6 ani în București. Din 2016 și-a notat datele în care Grégoire a început să își facă cuib împreună cu partenera sa, numărul de ouă depuse și al puilor care supraviețuiesc, data la care aceștia își iau zborul pentru prima dată, dar observă și rutina lor zilnică, personalitatea lor, felul în care comunică în diverse situații. Deși putem să credem că doar femeia îl observă pe pescăruș, aflăm destul de repede că este și ea la rândul ei observată – pescărușul o vede prin fereastra ei, se așază pe pervaz uneori în timp ce aceasta lucrează sau doar se privesc, își recunosc existența unul alteia.

Printr-un ochi de geam cât palma, între ghiveciul de lut al copăcelului de jad, rama ferestrei și pervaz – chiar pe deasupra binoclului așezat acolo -, pe acolo îi văd ochiul fantastic și pe acolo se uită Grégoire la mine și-n casa mea, la fel cum și eu mă tot uit la el și în casa lui. Ochi în ochi.
pagina 220

Ceea ce începe ca observație amatoare, așa cum autoarea o numește de câteva ori în carte, este clar mult mai mult de atât după 6 ani, iar dorința de neintervenție pe care autoarea o exprimă este încălcată de mai multe ori, atunci când, de exemplu, Ariadna, partenera lui Grégoire, este rănită iar Grégoire trebuie să crească singur puii și nu poate să caute hrană la fel de mult, așa că femeia cumpără hrană pe care le-o lasă pe pervaz; sau când unul din pui cade din cuib înainte să poată zbura, iar autoarea îi contactează pe cei în curtea cărora a căzut pentru a îl returna cuibului.

În ambele din aceste cazuri, intervenția vine ca urmare a unei înțelegeri pe care omul a dobândit-o cu privire la limbajul pescărușilor. Nu își dă seama de căderea puiului decât pentru că strigătele părinților erau aceleași pe care le foloseau când își încurajau puii să zboare, doar că mai intense. Câți dintre noi am avut răbdarea să ascultăm strigătele pescărușilor destul cât să le descifrăm înțelesul? Nu foarte mulți. Mult mai mulți dintre noi am interacționat cu alte animale non-umane, câini, pisici și alte specii, și știm că asta e adevărat, că sunetele pe care le scot, chiar dacă sunt în limbaj non-uman, nu sunt fără înțeles. Cu toate astea, animalele non-umane sunt numite fără voce, chiar și de către persoanele care fac activism pentru animale și care consideră că sunt o voce pentru cex fără voce. Dar animalele non-umane au voce, o voce pe care noi nu învățăm să o ascultăm, au capacitatea de a construi relații pe care noi nu învățăm să le construim decât dacă relația ne este benefică nouă, au personalitate, agentivitate, vieți complexe și făcute și mai complexe și dificile de către oameni și dorința lor de a crea spații atât de igienizate încât nu permit existența altor specii.

Cred că există mereu o linie foarte fină și deloc bine definită între un antropomorfism injust al animalelor non-umane și o relaționare autentică între un om și un animal non-uman. În relațiile pe care le avem cu animalele non-umane firește că proiectăm foarte multe din sentimentele și interpretările pe care le-am dezvoltat ca ființe sociale într-o societate umană, iar asta poate să fie în detrimentul relației cu un animal non-uman și să ducă la o barieră de înțelegere care nu ne dă voie să cunoaștem cu adevărat animalul. Totuși eu sunt de părere că a interzice să asociem relațiilor noastre multispecii oricare dintre interpretările pe care le cunoaștem din cele din interiorul speciei noastre poate fi la fel de injust, pentru că le pozitează pe animalele non-umane ca pe niște ființe veșnic străine și imposibil de accesat. Relaționarea multispecii înseamnă explorarea și îmbrățișarea diferențelor, inclusiv și mai ales ale celor care sunt și care poate vor rămâne mereu incomprehensibile nouă, dar și cultivarea lucrurilor pe care le avem în comun, ca indivizi și persoane umane sau non-umane.

În acest roman, bariera dintre uman și non-uman rămâne fereastra camerei autoarei, ca un portal multispecii. Ce cred că e important este că această barieră nu e un zid de netrecut, ci o barieră transparentă care se poate ridica atunci când fereastra e deschisă, parcă ilustrănd perfect dualitatea pe care o exprimam mai sus care e mereu inclusă în relațiile multispecii. Firește, această barieră fizică rămâne problematică, pentru că încă împarte în mod nedrept lumea în interior și exterior, spațiu alocat omului și spațiu liber sau mai liber, pentru că omul (ca specie, nu ca individ, deși uneori și ca individ) poate oricând să îl facă inaccesibil și nelocuibil pentru persoanele non-umane. Până la îndepărtarea barierelor, însă, fereastra mediază interacțiunea dintre cele două persoane:

Am mai făcut un pas înainte și-am revenit la fereastră, cu aparatul încă în mână, în vreme ce el stătea în colțul lui de pervaz. Și acolo, atunci, înalt, impunător – și curajos, și prietenos, și dulce, și precaut totodată -, s-a lăsat fotografiat pe îndelete.

L-am fotografiat întreg și i-am făcut portrete, din față și din profil, i-am surprins detalii, ochii, mai ales ochii. El s-a întors așa și așa, cum îmi stă așa?, dar așa?, și uite-mă și așa. Sigur, nu mi-am pierdut mințile, pescărușul nu are cum să știe că îl fotografiez, nu are cum să știe nici ce înseamnă o imagine falsă, o copie din pixeli sau din hârtie, însă, în felul lui, ceva știa, ceva simțea – că îl privesc intens, cu admirație și fără să îl pun în pericol, da, sunt sigură că privirea mi-o înțelege (sau respirația?) și simte că nu i se întâmplă nimic, că aparatul ăsta din care iese un tub negru nu trage, nu e o armă (porți tu cumva în gene, moștenită, spaima de arme de foc, pescărușule?). Nu știu să explic, nici nu trebuie explicat. Dar știu că Grégoire mi-a pozat.
pagina 110

Multe persoane care au făcut recenzii acestui roman și chiar autoarea au explicat sau argumentat că această carte este rezultatul unui an pandemic, plin de izolare și carantină, când lipsa interacțiunii umane a putut lăsa loc celei interspecii. Și deși scrierea atentă a datelor din fiecare zi și publicarea acestui jurnal poate fi explicată astfel, anii care au precedat pandemiei au creat și hrănit această relație la rândul lor. Relațiile multispecii nu sunt doar o alternativă atunci când cele din cadrul speciei noastre întâmpină dificultăți, sunt greu de susținut, ci sunt și trebuie să fie parte a rețelei noastre de relații.

Pescărușul de la geam. Jurnalul unui cuib a fost o bucurie neașteptată pentru mine, prezentând o întâlnire cu non-umanul care nu încearcă să îl transforme pe acesta din urmă într-o lecție despre uman, într-un simbol pe care oamenii să îl poată însuși într-un mod care să îl înstrăineze complet de referentul non-uman. Este un roman despre un pescăruș, Grégoire, despre partenera sa, Fiona, despre puii lor, Jack, Victor și Isa, și despre femeia care îi vede, în cel mai activ și profund al acțiunii de a vedea. Nu ar trebui ca asta să mă emoționeze atât de tare, dar o face, și las emoția aceasta să vină.

Nu știu cum să închei, așa că voi lăsa aici un ultim citat din carte:

Știu că numele astea, poate caraghioase, n-au sens la asemenea păsări. Pentru ele. Dar pentru mine, da. N-o să-i strig niciodată pe nume, la fel cum n-o să-i gâdil niciodată pe burtică. Însă, pe de altă parte, nici nu sunt doar niște etichete, care să mă ajute să-i identific și să le pot spune povestea. În toți ceilalți ani, de altfel, nu doar acum, păsările au avut nume. Grégoire nu e doar un pescăruș. E unul dintre acești pescăruși, unul anume, cel pe care-l cunosc. Un șef de colonie, cu atitudine, cu istorie, cu poveste. Cu anumite trăsături. Mi-e dor de Ariadna, pe care n-am mai zărit-o de mult. Mi-e dor de Fred și Barney și bănuiesc că ei zboară pe aici, stârnind ceva agitație, și mi-e dor de Mici-kiki. Îmi place să pot spune exact de care dintre ei mi-este dor.
pagina 120

Iuliu Neagu-Negulescu – “Arimania”

Posted on 3 Aug 20233 Aug 2023 by gabicaqt27

Cred că întotdeauna am evitat literatura română necontemporană (în afară de lecturile pe care le facem totx la școală, mi-ar fi greu să numesc texte românești scrise înainte de anii ’70 pe care să le fi citit). Textele vechi în general îmi dau bătăi de cap: aș vrea să le pot înțelege în contextul istoric și cultural în care au fost scrise, dar fără a anula contextul istoric și cultural în care le citesc – orice lectură e de altfel un dialog între cele două seturi de circumstanțe și nu îmi place să le separ de dragul unei obiectivități oricum false. Textele vechi sunt ușor de discreditat, pentru că par a fi în mod automat și învechite, nepotrivite unei interpretări moderne, incompatibile cu un sistem de valori feministe, de exemplu. Însă ce am ajuns să înțeleg recent este că ar trebui să chestionăm care sunt vocile care ajung la noi din trecut și care sunt vocile care nu ajung, la fel cum ar trebui să chestionăm același lucru pentru prezent. Problema accesibilității, a supremației status quo-ului, a marginalizării și mai mare a autorxlor aflate deja pe margini, toate acestea sunt și mai greu de descâlcit atunci când ne uităm la un secol și ceva în urmă, când vocile care străbat până la noi sunt atent selectate și de istoria majoritară. Așa se face că e ușor să credem că literatura revoluționară e o invenție a ultimului secol sau chiar că am inventat-o noi. Dar nu e neapărat așa.

Poate tot paragraful anterior e puțin exagerat, având în vedere că nu pot numi mai mult de 3-4 astfel de autorx care să confirme că o atfel de literatură subversivă există, dar Iuliu Neagu-Negulescu s-a înscris ușor pe această listă.

Sunt nefamiliară cu textele lui, așa că voi vorbi strict despre Arimania, un text publicat în 1923 care ne arată organizarea și buna funcționare a unei țări (probabil inspirată din România acelor zile) organizată pe principii anarhiste. Țara Buneiînțelegeri sau Arimania este subiectul acestei scrieri utopice.

Cartea e exact ce am scris mai sus: fiecare capitol din organizarea acestei țări primește o descriere detaliată, încercând să răspundă la multe dintre întrebările pe care le-am primit de atâtea ori ca răspuns la poziția anarhistă: ce facem cu poliția, copiii, educația, totul va fi haos! Deși organizarea concretă pe care o descrie poate să nu fie chiar potrivită unei perspective de secol XXI, cred că ce e important la această carte este felul în care structura acestei societăți prefigurează relațiile dintre oameni, relații de bunăînțelegere, bunăvoință și bunăconviețuire, în timp ce structura societății în care trăim acum este incompatibilă cu astfel de relații.

Bineînțeles, cartea este modelată de contextul cultural și istoric în care este scrisă: avem o perspectivă binară asupra genului, lipsește orice formă de eliberare sexuală, sexul fiind încadrat exclusiv în domeniul reproducerii și nicidecum al plăcerii, iar perspectiva asupra animalelor este una eliberatorie când vine vorba de animalele văzute ca muncitorx, dar nu când e vorba de ele ca hrană. Cu toate astea, discursul lui Iuliu Neagu-Negulescu include argumente despre abolirea poliției și a închisorii, scurtarea zilei de muncă până la maxim 4 ore, integrarea educației copiilor într-un sistem colectiv și care nu depinde de familia nucleară, care este și ea abolită în Arimania (deși monogamia e încă singura formă validă de relaționare). Imaginează-ți că am inserat aici mema aia cu it’s not much, but it’s honest work, ca să nu trebuiască să o fac pe bune.

În principiu am început să scriu acest review nu ca să spun că Arimania o să vă schimbe viața, ci ca să vă spun că a existat literatură radicală dintotdeauna, că există acum și că va exista întotdeauna. Arimania și alte texte le găsiți pe Pagini Libere. O să fac cândva o listă cu locurile și editurile (sau poate editura) în care puteți găsi astfel de texte. Dar sunt destule pe Pagini Libere să nu vă plictisiți așteptând.

Dubravka Ugrešić – “The Ministry of Pain”

Posted on 16 Apr 2023 by gabicaqt27

I haven’t written here in a while, but when I started reading this book, I knew I will. This is my first encounter with Dubravka Ugrešić, it’s a bit sad that her death had to be the one to make me finally give her a chance.

The Ministry of Pain is written from the perspective of Tanja, an intellectual that leaves a fragmented Yugoslavia for Western-Europe and ends up as a literature professor in Amsterdam, teaching the literature of a country that no longer exists written in a language that was split in multiple almost identical languages to students that only take the course in order to be eligible for a student visa. She turns her lectures in some sort of a collective memory, a collective act of remembering, a safe space for mourning and for Yugonostalgia to be expressed.

Reading the first few parts of the book was a much more emotional experience for me than I would have expected. While unfolding the memories of her students, there are many stunningly poetic passages about language and belonging and while the book is very specifically speaking about Yugoslavia, it very much applies to the more general scenario of immigration, especially that of Eastern-European immigrants in Western-Europe.

People say that the Dutch speak only when they have something to say. In this city, where I’m surrounded by Dutch and communicate in English, I often perceive my native language as alien. Not until I found myself abroad did I notice that my fellow countrymen communicate in a kind of half language, half swallowing their words, do to speak, and uttering semi-sounds. I experience my native language as an attempt by a linguistic invalid to convey even the simplest thought through gestures, grimaces, and intonations. Conversations among my compatriots seem long, exhausting, and devoid of content. Instead of talking, they seem to be stroking each other with words, spreading soothing, sonorous saliva over one another.

This is why I have the feeling I’m learning to speak from scratch here. And it’s not easy. I’m constantly on the lookout for breathing spaces to deal with the fact that I can’t express what I have in mind. And there’s the larger question of whether a language that hasn’t learned to depict reality, complex as the inner experience of that reality may be, is capable of doing anything at all – telling stories, for instance.

Or writing poetry, I find myself filling in the rest. Just the same way I find myself bending my verses with lots of English words or just writing everything in English for the beginning when my own language, Romanian, seems to fail me. Or I seem to fail it. Reading this book I realised that concepts such as home country or native language can turn into open wounds – collective open wounds that are treated individually and therefore never heal. Language is just where I can be wounded so easily, because at times it feels like the only thing I have. And so does Tanja. She has her language and her memories, her students’ memories too. Unfortunately, these are not enough create a self or merely simulate a sense of self. This is even more so as the eternal presence of war makes everything seem even more ephemeral in nature, less anchored in reality and more anchored in an unregulated emotional being:

My taste began to change the moment the war began. By now I can scarcely recognize myself. Things I despised before the war, ridiculed as sickeningly sweet, I now shed tears over. I can’t tear myself from old movies that end with justice triumphant. They may be about cowboys or Robin Hood or Cinderella or Walter Defends Sarajevo. I might as well have forgotten everything I learned at the university. I put down every book that doesn’t pull on my heartstrings. I have no patience with artistic folderol and the swagger of literary devices or irony – the very things I used to set great store by. Now I go for simplicity, for plot stripped to parable. My favourite genre is the fairy tale. I love the romanticism of justice, valor, kindness, and sincerity. I love literary heroes who are brave when ordinary people are cowardly, strong when ordinary people are weak, noble and good when ordinary people are mean and ignominiuous. I admit that the war had infantilised my taste.

When the memory game played in the classroom has to end due to someone complaining about the lack of structure or syllabus (which only adds a layer of paranoia to the situation, since the complainer is unknown), Tanja’s internal structure takes the same hit, and as she becomes a tyrant towards the people she was so close to before, the book’s coherence acts as a mirror. It becomes a lot more difficult to read, more slurry and confusing so that the reader ends up in the same vertigo Tanja suffers from. This might be an actual choice of the writer, but it feels like every try to shape the plot into something ends up in some exaggeration or ridicule of itself. Truth be told, I think that even before that, the plot itself didn’t bring anything to the book, which could have been just a long poem or an essay with poetic language. It was the poetry in this book that made me emotional. The plot was there just to allow me to catch my breath. Which was ok for the better half of the book.

One more complaint and the review is done: why is the book called this way? The name of the book is explained in the first pages as being related to that of a BDSM shop immigrants liked to work at because it was well-paid, but none of the characters works there or has any sort of links to the place. I would have been happier if the name did not get an explanation and was just a metaphor than I am with an explanation that leaves me completely unsatisfied.

Next: I’ll probably read some essays from this author, since she seems to be more of an essayist than a storyteller. Suggestions are welcome.

Gillian Flynn – “Gone Girl”

Posted on 29 Nov 202230 Nov 2022 by Gabriela

Just so you’re not surprised by the conclusion of this review, I’ll say it now: I hated this book. I am not sure how I could put into words how much I disliked this book, but I’ll try my best because I really don’t want anyone to ever feel like it is something worth reading. Maybe watch the film if you really want to know what’s going on? I haven’t because I don’t want to be double annoyed, but I’m sure it’s better to be annoyed for a couple of hours than for a week straight because this is not just a horrible book, it is also a 500-page book.

This review will have all the spoilers probably, but you should keep reading nevertheless.

I found this book in one of the boxes people sometimes leave out for other people to look in and choose whatever they want (which is a common thing in the country I just moved to). I was really excited to finally have found a book in a language I am able to read and I thought it would actually be a good read since I had heard about the book and the film and I assumed they couldn’t be that bad.

Oh boy, was I wrong…

Gone Girl is the story of a wife that suddenly disappears one day and the book alternates between chapters from her perspective, Amy, and her husband’s perspective, Nick. In the first half of the book, we have her diary entries, which paint her as an amazing and devoted wife and him as an asshole and a cheater. Plot twist: she’s framing him for her murder to get revenge for his cheating and in the second half of the book we find her real perspective, as the diary entries were just some evidence she manufactured for the framing (I feel like some tests to show that the ink used in the diaries was nowhere near as old as the dates of the entry would have been good proof that he’s not making up the story of his wife framing him, but I guess that’s what you get when you write a book with zero research and all the audacity). The plot twist is not that terrible, it’s just quite predictable and by that point I was so annoyed by everything else that I wouldn’t have appreciated a good plot twist anyways.

I have so many things I dislike about this book, but I will elaborate on just two that made my reading experience pure suffering:

The writing is absolutely terrible. It’s hard for me to believe that Gillian Flynn really thinks some people’s diaries or trains of thought read like these monologues of some spoiled teenagers. I feel like she tried to achieve something like what you get in American Psycho, but she’s closer to the obnoxious voice of a Gossip Girl. Let me just give you a bit so you can understand:

Poor me. Let me set the scene: Campbell and Insley and I are all down in Soho, having dinner at Tableau. Lots of goat-ch*ese tarts, lamb me*tballs, and rocket greens, I’m not sure what all the fuss is about. But we are working backward: dinner first, then drinks in one of the little nooks Campbell has reserved, a mini-closet where you can lounge expensively in a place that’s not too different from, say, your living room. But fine, it’s fun to do the silly, trendy things sometimes. We are all overdressed in our little flashy frocks, our slasher heels and we all eat small plates of food bites that are as decorative and unsubstantial as we are.
– Amy, when we’re supposed to actually like and feel compassion for her

The misogyny! It’s absolutely everywhere. And I get it that the characters in the book are supposed to be terrible, we should despise them, but from what other reviews I read, they’re also supposed to be loved in a very twitched way because lots of people seem to actually love them. So misogyny from a bad character should be ok since they’re supposed to be evil? Maybe, if the point of including so much misogyny was to criticise it. But that never happens. Amy from her fake diary when she’s supposed to be nice and likeable is just as misogynistic as the real Amy. Lots of slut-shaming, lots of fat-shaming, and lots of unnecessary opinions about what a wife should and should not be. This book did not need all of these. There was no real need for this amount of misogyny for the plot of this book, so this excess seems just something that Gillian Flynn enjoys writing. And that made me want to puke too many times.

Even if I were to ignore the things I mentioned, this book would still be bad. For a thriller, it’s just not that thriller, the ending is just boring and at no point was I surprised during this. I was mostly annoyed and bored. And that’s simply not a good book.

Should I put this book out in a box too or should I shelter the people from my new city from reading this?

Annie Ernaux – “The Years”

Posted on 16 Nov 2022 by Gabriela

Ok, I’ll be honest: I hadn’t heard of Annie Ernaux before she won the Nobel Prize and while I am not a fan of this sort of prizes, their significance, or arbitrariness, I still consider them a good way of being introduced to new (at least to me) literature.

So I read Annie Ernaux. I knew it was going to be a good read, since for a week after the prize announcement, my feed was full of White Men Writers™ complaining, priding themselves over never having read her (not surprised boys, we know you only read each other), or talking about how forgettable her texts are. The only books that are better than books feminists love are the books misogynists hate.

I wish I had read Ernaux before because I absolutely loved it. Her writing is simple and elegant but still able to feel exquisite. The Years is a memoir of the writer but is written more like a collective memoir of French society during Ernaux’s life. There is no I in this book, only we (the French on), which offers such a unique reading experience. Constructed about a series of photographs which are described in detail, reading The Years feels like flipping through a family album and hearing the stories that are linked to each photo. It always starts with the details in the photos and keeps zooming out until the whole of France is encompassed in the description, showing the smooth connection between the micro and the macro of our world. Because of this, The Years can feel like a memoir, but also like a history book or even like a sociological analysis of French society. And Ernaux states very clearly that she cannot tell the difference between the memoir realm, which deals with the individual and one’s life, and the history realm, where the individual is just part of a mass with very few exceptions:

Family narrative and social narrative are one and the same.

Being a memoir after all, it is interesting to see how the perspective evolves from the 40s and 50s when the writer is a child and a teenager to later on when she becomes an adult. The sociological perspective is always there, but she keeps true to the emotions and feelings of the age and makes them fit into the larger context.

I loved so many things about this book, but probably my favourite part was the dialogue with the younger generation. I don’t like that it’s generally acceptable for a generational conflict to exist, especially the fact that older people are supposed to think that young people are ruining everything and that a lot of times they really do think that. But Ernaux is cool about that, she sees how the mistakes of her generation are not present or less present in the younger one and she embraces that, she is open to learning from it and she writes about this beautifully:

The young were sensible. For the essentials, they shared our way of thinking. They didn’t heckle us at the lycée, challenge the curriculum, the rules, or authority, and accepted the boredom of classes. Outside of school they came to life. They spent hours at a time on Playstations or Atari consoles, and playing role-playing games. They raved about home computers and begged us to buy the first model, Oric-1. They watched Les enfants du rock, Les Nuls, nonstop music videos on Bonsoir les clips, read Stephen King and to make us happy, leafed through the Phosphore, the lycée students’ magazine. They listened to funk and hard rock, or rockabilly. Between LPs and Walkmans, they lived inside music. They “partied hard” at teufs and probably smoked tarpés. Studied. Were close-mouthed about their futures. Opened the fridge and cupboards at all hours to eat Danette pudding cups, Bolino instant noodles, and Nutella. Slept with their girlfriends at our apartment. They didn’t have time for everything, sports, painting, film club and school trips. They didn’t resent us for anything. Journalists referred to them as the whatever generation.

Schooled together since kindergarten, girls and boys grew up quietly in what seemed to us a kind of innocence and equality. They all spoke the same crude, ill-mannered language. They called each other assholes and told each other to fuck off. We found them “very much themselves” and “natural” in relation to all that had tormented us at their age, sex, teachers, parents. We questioned them with circumspection, afraid they’d say we were a pain in the ass and got up their noses. We allowed them a freedom we’d have loved to have had ourselves, but discreetly watched over their behavior and silences, as our mothers had done with us. We looked upon their autonomy and independence with surprise and satisfaction, as something that had been won over several generations.

They had a thing or two to teach us about tolerance, anti-racism, pacifism, and ecology. They weren’t interested in politics but adopted all the generous watchwords and the slogan created just for them, Touche pas à mon pote! They bought the CD for hunger relief in Ethiopia, followed the march of the Beurs. They proved to be exacting about the “right to be different.” They had a moral worldview. We liked them.

So I am once again thanking the White Men Writers™for the great recommendations, I really hope many more will come.

Andrea Gibson – “You Better Be Lighting”

Posted on 5 Oct 2022 by Gabriela

I am writing this at midnight because someone reminded me I love to write about books and I decided to do it now because there is no better way of loving something than dedicating your present to it. And the book I am writing about is about love, or maybe less about love and more love itself.

I decided to buy You Better be Lightning after I watched Andrea’s amazing performance of Homesick: A Plea for our Planet, having never heard of Andrea Gibson before or even expecting to have my heart shaken in the most brutally beautiful way, it was mostly an impulse buy, but I’ve never regretted an impulse buy in my entire life. It’s mostly books, soft toys and all sorts of frog-shaped objects. What’s there to regret?

After just some poems and just as many crying sessions, I knew this book would be with me forever. And I mean physically, I used to carry my favourite poetry book everywhere, now it’s two of them. And it’s not just a symbolic thing I do or even just a comfort thing. No, it’s pure necessity. Sometimes I might need to remember what love is and how it can make you a bad activist or just a flawed human being. Sometimes I might need to remember what I’m fighting for by reading how queer youth are five times more likely to commit suicide or reminding myself how the earth is holding us with so much kindness and needs us to hold it back with at least a tiny fraction of that kindness. Sometimes a friend might need to sign a contract with themselves to stop being their own worst enemy and sometimes I need to remind myself I signed the same contract. Sometimes I might need to understand that I will never feel anger as long as I can feel love and that love can be so many things. Love can be in so many ways. Love can be the voice I hear when I read out loud the poem about Prince which teaches me once again that love can be so much more than we learn. So much more than romance or even friendship. Love can come from so many places I just stopped questioning love. It’s not love that needs questioning, but the lack of it. I started writing a review about the most beautiful poetry I’ve ever read and I ended up writing a long text about love. And this is perfect – because the most beautiful poetry out there will always speak about love and the most beautiful love in here will always be poetry.

And yes, this is a book about queerness and social justice and feminism and veganism and all the right things and it was great in all the right ways. But I don’t think that’s why I loved it.

Here’s a poem I loved that is short enough for me to type it:

Note to the stranger six feet away:

There was never not a bridge from your chest to mine. My heartbeat was always the sound of your feet walking towards me. I can’t believe how many years I lived without knowing the air you were breathing out was the air I was breathing in. Forgive me for not saying thank you before our lungs had reason to hide. Do you pray mor enow than you used to? I pray all the time. I pray to the Big Bang and the Tini Bang and to the bangs we’ll all have to cut ourselves so we can see what beauty can only be seen from six feet away. A giraffe’s neck is six feet long. A decade from now, will I remember the week I spent wondering if I could hug a giraffe’s torso and not get sick if the giraffe coughed? I don’t want to forget anything about this. Especially not how it feels to worry about everyone I love at the same time – so much of the world had been doing that already.

If every heart-worthy novelist weeps for days before killing off a beloved character, god must have spent centuries sobbing before pressing a pen to the page of this year.

Mia Couto – “Confession of the Lioness”

Posted on 3 Jul 2022 by Gabriela

Despite the fact that I read quite a lot of poetry books in the past month, Confession of the Lioness might be the most poetic (and the most beautiful) text I have read recently.

Once I started reading more literature written in Portuguese, I realised that the most fascinating books are not those written by Portuguese authors, but those that come from the Portuguese (ex-)colonies, in which this language is not just a means of communication, but a continuous reminder of a violent history that has not necessarily stopped. This was very obvious when I read and reviewed A General Theory of Oblivion, and it is just as obvious in Mia Couto’s book.

Mia Couto is a Mozambican writer and Confession of the Lioness is set in Mozambique. We are told that the plot is inspired from real events that happened in 2008 in Cabo Delgado, where 28 people were killed by lions, but further investigations discovered the social and historical issues underlying the events. In particular, the lions came into the village for reasons that were the humans’ fault, after intruding their habitats and making them come closer to the village for food, but the solution decided upon was to kill the lions – are humans even able to take responsibility for their mistakes and give reparations?

The book alternates between Miamar’s perspective, a woman living with her parents in Kulumani, whose sister was a victim of the lions attacks, and Archangel Bullseye’s perspective, who is a hunter called from the city to kill the lions – the officials that make this call are not interested in the welfare of the people of Kulumani, but in the political damage brought by the situation. But the people living in the village are more than mere voters, other societal mechanisms are at play.

Both Miamar and Archangel have to fight their past, present, and are wondering about their future; complex familial patterns are being explored and they have to disobey what is expected of them: Miamar is a woman that does not act like a Kulumani woman should act, Archangel Bullseye is supposed to be the only real hunter left, but is hunting what he wants to do?

One of the characters says:

I don’t know what they’re looking for in the bush, the lion is right here in the village.

It is so easy to blame someone we do not understand or want to understand. Non-human animals end up being blamed and punished so often for effects that are obviously man-made. In this book, the lion becomes a symbol (which I do not particularly like), of disobedience, of freedom. The use of the lioness is linked to Couto’s analysis of the condition of women in the village of Kulumani. Multiple women are given a voice in this book, and all of them are victims of patriarchy, which is a criminal system in general, and Couto does not shy away from denouncing these crimes.

Agustina Bazterrica – “Tender is the FLESH”

Posted on 2 Jul 2022 by Gabriela

TW: violence, slaughter, rape

In my attempt to find more fiction books that approach the topic of veganism, I came across Agustina Bazterrica’s debut novel, Tender is the Flesh, which ended up being a sort of disappointment, but has some ideas that are worth discussing – and I am going to do that because I finally found some time to actually write more than 3-line reviews on Goodreads.

Tender is the Flesh is a dystopic novel set in a future where a virus has infected non-human animals, making their meat and mere presence poisonous to humans. Therefore, all non-human animals were removed, with some still existing in the wilderness. Humans created a genetically modified type of humans that are killed in meat-processing plants and whose (special) meat is now consumed by fellow humans. These humans are modified in order not to be able to make any sounds, they are treated in all the traditional ways of factory farming and any sort of interaction, especially of sexual nature is strictly prohibited. We follow Marcos, who works in one of the processing plants, and his conflicting thoughts while he has to go about his day.

Bazterrica makes a really smart move here: there are lots of documentaries, papers, and books on the atrocities animals go through, but humans don’t seem to flinch – it’s more extreme to want the abolition of animal suffering than to partake in it. In order to make humans a bit more open to thinking about this, she replaces the victims with humans. The same mechanisms we use today to make consuming meat justified or simply not wrong are present in this world:

the humans that are being consumed need to seem as distant to the humans consuming them as possible: they are not humans, but heads i.e. objects, subhumans, and their meat is called special meat (the same way we call it pork or beef, instead of pig and cow);
they are intentionally disabled in order to be easier to handle or give better meat (the same way that chickens have been modified to have breasts so big they cannot stand or hens have been selectively bred to give eggs almost daily when naturally they would do it once a month – they need a lot of nutrients to produce these eggs, making the hens very vulnerable).

While these observations can be easily done from the setting of the book, they and their implications are not explored in any depth, so it was a bit of a let-down in the end. Bazterrica decides instead to go in-depth with a different challenging topic. Having been left by his wife after years of struggling to have a child, Marcos receives as a gift a female head, who is affectionate, even without words, and becomes part of his life, creating a bond of love. I’m trying not to spoil the rest of the book, so I will not tell you how their relationship evolves and what the ending brings. However, this bond is a good starting point for wondering about the relationship we have with the non-human animals in our lives. How do we communicate? How do we show our feelings, positive or negative? And why is this type of communication seen as below that between humans?

I know my observations and questions came up mostly because I already have these things on my mind and am aware of them, but I hope other people reading this will get to wonder, think and maybe get to similar questions.

José Eduardo Agualusa – “A General Theory of Oblivion”

Posted on 27 Mar 2022 by Gabriela

Go back to the title. Yeah, read it again. Sit with it. Let it sink.

This is maybe the most beautiful title of a book I have come across in a long time, maybe ever. So of course I had to read it. That’s how the saying goes: don’t judge a book by its cover, judge it by its title. I mean, the cover is pretty stunning too, but the title did set some really high expectations. And then it delivered.

A General Theory of Oblivion is inspired by the real story of an agoraphobic Portuguese woman that was living in Angola during the fight for the Angolan independence from the Portuguese colonisers. Once the fights start and she realises that the rest of her family isn’t coming back, Ludovica (Ludo) barricades herself in her apartment with a dog, Phantom. The book is a work of fiction, but the author had access to Ludo’s diary from that period. So we have chapters that are narrated, and diary entries (which might or might be not entries from the real journal).

In parallel, several other stories that happen in close vicinity to Ludo’s apartment unravel and they come together beautifully and very satisfyingly at the end of the book. So this is clearly a novel (or maybe a novella? it’s really short) for those that appreciate a story that is beautifully crafted and where everything falls into place. There’s no detail that feels superfluous or redundant, everything is where it’s supposed to be.

One thing that I still have mixed feelings about is the treatment of pigeons in this book. Once she runs out of food supplies, Ludo starts capturing pigeons using her jewellery and eats them and this is actually from Ludo’s real diary – this is probably a deserted island-like scenario I’ve never encountered before (and as a vegan I get a lot of those). A homeless character does the same – this is probably to illustrate the harsh conditions in that period. So I guess there is this intention of using the pigeon as a symbol of peace as usual with the twist that killing and eating them is clearly a bad sign. The thing is I’m a bit over using non-human animals to symbolise the human condition and, in this case, to move the plot forward. And we should all be over it.

A quite subtle parallel that I really enjoyed in this book is that of colonial violence vs sexual violence. As we slowly find out about Ludo’s traumatic past and her constant fear of people in general, and of the figure of her rapist in particular, we also get to understand more the contribution of colonial powers and of capitalism on the country, on the population – this is also violence. The two complement each other and we can see Ludo’s degradation and her falling into oblivion as a mirror of what happens to colonised countries and her bettering once she is saved by a kid as a hopeful prayer but also a burden on the future generation.

It’s a book worth reading and a book worth quoting (hopefully one day I’ll get to reread it in Portuguese) so I’m going to end this with my favourite quote:

‘My family is this boy, that mulemba tree out there, and a phantom dog. My eyesight gets worse every day. An ophthalmologist friend of my neighbour was here in the apartment to look at me. He said I would never lose my eyesight completely. Is till have my peripheral vision. I’ll always be able to make out the light, and the light in this country is a riot. In any case, I don’t aspire to any more: the light, Sabalu reading to me, the joy of a pomegranate every day.’