I'm in the mood to oversimplify so I'm going to say this novel argues that the question is wrong. A meaningful death is an Whose death is meaningful?
I'm in the mood to oversimplify so I'm going to say this novel argues that the question is wrong. A meaningful death is an illusion. A man dressed as an angel holding a flashlight in front of his face. The urgent task is rather to construct a meaningful life. Drugs and booze are the shortcut. The correct response is love and art.
Art - This book is swollen with poetry. Cyrus's dialogue and thoughts bleed lyric. Yeats and Blake and this gem from Jean Valentine:
I came to you Lord, because of the fucking reticence of this world no, not the world, not reticence, oh Lord Come Lord Come We were sad on the ground Lord Come We were sad on the ground.
Yes.
There is less love in the book. The main appearances are those first explosions of romantic bliss. And tender, unrequited longing for a best friend gets a shout out. But the drudgery of familial devotion comes off looking rather too pale to infuse a life with meaning. Parenthood, in particular is mostly only sacrifice. Or am I projecting?
My favorite image in the book - cutting off parts of a finger in exchange for art. That is true passion. That matters. But sometimes the greatest drama is when your best friend loves you back and for a breathless moment, the world reveals its miracles....more
This book changed my life, in a subtle way. There were types of people and lives represented here that I hadn't quite realized were possible. I wish IThis book changed my life, in a subtle way. There were types of people and lives represented here that I hadn't quite realized were possible. I wish I'd found this a lot earlier...more
A breezy beach thriller about addiction. I haven't seen Alex's addiction to painkillers and alcohol mentioned much in the reviews, but to me, that wasA breezy beach thriller about addiction. I haven't seen Alex's addiction to painkillers and alcohol mentioned much in the reviews, but to me, that was the rationale of her character's irrationality. Everything else in her life is incidental in comparison to the high. Pain and pleasure, sex and destruction, people, animals, herself, it's all behind the gauze, half-real.
I deeply connect to this. As the world slides into doom, the one important thing is making sure it's blurry enough. Otherwise it's intolerable.
Pop some pills and jump in the pool. Splash...more
The set up is absurd, I couldn't tell anyone about it without giggling nervously. Also damn yes didn't know splatterpunk was a genre, and I now know tThe set up is absurd, I couldn't tell anyone about it without giggling nervously. Also damn yes didn't know splatterpunk was a genre, and I now know that it is not my genre. Yet I'm glad I read this ferocious book. The violence and fear are so extreme and so physically embodied, that in the insanity of this setting, I was able to access a new, more truthful understanding of dysphoria and other aspects of the trans experience.
I particularly liked exploring the world of the bunker and the metaphor implied that all of us with a bit of money and privilege are in a version of bunker, enjoying our relative safety while the world burns. That one weaseled its way into my dreams....more
You go girl! Oh wait, you don't need me to cheer you on. You are strong as granite, your belief in yourself unshaken. No internalized misogyny for youYou go girl! Oh wait, you don't need me to cheer you on. You are strong as granite, your belief in yourself unshaken. No internalized misogyny for you! You are a picture of "The Hero We All Need Right Now" TM. Unless you like your heroes vulnerable and human, in which case, move on. Characters are as slick as Formica here. Almost everyone is either Feminist and Atheist and Good, or Sexist and Religious and Evil, because sure that's how the world is and has always been!
And the genius daughter reading Nabokov, give me a break...more
Loved the draft of the guy's memoir the best. The blatant, flippant, f u all over your face of that text's unreliability. IMoney money money yum yum.
Loved the draft of the guy's memoir the best. The blatant, flippant, f u all over your face of that text's unreliability. It tried to get like noble or self righteous with the misunderstood wife character, and all that rang a bit false to me...more
A novel about work which is hard to pull off I suppose, given how rare it is.
The scene told from the pov of a dying man was devastatingly beautiful. A novel about work which is hard to pull off I suppose, given how rare it is.
The scene told from the pov of a dying man was devastatingly beautiful. Granted I read this in the middle of the night with a like three day old newborn so my nerves were raw but I melted in tears.
Pity that the female main character was underdeveloped. I read an article that analyzed stats of novels and almost all novels, by men or women, authors with MFAs or not, have a majority of male characters. Men are really not that sparkly...
Ick. No. These characters had no interests beyond their own pleasure, power, and status. They ranged from mildly to clinically depressed. Yes such peoIck. No. These characters had no interests beyond their own pleasure, power, and status. They ranged from mildly to clinically depressed. Yes such people are out there. But I don't want to be stuck in their shitty minds for random slices of time. Some of these stories had at least the pretty prose I'd expect after The Girls, but none of them brought any transcendence, or flash of deeper understanding, or awkward self-recognition. No, the stories were mostly as superficial and hopeless as their characters. They hint that to want anything more than they offer is naïve. In the world of this collection, there is no depth, no genuine surprises, no intelligence that isn't a weapon, no sex that isn't a transaction, nothing worth caring about besides yourself. I am so happy to be done with these stories.
I guess this collection did reinforce a belief I already had, which is that the villains of the world are to be pitied, not hated. But what a waste of talent on just that lesson. I wanted more. ...more
**spoiler alert** Environmental anti-Western. How the lust for gold left the West a dusty boneyard. Two siblings, narrator sister and her trans brothe**spoiler alert** Environmental anti-Western. How the lust for gold left the West a dusty boneyard. Two siblings, narrator sister and her trans brother, wandering inside a buffalo skull, with their father's corpse in a suitcase. Then a flashback, a long, excruciating waltz through the family hopes and dreams, in which the only dramatic tension is - how will this all be destroyed? Finally, for sis, escape and a dream fulfilled which turn out an even deeper degradation. Back to the skull. The final dash for freedom, the final dream deferred.
To write a mystery, you have to read a bunch of mysteries? Fuck that.
Moshfegh takes the infamous confession that she wrote Eileen by following a how-tTo write a mystery, you have to read a bunch of mysteries? Fuck that.
Moshfegh takes the infamous confession that she wrote Eileen by following a how-to guide called The 90-Day Novel, and gives us a mystery that is written by a woman following a how-to guide. The whole mystery is the main character's creation, constructed out of answers to a print-out from a website about how to write mysteries. There is no factual source for the narrator's musings - until the world seems to play along and validate her story. Or is she an unreliable psychotic? Or is it all a sophisticated postmodern spin on the nature of truth? (Her dead husband was an epistemologist after all.) Impossible to say, and no real reason to try. There's no moral lurking, the fun is living in this obsessed, irrational person's mind.
4 instruments, 4 skin tones, 4 girls. An actress, a dancer, a singer, a studious death enthusiast. Angry secretive AngelThis is a memory.
This is jazz.
4 instruments, 4 skin tones, 4 girls. An actress, a dancer, a singer, a studious death enthusiast. Angry secretive Angela (addict mom), Chinese-eyed Gigi (22-yr-old mom), middle-class Silvia (queen of side-eye mom), and self-deluded August (mom? coming home? what's in that jar, daddy? you know what's in that jar)
The raw energy of the streets of 70's Brooklyn, mid- and post-white-flight, is a river of irresistible currents and the currents are desire and the two most desirable objects in this world are drugs and girls. The 4 girls feel desire yanking at them well before puberty. To be a girl is to feel the hand on the ass, hear the compliments that flip into insults if you dare clap back, to get killed and wrapped in a rug on Times Square, to get pressured pressured pressured for sex by older boyfriends until you give in and become a teen mom or they get bored and go.
August tells the story as a memory, in a present still hurting, still groping through her trauma by fucking and leaving, no I love you, no goodbye. The ending has some closure, but it is another old memory. Jazz has no resolution. The key is always transitional. There are no endings, only reinterpreted echoes.
As a novella this might be 3 stars, but as a long poem, 4. There is a surface quality to the characters and the plot, but the images and language pierce and lodge....more
A book about bodies, especially female bodies. Ouch though, having a body, especially a female body, is a dangerous endeavour. I read this book quicklA book about bodies, especially female bodies. Ouch though, having a body, especially a female body, is a dangerous endeavour. I read this book quickly because I couldn't bear to be stay too long inside this suffering. I get that this is a book about slavery and not a light beach read, but as with art about the holocaust, I also want genuine, sufficient motivation for me to enter and inhabit this pain.
Atakora said in an interview, "Conjure Women then is my humble offering to what I have to believe is the new movement of the Slave Novel, one that dares to tell the tales beyond a legacy of whippings against which readers have grown understandably numb. In writing this manuscript it was my hope to unpack every trope, to turn it over, and beat it out."
I did learn about the nuances of this time, and it helped flesh out this moment in American history, which helps flesh out our present day. All the same, it didn't fully breathe for me. The plot felt contrived for the sake of making sure all these characters get their representative dose of trauma. (view spoiler)[In particular, the all-loose-ends-tied ending didn't feel earned or plausible to me. (hide spoiler)] The comparisons on the cover to Yaa Gyasi and Toni Morrison don't help. Atakora's characters, maybe with the exception of May Belle, are relatively flat, no carbonation, no surprise.
I'm glad I read this, but I'm glad I'm not reading it anymore....more
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