elfs29's reviews
191 reviews

Boring and self indulgent. 

Absolutely gorgeous and completely devastating in its brutal honesty. I can’t right now bring myself to say much else about this book, other than that it’s brilliant and terrifying and somehow a little soothing. This is completely full of quotes and thoughts I cannot ever forget. 

Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I think?

I am suddenly smothered by the urge to read all of Keegan's work, I have been aware of her for so long but just never quite got around to reading her. Her prose is absolutely gorgeous, precise and moving, both child-like and mature from the perspective of the young protagonist, and felt entirely intentional in such a short story. The vivid pastoral imagery, entwined with the child's feelings of longing and acceptance were truly gorgeous.

The sun, at a slant now, throws a rippled version of how we look back at us. For a moment, I am afraid. I wait until I see myself not as I was when I arrived, looking like a gypsy child, but as I am now, clean, in different clothes, with the woman behind me. I dip the ladle and bring it to my lips. This water is cool and clean as anything I have ever tasted: it tastes of my father leaving, of him never having been there, of having nothing after he was gone.

I think most of this novel is extremely mature, well planned and cleverly executed, although I cannot help but feel that Zoe’s storyline was unnecessary, that perhaps the narrative would have been stronger kept within the family and the siblings’ explorations of their own pasts and family. The way Nemony and Tree’s narratives and hopes cross over across so many years is extremely clever and poignant, and the way they all hinge on their mother is beautiful and heartbreaking. As a story of understanding and perspective, this was really fascinating. 

I understand, in theory, what the purpose of this book is, to present the rigid binaries of society and the difficulty that lies in existing outside of them. Yet, every single thing about this story is devoid of personality and feeling - Keiko may be ‘strange’ but she still has feelings, and yet none of the writing carries any kind of real emotion at all. Telling and never showing, Murata surrounds her with an absurd cast of characters, I imagine for the purpose of highlighting Keiko’s disconnect from them but in practice only creating a story that I am completely detached from. 

The only reason I cannot give this five stars is because I could never possibly understand it all. It is no less brilliant for that, of course. 

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust. 

Whilst in content, this novel is similar to The Colour Purple, Walker uses an entirely different tone and structure. The way she places focus on different characters throughout is part of the fabric she uses to discuss change, and who and how people are capable of it. The switch of focus onto Grange, who the reader, from following Brownfield’s perspective, would have assumed was written off, yet having him remain deeply complex throughout all of his lives, as it were, speaks of Walker’s serious intelligence that was involved in this nuanced portrayal of violence, toward black women by men, toward black men by white people, but also this portrayal of love. She is writing of predominantly of love, and of all the horrors that disturb, revoke and challenge it.

His wife had died believing what she had done was sinful and required death, and that what he had done required nothing but that she get out of his life. And now Grange thought with tears in his eyes of what a fool he had been. For, he said to himself, suppose I turned my back on that little motherless girl over there and then my time with some other little girl; would she understand that something beyond myself caused it? No, she would not. “And I could parade Shipleys before her from now till doomsday and she’d still want to know what’s done happened to her granddaddy’s love!”

Katherine Mansfield, my angel. Master of modernist prose, of allowing the unconscious and conscious to exist within one another, of making the female experience a literary event. What more might you have done, had you had the time? (Virginia Woolf owes you her career)

And the two women stood side by side looking at the slender, flowering tree. Although it was so still it seemed, like the flame of a candle, to stretch up, to point, to quiver in the bright air, to grow taller and taller as they gazed—almost to touch the rim of the round, silver moon. How long did they stand there? Both, as it were, caught in that circle of unearthly light, understanding each other perfectly, creatures of another world, and wondering what they were to do in this one with all this blissful treasure that burned in their bosoms and dropped, in silver flowers, from their hair and hands.

Short stories, even by the most talented authors, can often be hit or miss, unfulfilling, tiring. These, however, are all gorgeous and all moving. Baldwin perfectly utilised the form to capture a specific moment for each character, indicative of a much larger life and a society. Sonny’s Blues, Previous Condition and Come Out the Wilderness were my favourites but every one was equally as good as the next. Going To Meet The Man was perfect as the closing story and so difficult to read, perfectly and troublingly detailing the white man’s view of black men in America, the severity, violence, sexuality and danger involved within it. These may be perhaps more astute than many of his essays, for the way Baldwin uses characters to intertwine human emotion with the reality of society is nothing short of genius. 

To enforce his power over her he had only to keep her guilt awake. This did not demand that he have, as, in fact, he overwhelmingly did have, an instinct for his own convenience. His touch, which should have raised her, lifted her roughly only to throw her down hard; whenever he touched her, she became blacker and dirtier than ever; the loneliest place under heaven was in Paul’s arms.