elfs29's reviews
191 reviews

This is perhaps one of the most gorgeous, and hence most devastating, portrayals of love that I have read of Baldwin’s, certainly that I have read ever. Not only between Tish and Fonny but also between their family, this novel, though terrible and tragic, is bursting with love. Baldwin doesn’t quite let us imagine that their awful situation was resolved, but it is the pride and devotion and sympathy the characters exhibit, each so whole and real, that carried all the pain and love through this narrative. An incredible novel. 

Time: the word tolled like the bells of a church. Fonny was doing: time. In six months’ time, our baby would be here. Somewhere in time Fonny and I had met; somewhere, in time, we had loved; somewhere, no longer in time, but, now, totally, at time’s mercy, we loved. 

Reimann has produced a complex and interesting snapshot of life in East Germany during the Cold War from the perspective of a young socialist woman with a bourgeois background. The complexity and severity of the political situation and the divide in Germany intwines naturally with her narrative and relationships, not to mention that the prose is absolutely beautiful, offering a detailed image of her, the way her experiences have affected her and the way she perceives those she loves. 

It had been very early. The orange-red sun rose above the horizon, and the shadows of the trees and the fences were long and cold. That June morning had the exquisite clarity and freshness of bright cherries washed clean by the night’s rainfall. The silence, still linked to the night, was broken only by birdsong, and not one plume of smoke, not one leaden grey vapour trail sullied the cheerful blue sky. 

I feel like I will continue to unravel the complexities of this book and its characters, the intersections between class and male privilege, the psychological horrors and demands. Especially Miranda’s character I found fascinatingly constructed, not the perfect victim but of course a victim nonetheless,  how her determination and will to survive are both admirable and a consequence of her privilege. 

I think it was a mistake to read this after watching the film — whilst the film offered a gripping, eerie and nuanced depiction of depravity and abuse, the book, whilst creating a powerful image of the intensity of self loathing, fell short in almost every other aspect. 

The content of this book is bleak and necessary and whilst the characters are interesting and sympathetic, it just felt a little lacking in depth. It felt as though I was just being told the nuances of the situation rather than experiencing them, and I feel a little annoyed that it was so neatly wrapped up in the end. It felt a like a simplification of perhaps one of the least simple subjects a novel could be written about.

Nunez has curated an extremely complex vision of grief, of the way life exists when you're experiencing it and the way the past exists when you consider it in the wake of loss. The vision of a man the narrator may or may not have been in love with, who may or may not have been a good person, is less important in the narrative than the experience of losing him, and her relationship with Apollo instead takes focus - how can she let herself love again when she knows she must lose again? How can she console herself, or know if she is lonely? The consistent quotations and literary references create the image of a woman who doesn't have answers, who has never had answers, and as an aspiring writer, her questions of the ethics and purposes of writing have unsettled me. Every part of this book has made me wonder about something (is that the point of writing?).

Now watching him sleep, I feel a surge of contentment. There follows another, deeper feeling, singular and mysterious, yet at the same time perfectly familiar. I don't know why it takes me a full minute to name it.

Didion writes with incredible precision — the formation of Grace’s character through her observation of Charlotte is cleverly constructed, and the intersections between their personal conflicts and the political backdrop are never arbitrary. Didion’s women have a tendency to stick in my mind, unfortunately so do her men, but I don’t think I’ll forget this story and how deftly Didion asks about character, about truth, about what we remember and what we see and whether one can ever be a true witness to someone else. 

The question of Charlotte Douglas has never been ‘settled’ for me. Never ‘decided’. I know how to make models of life itself, DNA, TNA, helices double and single and squared, but I try to make a model of Charlotte Douglas’s character and I see only a shimmer. Like the shimmer of the oil slick on the boulevards after rain in Progresso. 

Rhys’ prose is mesmerising for all the ways she so closely captures what happens inside a woman’s head. Sophia felt desperately and devastatingly real to me, almost immediately, and I couldn’t bear to tear my eyes away from her because it just felt so important that she be seen. Glimpses of hope amidst desolate loss, glimpses of humanity amidst the almost collapse of it, Sophia’s story, never linear and always heartbreaking, was moving and scarily real. 

I am trying hard to be like you. I know I don’t succeed, but look how hard I try. Three hours to choose a hat; every morning an hour and a half trying to make myself look like everybody else. Every word I say has chains around its ankles; every thought I think is weighted with heavy weights. Since I was born, hasn’t every word I’ve said, every thought I’ve thought, everything I’ve done, been tied up, weighted, chained? And mind you, I know that with all this I don’t succeed. Or I succeed in flashes only too damned well. Think — and have a bit of pity. That is, if you ever think, you apes, which I doubt.