Tag Archives: narration

Week 13 – Fever Dream

Huh?

This book lost me. It wasn’t as bad as Borges but I still felt lost and confused. I mean I think I understood the overall concept of the book but the little details here and there just confused me. I don’t know if I like or dislike this book, for me it’s just there, like something I don’t quite know how to feel about. I will say though, whether it was intended or not this book did a good job of making the reader feel uncomfortable and frustrated at times with the narration of the story.

Going back to how I felt reading the book, there was something about David’s character that made me feel uneasy. His interaction with Amanda was so strange and I always felt unnerved whenever he spoke. Everytime David said “that is not important”, I wanted to scream. Like why isn’t it important??? What do you know that we don’t know?? Every single time he said “that is not important” I anticipated something big to happen next because I had this uneasy feeling that there was going to be a big revelation. I don’t know what it was about David’s character that made me feel like we were playing a game, like somehow his mentions of certain details not being important, were all part of some kind of puzzle. It truly felt like David was playing a game with Amanda, like somehow he knew the end of the story but wanted Amanda to tell it. Maybe I just didn’t understand David as a character or maybe I just hated him. Either way his character was quite confusing and frustrating to me.

Moving on, the reason behind Amanda’s sickness was interesting. The idea that Amanda (and Nina) had been plagued by the poisonous water was a unique idea and wasn’t something I was expecting. Sometimes during the story I would forget that Amanda was sick, just because of the interaction between David and Amanda and how she was telling the story. I wish the importance of agriculture pesticides was explored more or mentioned more clearly during the book. Also, the symbolism behind the worms was interesting. They kind of represented the illness that was contracted from the pesticide spray in the water. Worms are tiny little things that grow and slither around you, without realizing, kind of like the illness that spread in Amanda.

Overall, this book was interesting and confusing, it truly felt like a fever dream.

Question to think about: Why did the author chose to convey the importance of pesticide poisoning, in such a creepy and unnerving way? Did it add something more to story?

Week 12 – Papi

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I loved this book. The narration from a child’s perspective really made the story stand out, and had me hooked from the beginning. There’s just something about viewing the world from a child’s perspective that keeps you captivated with whatever story they have to tell. Thinking back to the other novels we have read, I would say the narration in this was far more believable. Children tend to be honest about what they see and experience, and while there were parts that were more fictitious, it wasn’t enough to make me second-guess the narration.

Moving on, I couldn’t help but think about the show Narcos, as I read the book. In the series (and in real life) Pablo Escobar was a notorious drug dealer, who committed other crimes (like murder) that no one but the people he sent to do the crime, knew about. In a way he was an enigma to his family, especially his daughter, just like Papi in the book. While we don’t learn or see much of his daughter throughout the series, I couldn’t help but picture her narrating this book. In the series she grows up with her father being absent most of the time, and doesn’t understand what kind of man he is. For example, when there’s a bombing at her house, that makes her lose hearing in one ear, she’s too young to realize it’s because of her father’s lifestyle that she gets injured. She kind of lives in this “bubble” that only exposes so much of her father. Anyways, I won’t go into further detail about this show but for those who haven’t seen it, I definitely recommend it.

Back to the book, there was something about the flow of the novel that made me feel slightly uneasy. At times it felt like we were getting somewhere with who Papi was, but then he would “disappear” and you began to feel lost again. It was kind of frustrating that his character was such an enigma, but it also added to the effect of what the narrator had to be feeling in the novel. I also couldn’t help but feel slightly unsettled by the way the narrator continued to love her father, despite the kind of man he was. He showed her his good and bad side, yet despite that she loved him. I guess this went to show just how much trauma she had from her father’s absence, and how she didn’t know how to deal with it. Overall, the book was an interesting read, and the elements of sadness and fantasy made it stand out.

Question to think about: Throughout the novel the narrator retells the story as a mix of make-belief and real events. Which got me wondering, do you think the “made-up” aspects of the story was a way for the narrator to deal with the trauma of having her father be an absent figure in her life?

Week 6 – Pedro Paramo

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This was a somewhat confusing but welcomed read. Compared to last weeks Labyrinths, this book was a breath of fresh air. While nothing will ever be as confusing as last weeks read, I will say this book did come a close second. The narration between Juan and Pedro was confusing and a bit hard to follow because the timeline would go back and forth, without a clear separation. For those of you who have watched the show Dark, the jumps between timelines in this book were similar to those in the show. Anyways, I found myself paying really close attention to what was being said and to who was saying it. While I was reading it, I felt like I was essentially reading short stories that had to be pieced together, kind of like a puzzle. Once I was able to piece together what was happening my final conclusion was that the book was sad. When combining the story of the people in the ghost town, the kind of person Pedro was and how Juan would never get the chance to meet his father, all made the story so sad to read about.

It was sad to think about how Juan came to Comala with the determination and promise to his mother to find his father, only to find out through the dead townspeople that he died. When I first started the book I thought it would be about a son finding closure for his childhood without his dad. However, I felt it instead became a story about loss, death and hopelessness. It seemed to me that every character was living in a state of hopelessness that resulted in their death. With Pedro he lost his childhood crush and it put him into this state of despair, which made him cause destruction to those around him and it eventually costed him his life. For Juan he lost his mother and came to the town hoping to find his father and claim his inheritance, only to find out he is dead. It seemed like whatever the characters were hoping to achieve or gain, never happened and they ended up falling into a state of utter despair. The idea that whatever hope the characters had would only resulted in loss and hopelessness, added a sense of realism to the story. It really highlighted the fact that in life not everything we hope for can be achieved and that you can go through life living only in despair.

Question to think about: By using themes of hopelessness and despair, what do you think the author trying to convey throughout the story? That life can only be full of hopelessness?

Week 2 – Mama Blanca’s Memoirs

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Wow. Teresa de la Parra’s “Mama Blanca’s Memoirs” was such an interesting read and made me feel nostalgic in a way. The second paragraph in the Foreword, where she wrote “It was not kinship that bound me to Mama Blanca, but mysterious spiritual affinities that in the commerce of souls weave the brief or enduring web of sympathy, friendship, or love, which are separate stages in that supreme joy of mutual understanding”, I felt sadness, loss and somehow nostalgic. This sentence really captured my interest and drew me in to the text.

Throughout the reading I was really drawn in by how everything and everyone was described in such a specific and particular way, that on the one hand you knew exactly what the narrator was conveying, but at the same time it was left up to your own imagination. The way scenes and situations were described really stood out to me because the perspective was from a child (Blanca Nieves childhood), but things were described in a far more intricate way. The narrator’s use of descriptive language like this, brought in a sense of realness to it and it made you forget that everything that was being told was from a child’s perspective. Something like “…my independent soul, my inviolable soul, which Evelyn could not take by the arm, did indeed resist!” (30), was interesting to think about when imagined being said in a child’s voice.

Besides the descriptive language, the relationship dynamics that were brought in between Blanca and her sisters (especially Violeta), and her mother was something I felt most people could relate to (I definitely could). The argument and fight between Blanca and Violeta really stood out to me (mostly because I could relate it to my brother and myself) and it captured my interest how seeing Violeta crying put Blanca in distress, and made her start crying. It was such a contrast from what I was expecting the scene to end up like. From where the scene started to where it ended was sweet but is also got me thinking about how that fight must have been so significant for the narrator to recount it, when describing her childhood. The argument could have just been a dumb story that was meant to be funny, but if you traced it back to where the fight started you would realize just how significant Mama’s need for Blanca to have curly hair was and how it affected the way he childhood progressed.

The constant need Mama had to ensure that all her daughters had the same curly hair, made me feel sorry for Blanca because she kind of lived in her childhood in a lie. Now, it may seem like I am exaggerating but the fact that Blanca’s hair was mentioned through the text, kind of proved just how significant it was to her that her mother was constantly trying to “change her”. Again, this reiterates the idea of how small things that may not seem as significant when you’re a kid, can actually have a big impact on you. It can change the way you view your childhood and yourself.

Overall, I would say this reading was quite interesting and the visuals that were painted in my mind, will stay with me for a long time. The different detailed descriptions kept me visualising throughout the text and had me thinking about my childhood.

Question to think about: Was there a particular scene that was described, that made you think back to your childhood? And if so, how did you feel when recalling that memory?