Reading this book was pretty different from what I expected out of a wartime novel! It focussed a lot more on the daily, domestic aspects of Natalia and those around her, so much so that I almost forgot about the war until the book reminded me halfway through\uff08\u00b4\u2207\uff40”\uff09I was also growing increasingly frustrated with Quimet, even from the very first time he appeared on the page, and especially when he essentially gaslights her on page 32 \u1559( \u15d2\u15e3\u15d5 )\u1557!!<\/p>\n
Something I found interesting was how the humans were continuously being described with animal features. For example, Quimet has monkey eyes, Father Joan is made of fly wings, the lady on the street has jowls like a dog, etc etc. These comparisons subtly made me see them as slightly distanced from a fully human existence, connecting to the concept of living the \u201cbare life\u201d of animal existence from the lecture video.<\/p>\n
The moment where Natalia kills the bird eggs and where she tries to kill herself and her children feel to me like she reaches a breaking point and tries to regain control. Throughout the book, she doesn\u2019t seem to have much control over anything in her life. Quimet doesn\u2019t listen to her, the war takes away any stability of the basic necessities in life, and her own home is overtaken by pigeons. Even her nickname, Colometa, is given to her and only connects her more to the animals taking over her life. By the time she reaches for the eggs, I understood it as Natalia trying to gain some semblance of agency over at least a small aspect of her life. Similarly, when she decides to kill herself and her kids, it feels like she is choosing to change their fates and relieve their suffering in the only way she can guarantee it, even if that is through death. I really don\u2019t think I can fault her for that (\u2565\u2038\u2565)<\/p>\n
Although I understand Natalia\u2019s actions, the writing of the scene where she shakes the eggs brought out a very tangible discomfort in me. It wasn\u2019t even one page long, but the descriptions of how she waves them in front of the pigeon’s face and the resulting swirl of blood and yolk and barely-formed hearts felt so incredibly cruel. At that moment, she even seemed a bit inhuman to me.<\/p>\n
Overall, this felt like an easier read than some previous books, yet contained so much depth and emotional weight. Do you think the straightforward style affects your reading of the story? Did it in fact make the experiences of Natalia more of an impact?<\/p>\n
I really enjoyed this book and I\u2019m looking forward to discussing this in class!<\/p>\n
See you tomorrow!<\/p>\n
Julie \u1555( \u141b )\u1557<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reading this book was pretty different from what I expected out of a wartime novel! It focussed a lot more on the daily, domestic aspects of Natalia and those around her, so much so that I almost forgot about the war until the book reminded me halfway through\uff08\u00b4\u2207\uff40”\uff09I was also growing increasingly frustrated with Quimet, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107663,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[23,24],"class_list":["post-38","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rodoreda","tag-agency","tag-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/juliermst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/juliermst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/juliermst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/juliermst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107663"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/juliermst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/juliermst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/juliermst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions\/39"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/juliermst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/juliermst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/juliermst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}