Hi there blog!! Hope the reading break went well :DD
Rodoreda’s The Time of the Doves provided me with a very convoluted(? I can’t think of a better word) reading experience. Strap in because I forgot we should keep the blogs short and just went off (I am so sorry, but also I have no regrets since I had fun writing this).
First off, I really liked the lens through which the book was told. Rodoreda managed to make Natalia’s experiences feel as close to personal to the reader as she could get by what I will describe as “making the reader be a fly on the wall of Natalia’s brain”. What I mean by that is that the perspective of the book makes it feel as though we are going through this story as if we were a little guy on Natasha’s Inside Out emotions team (Inside Out the Disney movie). It felt like-
I can’t think of an emotion that accurately describes what it felt like to watch Natalia’s life. The best way I can describe it is through a quote. This is the part of the book where they are looking for the lost key, and Natalia says, “As long as we thought we’d lost it, it was like we had lost it.” (pg 53). It was excruciating to watch Natalia make herself into nothing because she is sure that “As long as we stay married and we thought everything was okay and happy, it was like we were okay and happy”. It feels insane to say this, but I felt as though the weight Natalia lived with was lifted by a LOT when the revolution started. Her battles transitioned from being fought internally and secretly to being fought externally and with others, and you could really tell that having Quimet not focus on being a piece of shit to her gave her soul some lightness.
Before I transition to rip a new one into Quimet, I want to mention the truly insane metaphors in this book. Holy shit. That’s the only way I can explain how amazing these were. The doves symbolize so many different things throughout the book, one of the big ones being Mr. Asshole himself. But I also think the doves represented Natalia’s spirit. She was free before she met Quitem, and after their marriage, her freedom and happiness got stripped away. When they mention building the dove enclosure/cage/house, my first thought was “welp, there goes her freedom, they are literally making sure she/the doves can’t fly. He just wants absolute control over them”. Then my point got stronger when Quitem panics about opening the cages for the first time, thinking the doves would fly and never come back. He is so worried, his control will slip, but unfortunately, both for the doves and for Natalia, they know nothing better than to be under his control, so they come back.
The metaphor I loved the most and found the most masterful and interesting is the tapeworm/umbilical cord/termite/bellybutton/egg shaking pipeline/connection. GOD, that was so amazing to weave together as I read. Throughout the whole book, we see constant imagery about things being consumed from the inside out (through the tapeworm and a bit with the termites), and how the outside person and the inside person are crucially connected (through the umbilical cord, the bellybutton, and the egg shaking). And we see these things through this weird pipeline I mentioned. The reason I thought this was genius is because this is exactly what is happening to Natalia. She enters this truly horrible marriage, and she gets abused and put down and diminished over and over and over again, which starts to destroy her from the inside out. She never shows Quimet she is struggling; she just lets it fester, growing and growing like the tapeworm. So then, when she sees things that reflect who she was before this started, showing her that who she was and who she’s unintentionally become are one and the same, she can’t handle it. So she shakes the eggs. She would rather make sure no being could ever get close to the situation she was in when this all started than let them be alive in the first place.
While I could talk about metaphors for a while, I have business to attend to. And that business is talking about Quimet. Specifically about how much he was a horrible piece of shit. He is so possessive of Natalia, it feels like he does not see her as human. She is his possession, she does things for him and needs nothing in return, she is his doll, his servant to command. Expecting anything of him is truly preposterous. It pissed me off. I hate him. Reading about an abusive partner is never easy, but this motherfucker really got on my nerves. He might’ve been the one to have the tapeworm, but he was the literal tapeworm in Natalia’s life. Fuck that guy.
Lastly, the one non-story-related thing that had me genuinely losing it throughout this book (besides her piece of shit husband as mentioned previously) was that, for some reason, the formatting of this book made me feel as though I was reading a constant anxiety attack. I read the book in one sitting in 2:30 hours, and I genuinely think I was breathing too fast but not fast enough to be hyperventilating for literally all but that last 30 minutes. It was extremely uncomfortable, and I genuinely almost DNF the book multiple times because of this. But I made it out alive and survived to the end. I got to see Natalia get the life she deserved :))
Overall, this book was pretty tough to get through, but a very rewarding read nonetheless. I really liked the lens of the story, even though I was bordering on an accidental anxiety attack with the formatting. The story is tragic, but not every moment in life can be beautiful. I will leave you guys with a question: what did you guys interpret from all the tapeworm/umbilical cord/termite/bellybutton/egg shaking business? Did you feel they were connected like I did, or did you have a totally different POV??
Last but oh so certainly not least (just kidding, there’s a PS section this time oops), it’s time for everyone’s favourite part of my blog, the
Freud Tally!!!!!!!!!
This week, we were spared from parental issues, mostly because we don’t get to see much of Natalia’s parents, and we are actually the parents. Even then, all parent-child relationships would have disappointed Freud, meaning they were normal in Freudian standards. This means The Time of The Doves gets to join the “Knows Freud had no credentials to do psychology” category!!! I am seeing a trend of single-word titles making Freud proud and multiple-word titles disappointing him, so let’s see if that trend keeps up later.
✨Freud Tally!!!!!!!!!✨
Makes Freud proud- 2 (Combray, Agostino)
Knows Freud had no credentials to do psychology- 3 (Mad Toy, The Shrouded Woman, The Time of The Doves)
PS- 4 things I couldn’t figure out how to include in the blog that I HAD to mention
1- The alternate title for this post was “Quimet?? More like Quit’em, get oUT OF THERE NATALIA”
2- When she was talking about killing her kids?? So that they didn’t have to suffer?!?!?!!?! holy fucking shit that was tough to process.
3- to end on a light note, we have a Father Joan Banger quote, cuz he called all of us out with this one – “I know young people are high-spirited. They want to live and live fast . . . but a life, if it’s really going to be a life, has to be lived slowly.” (pg 39)
4- If you saw this post as it went up and caught my message of me tweaking out at 11pm on Sunday over the image breaking and deleting 2/3 of my blog, No you didn’t. I had the post ready early this time, but that god-forsaken meme broke my blog and my spirits.
See yall next time!! :))