“very early in my life it was too late”.
I feel like that quote in itself really encapsulates the tone of the book very well- the moodiness of the book, to the writing style being a sort of recollections of instances in her life past but sort of looking at it sometimes as if from a third person kind of view? Either way, this writing style was very Lana del Rey of her. This book heavily emanates a sense of melancholic nostalgia to me.
My feelings for this book is a warped one to some degree. I have first heard of this book from another source in a book review- as I believe for one reason or another its been quite popular recently and sort of exists in the same literary canon as Lolita, Norwegian Wood, Breasts and eggs, as “modern classics” to read. So I did choose to read this book with some knowledge of what it would be about, and I sort of came to see this book outside the more academic context and saw it through the lens of “personal enjoyment” like a book you would pick up to read as a pass time. Which I feel like I can say now that this book does not suit those circumstances- pedophilia does not work as light reading.
On another note, this weeks shitty man award goes to the older brother of the book. I think that there’s enough shitty men in every single book so far that its probably worthwhile to hold a shitty man award by the end of the semester to see who can duke it out and win the title for the shittiest man of all. I wanted to beat the shit out of the older brother in this book really bad so I probably would vote for him as being the worst. And I feel like that says a lot when theres a literal pedophile in this book.
Now that I think about it, titling this book The Lover kind of feels like one sick joke. She states in the book that she doesn’t love him, and that his feelings of fear are too great to be love. So where exactly is the love in this book? Her family dynamics is also a big oof; I kept on sighing whenever they were mentioned. However, I guess I see more love in her relationship with her mother- she is after all just a girl obsessed with her own mothers unhappiness- as I would argue is often the case with eldest daughters in immigrant families.
My question to everyone this week is: out of all the shitty men this class has seen so far, which one do you think is the worst and why?