Month: April 2026

Patterns. I made a list to see if I could notice some patterns in the themes that caught my attention the most from each book. Overall, as the title suggests, I think in most of the novels the main character(s) were misfits in some way, people who do not quite fit into the world around them.

• combray – mommy issues (weirdo), memory, nostalgia
• mad toy – misfit, criminal, need vs pleasure
• shrouded woman – passionate woman in a patriarchal society, misfit
• agostino – misfit (mommy issues once again), coming of age, adulthood vs childhood innocence
• deep rivers – torn between two cultural identities (misfit), ongoing colonization
• time of the doves – womanhood, poverty, toxic relationship
• if on a winter’s night a traveler – boring
• the trenchcoat – suspicion, political insecurity
• money to burn – criminals with no purpose,  not poor, just… like?bored?
• chameleon – lack of identitieS, politics, plot twist, albino: a symbolic misfit¿? 
• faces in the crowd – favorite, mix of identities, patriarchy? (traditional Latin American family life), motherhood, misfits¿? (ingrávidos)
• love me tender – unfulfilling motherhood, emotional misfit

Before commenting on this, I should say that I am honestly surprised I managed to read one book per week. Even more surprised I managed to be in a couple of the student awards. As an Econ major who has not had to write essays in a WHILE, this was somehow rewarding 🙂 Anyway, I really enjoyed this class, some books more than others, but overall I learned a lot.

One thing that surprised me is how some of the older texts still feel very relevant today. For example, Bombal’s novel was published almost a century ago, yet the themes of gender expectations and women feeling trapped by social roles still feel very familiar. Even something like Proust, which is very old and very different stylistically, still deals with things that feel recognizable: memory, nostalgia, and complicated family relationships. In a way, this made me think about something mentioned in the first lecture, that literature often remains meaningful because it speaks to problems that continue across time.

Another aspect I enjoyed was the “Romance” part of RMST. While the course was not really about romance in the romantic sense, it was interesting being able to read several of these texts in Spanish, which is my own Romance language. Reading authors like Arlt, Bombal, or Luiselli in Spanish felt different from reading translations because the tone, humor, and style come across more directly. It also made the class feel more personal.

Going back to the patterns on my list, I could group the main characters into different types of misfits. My favorite group is called “mothers unfulfilled by motherhood who were destined for something bigger but are somehow trapped.” Long name. An honorable mention goes to Luiselli, whose novel was probably my favorite. Even the Spanish title Los ingrávidos (which I had to google) sounds at first like it could mean something like “a bunch of weirdos,” but it actually refers to something being weightless. This describes her characters perfectly: dematerialized, ghost-like beings floating between life and death, past and present, and New York and Mexico City.

Bombal and Debré also fit into this group, though in different ways. In Bombal’s novel, Ana María cannot escape society’s expectations even after death, and only becomes free after her “second death.” She basically suffers her entire life because of men and the roles imposed on her. Debré’s narrator, on the other hand, manages to leave that life behind and has the freedom to change her life completely, which honestly felt like a pretty radical possibility compared to the other stories. Yet she is still emotionally trapped in other ways. Time of the Doves also deals with this kind of situation, although it focuses more on survival within poverty and a toxic relationship.

Then there are the other, mostly male, misfits. As you can see from my list, most of these characters are outsiders in completely different ways. Some are awkward children with mommy issues, some are criminals with no remorse but somehow in a very tender gay relationship, and others are people struggling with identity (having none, too many, or existing somewhere in between). Very interesting reads, for the most part, and I think all needed to say about this can be explained by the list.

In the end, what many of these books seem to share is an interest in characters who exist on the margins of society. Whether they are trapped by gender roles, poverty, politics, or identity itself, they all struggle to find a place where they truly belong. Maybe that is why literature is so often drawn to misfits: by focusing on people who do not fit into the system, these stories reveal the limits and contradictions of the system itself.

Question: If so many literary protagonists exist on the margins of society, are they exceptions? Or does literature suggest that living “on the margins” is actually a normal human experience?

I saw in a couple other blog posts about Love Me Tender that people say not much really happens in the book. At first I kind of agreed. It doesn’t have the usual kind of plot. There’s no big dramatic sequence of events. The narrator swims, writes, meets women, walks around Paris. The chapters are short and sometimes feel more like quick notes than full scenes.

But I think the interesting part isn’t the events, it’s the way she relates to people.

There’s one moment that really stayed with me where one of the women she’s seeing starts crying because she doesn’t understand their relationship anymore. She says she feels like she can’t talk to the narrator. Instead of reassuring her, the narrator responds in this really strange way:

“I hold my hand up in the air, I say, I don’t love you this much, then I lower it, I say, I don’t love you this much, then I put my hand midway, I love you this much, that’s how it is.”

It’s such a weird response. Instead of explaining how she feels, she literally measures it with her hand. Love becomes something limited, something she can control. Not too much, not too little.

Then,

“I wait for her to leave me. I’ve already done it too many times.”

That line makes it clear like this isn’t a one-time situation. It’s a pattern. She already knows how these relationships end.

What’s interesting is that the narrator left a life she clearly wasn’t satisfied with, her marriage, her career, the expectations that came with it. The whole book is about her trying to live differently. But even in this new life she doesn’t really let people get close, at least emotionally lol.

I read something on Josh Tan’s blog that made me think about this. He asks: “When we renounce everything that chains us, similar to Debré, have we really freed ourselves, or have we built a more comfortable cage?” And honestly that question feels very relevant here.

“She says one day she’ll end up leaving me. I tell her she loves me too much to do that.”(155)

hello????what??

The narrator has escaped one structure of life, but she might have created another kind of restriction. Instead of social expectations limiting her, now it’s her own emotional distance. She is emotionally closed off living a life that does not seem like it is fulfilling her.

So maybe the book feels like “nothing happens” because the real story isn’t about events. It’s about the way she moves through relationships, always a little detached, always expecting them to end.

If the narrator leaves her old life in search of freedom, why does she still keep people at an emotional distance in her new one? Is this freedom, or just another form of control?