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Conclusion

maybe the real romance was the friends we made along the way

Over the course of this Romance Studies course, my understanding of literature has shifted in ways I didn’t initially expect. At the beginning, I approached texts like Combray or Mad Toy as isolated works tied to specific national and cultural niches. Now, I see them as part of a broader, interconnected field that constantly crosses linguistic, cultural, and historical boundaries. Romance Studies, to me, is no longer just about studying literature translated from Romance languages, but about tracing how these texts can challenge traditions, move across contexts, and open up what our course described as “a world of difference.”

One of the most important things I have learned is how to approach difficulty in literature. Many of these works are unlike anything I’ve ever read, so naturally I went in confused and overwhelmed by language I’m not used to. Over time, however, I began to see that their complexity wasn’t a barrier, but an invitation for me to read more carefully. Using concepts like modernism, realism, trauma, and translation really helped me engage more deeply with these texts over the semester. Overall, learning to take notes and look deeper at the texts became essential — not just to uncover a single hidden meaning, but to appreciate how meaning shifts and multiplies.

While we covered plenty of themes in this course — like history, memory, violence, childhood and growing up — I think the theme of betrayal stood out to me the most. It wasn’t just presented between characters (notably from the shitty men we never managed to avoid), but also as a defining feature of literature itself. Many of these works turn against tradition, rewriting or questioning the past rather than simply reproducing it. Whether in the fragmented truths in The Book of Chameleons or the shifting narratives of the other texts, literature continually pushes against its own limits, revealing that language and representation are never fully stable.

Perhaps the most important takeaway for me, however, was how the true meaning of these texts emerges through the interaction between the text and the reader. Reading my classmates’ blog posts on the same texts that I read was really eye-opening to just how differently people can interpret these works, exploring aspects of the text that I didn’t even bat an eye at. I gained so much insight by exploring the other perspectives in this course, and it was a really impactful experience for me.

Overall, I found the readings both challenging and rewarding. While some texts were more difficult than others to get through (looking at you, Proust…), each really did contribute to a deeper understanding of how literature can challenge my ways of thinking and create new perspectives. In that sense, romance studies, for me, has become a practice of embracing complexity, recognizing difference, and remaining open to the idea that literature is never finished, but always evolving.

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Book Reviews

oh so that’s why they’re called U-Haul lesbians

Love Me Tender by Constance Debré left me with a slightly frustrating reaction because it felt like nothing really happened? The narrative drifts rather than builds and it circles the same emotional terrain instead of moving forward in any traditional sense. I suppose the more I reflect on it the more it could be an intentional story about suspension rather than progression, but that doesn’t feel quite right when Constance herself talks about wanting this new sense of adventure during this change in her life.

Constance, as both narrator and subject, exists in the aftermath of her own undoing. She completely abandons her former life — her husband, her career as a lawyer, even her relationship with her son Paul — in favour of something starkly different: a life of writing, and tattoos, and fleeting intimacy with women. Although this is a new chapter in her life, one where she can finally live authentically as herself, this new life doesn’t feel super liberating in any conventional sense. Instead, it reads as stripped down to the point of near-emptiness, where desire is constant but meaning is somewhat elusive. She moves from place to place (making herself quite comfortable at each woman’s house, I might add), and from lover to lover, but nothing really sticks.

This emotional detachment is perhaps most striking in her reflections on intimacy.

“I like sex the same way I like looking at people in the street, watching someone walk right in front of you without knowing them, the feeling of being so close and yet so distant” (p. 114).

It’s a jarring admission, one that directly pushes against stereotypical ideas of women as emotionally driven or inherently nurturing. Debré’s narrator is neither clingy nor sentimental, and she treats closeness as something almost aesthetic, something to observe rather than feel. In doing so, the novel disrupts the gendered expectation that emotional depth is a prerequisite for female sexuality.

This challenge to gender norms also extends beyond intimacy into the realm of motherhood. Constance’s distance from her son complicates the assumption that motherhood is an automatic or essential identity. Society often frames lesbian women — especially those who reject heteronormative family structures — as lacking something fundamental. Debré even goes as far as to raise the question: does having a child make you a mother, or is motherhood something else entirely?

Her reflections on gender itself are equally stark, observing:

“I look at him and realize he’s stronger, physically stronger than me… That’s when I realize that the difference between a man and a woman is just the question of weight and muscles” (p. 18).

I think it’s a pretty blunt reduction, one that strips gender down to physicality and dismisses the social and emotional narratives layered on top of it. In this way, Debré destabilizes the very categories her narrator seems to inhabit.

So yes, I do think that Love Me Tender leaves something to be desired — a plotline, personal growth, resolution. But maybe that absence is the point. It captures a life unmoored from traditional structures, where identity is constantly being rewritten. It’s repetitive, and at times emotionally hollow. But maybe that’s all it really needed to be.

Categories
Book Reviews

i fear this is a cannon event

When I think back on my adolescence I feel a strong sense of nostalgia — a painful sort of longing that will never truly be fulfilled. I suppose it’s true what they say… you don’t truly appreciate what you have until it’s gone. As time passes, I look back fondly on my childhood years, but I ache to enjoy just one more second of that youthful innocence. 

I think that reading Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend completely stripped me of that nostalgia. 

In simple terms, it’s about Lenù and Lila, two girls growing up in a rough neighborhood in Naples. But in reality, it’s about the kind of friendship that makes you insecure and competitive, yet somehow… entranced by it? We’re constantly surrounded by these notions of what childhood friendships and “girlhood” should look like, yet so few will actually depict the true nature of what female friendship can look like. And I think Ferrante hit the nail on the head here. 

“I wanted her to realize that I was special… [that] she couldn’t do without me, as I couldn’t do without her” (133). 

Lenù doesn’t just admire Lila — she is constantly and obsessively comparing herself to her. Academics, looks, attention, talent — everything becomes this silent competition. Seeing this laid out was so raw and familiar, and I truly felt like I was being transported back to a time when I was Lenù.

These are the kinds of feelings that we grow up trying to suppress. As we get older we preach “supporting other women” (as we should) but Ferrante zooms in on that earlier, messier stage of girlhood where admiration and jealousy are basically one and the same… and these are the types of memories that make me grateful that adolescence is but a short period of our lives.

At one point, Lenù describes Lila, saying: “She gave off a glow that seemed a violent slap in the face of the poverty of the neighborhood” (264). It’s such a dramatic line, but also… exactly right? Because I think everyone knows someone like that, or can remember a time when they thought like that… a kind of destabilizing realization that you’re below someone. 

I think what makes their relationship so addictive to read is that it’s never just one thing or one feeling. It’s not purely supportive, not purely toxic — it’s both and it’s constantly shifting. They inspire each other, compete with each other, define themselves through each other. It’s messy in a way that feels truly authentic. As painful as this novel was — rehashing old wounds from my own trials and tribulations in the world of adolescent friendships — I felt oddly comforted by my own experiences being shared on the page in front of me. 

In saying that, I will most definitely be continuing on to the next novel in this series — if not to see what happens to Lenù and Lila, then simply to find out how Marcello acquired those Cerullo shoes?! And I also just found out that there’s a show so…brb! 

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Book Reviews

did you know? rewriting your past could save you 15% or more on car insurance

I know you’re all wondering — if I could reinvent my life from the start, would I? Well, I think I quite like my life the way that it is. But would I also like to try my luck at living the nepo baby dream? Yeah, I think I would.

The Book of Chameleons by José Eduardo Agualusa presents us with Félix Ventura — a genealogist of convenience — and asks a somewhat unsettling question: if you could rewrite where you came from, would you?

Félix’s clients seem to think yes. They don’t just want better stories, but they want better inevitabilities. For them, a fabricated childhood becomes a kind of destiny retrofit for them, a way of manufacturing legitimacy. 

Agualusa laces the novel with images of cocoons and metamorphosis, which at first feels hopeful. After all, a cocoon promises emergence, a redefinition of self. But here, the transformation is surprisingly backward-facing. Instead of changing who they will become, Félix’s clients change who they supposedly were — almost like a sort of metamorphosis of memory. 

That tension highlights one of the novel’s central ideas: that identity is, in many ways, constructed. Félix’s entire profession exposes how fragile and malleable personal history can be. And yet, there’s a paradox running through it all in the fact that history is perhaps the only thing in life that truly should be set in stone. Still, the characters treat it as negotiable, obsessively revising what cannot actually be changed. 

Interestingly enough, the novel also reflects a society negotiating its own history with colonialism, conflict, and reinvention — a direct reflection of Luanda, where the story is set. The personal rewriting of pasts mirrors a broader cultural impulse to reshape identity after rupture. In that sense, Félix isn’t just a quirky businessman, but a part of a larger, almost national act of storytelling.

This brings me to Eulálio, the talking gecko and unlikely philosopher of the book (who I very much so imagine as the Geico mascot). 

Geico Gecko with Cowboy Hat transparent PNG - StickPNG

As a narrator, he’s both whimsical and grounding, embodying the role of a witness in a world where facts are increasingly fluid. He watches as people bend their histories to fit their desires, quietly reminding us that memory, even when fragile, still exists. So yeah… I was kinda devastated when Eulálio died. 

His death does, however, also introduce my question for the week: If no one is left to remember things as they were, then what anchors identity at all? What separates reinvention from erasure?

Maybe that’s why the cocoon imagery sticks with me. A cocoon is a space of becoming, but also of waiting. Félix and his clients wrap themselves in new narratives, hoping to emerge transformed, but they rarely do the harder work of living differently and waiting for the outcome. They want the butterfly without the struggle, and I get it… reinvention is vastly appealing. The idea that you could simply step into a better origin story — one with a shiny exterior that allows more privilege, is hard to resist. But Agualusa seems to suggest that while the past can be rewritten on paper, it’s the future that truly demands courage.

Categories
Book Reviews

Mo Money, Mo Problems

I have to say, I’m pleasantly surprised by Ricardo Piglia’s Money to Burn. This is by far my favourite of all of our novels so far, and I think it’s the first one that I was actually invested in getting through. On the surface, it’s a noir-ish crime tale about a botched Buenos Aires robbery and its bloody aftermath — something resembling a Tarantino film (minus the unnecessary foot stuff ofc). But the real “payoff” here comes in the strange, hypnotic symbolism of the money itself — especially when it’s quite literally set on fire.

In a lot of ways, this novel seemed really familiar — reminiscent of films I’ve seen like Dog Day Afternoon, Reservoir Dogs, or The Usual Suspects. There’s a cinematic chemistry between the crew and I think that’s part of what made it so easy for me to become enthralled in — the fact that I was so easily able to visualize exactly what was going down. And, after learning that there’s a film adaptation, Plata Quemada, that’s actually more accurate to the real 1965 events than the novel is, I’m really intrigued to watch it and see how all this looks on screen.

The heist itself is undeniably grisly with cocky thieves, deadly shootouts, and people falling like dominoes. It’s hard to keep track of at times, and I couldn’t possibly remember all of the characters at play throughout the entire story, but what did stick with me was how the public reacts not to the killings or the mayhem, but to the moment the cash goes up in flames. Watching them burn millions of pesos becomes the infuriating crux of the whole narrative because the onlookers treat it as the ultimate crime, worse than the actual bloodshed itself. In Piglia’s words, people shout that turning “innocent money” into ash is akin to “a declaration of total war… a direct war against society as a whole” (p. 158). 

What really stuck with me here is that these people consider money “innocent” even though it was taken and held through greed, blood and violence. But when they burn it, suddenly that’s the real crime. What does that say about us? Maybe that we prefer symbolic transgression over uncomfortable truths. Maybe that we’re more offended by the idea of losing intangible value than by losing human life. Either way, I’d argue that it seems like a pretty prime example of cognitive dissonance. 

For now I’ll leave you with one final question to consider: Is the public truly outraged by the money being burned, or by the fact that its destruction makes all the bloodshed leading up to it seem pointless?

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Book Reviews

the French aren’t beating the mean girl allegations

Duras’ The Lover follows a fifteen-year-old French girl in colonial Indochina and the wealthy, much older Chinese man who becomes her lover. Some may try to frame this as sensual, tragic, even romantic… but I can assure you that it lands somewhere closer to the unnerving territory occupied by Lolita.

I think what I found the most interesting throughout this book was the girl’s detachment and coldness toward this supposed love interest. This distance is depicted quite starkly in how the lover himself is presented. For someone who supposedly defines the emotional centre of the story, he is oddly vague. He has no name, and is mostly just referred to as “the Chinese man.” The relationship is intimate, but he’s also kept at arm’s length the entire time. It’s as though naming him would make the situation too real or too personal, so it acts like the narrator’s own coping mechanism to navigating their relationship.

I also find it interesting that the novel is startlingly blunt about the lover’s appearance. In other romanticized scenarios like this one, the older lover is typically described as being a strong, masculine presence that radiates power and confidence. This one, however, is almost the exact opposite. Duras repeatedly calls him ugly, highlighting his nervousness, his thinness, the way he trembles.

I think this description stands in sharp contrast to how the Europeans in the book are framed. Even the narrator’s dysfunctional family carries a kind of narrative privilege simply by being French. The lover, meanwhile, is constantly marked as being different racially, socially, and physically. His wealth can’t quite overcome the rigid hierarchy of colonial society in which they find themselves, and this was the most painfully obvious in how the narrator’s family treats him so horribly. The brother insults him, mocks him, takes his money, and treats him with open contempt. It did make me feel quite bad for him.. until I remembered the context of this book and his comments about making love to “his child” (major side-eye btw).

I do think that this book has an interesting perspective to share. I don’t feel as though the relationship is really condemned, but its also far from romanticizing it. Rather, I’m just kind of just stuck in this uncomfortable limbo, questioning why the author repeated herself so so so so much and who tf is Hélène Lagonelle and why is her rack so impressive?

But on a more serious note, I ask: Do you think The Lover romanticize the narrator’s relationship with her Chinese lover, or does the emotional distance actually expose the power imbalances at the centre of it?

 

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Book Reviews

uh oh, we’ve got a yapper

Reading Hour of the Star kind of made me wish that I, too, was hit by a Mercedes.

The narrator’s incessant yapping in the beginning made it really hard for me to get into this book, which is honestly kind of an achievement given how short this story is. And then, when we finally get going… it’s just the tale of how Macabéa gets shit on her entire life until she’s run over by a car and dies. The worst part? This is almost seen as a fortunate situation for her — the privilege of being hit by such a luxurious vehicle.

Don’t get me wrong, the girl wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. But would I go as far as to call her retarded? Probably not. And she likes hot dogs so really, she got something right. Now despite my annoyance at her daftness, one thing I can get on board with is hating on a man who thinks he’s all that. Enter… Olímpico de Jesus. First of all, if a guy told me my name sounded like a skin disease I’d probably run the other way. But that honestly feels like a compliment compared to how he treats Macabéa throughout the rest of the story. I’ll rank the top ones for your convenience:

1. “Are you just pretending to be an idiot or are you actually an idiot?” (47)

2. “You sound like a mute trying to sing.” (43)

3. “You didn’t cost me much, just a coffee. I won’t spend another cent on you, okay?” (47)

I’ve hated myself a fair share in my life, but I don’t think I’ve ever hated myself enough to take shit from a guy like this brother-looking little bitch.

But in actual news, something that really stood out to me in this book was the narrator’s, or Macabéa, sense of God. We’re told that “she didn’t think about God, God didn’t think about her” (18), and yet she seems to spend quite a lot of time thinking about God. She’s presented as a saint, and “she repented entirely and for everything” (29), but also doesn’t really seem to have a strong sense of religion. It isn’t until she thinks that her luck is finally starting to turn around that “Jesus was finally taking some interest in her” (67), and then of course she dies so… yeah. I guess we ended with a bang (explosion!).

To be fair, I don’t think I was in the mood to read this book (if that’s even a thing that someone could be in the mood for). But I feel like I just didn’t really get it. Why spend so much time creating this sob story of  Macabéa’s life, just to end it all so abruptly? And that is why I shall now go watch the lecture videos in hopes of gaining a profound insight into the depth and nuance of this novel. Will I have a fonder view of this novel by the time we discuss this work in class… guess you’ll have to wait and find out!

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Book Reviews

#TeamAntoni <3

I’ll be honest, I don’t think I took the disclaimer about Mercè Rodoreda’s The Time of the Doves being dark as seriously as I should have.  Knowing it was set in the Spanish Civil War, I wasn’t surprised to see that there were bombs and hunger and death. But the fact that most of it is presented through Natalia’s small, exhausted observations about daily life somehow made it feel even more shocking. And then, of course, she decides to kill her children. 

Maternal filicide isn’t something I expected to encounter in a novel I’m reading for a romance studies course.. and yet, there it was. So ground down by poverty and war that death begins to look like mercy. It’s drastic, and it’s horrifying, and still, Rodoreda writes it so frankly without spectacle. There’s no dramatic moment of realization for her, it just somehow appears. Now, it would be easy for me to sit here comfortably and judge her decision making skills. But that feels almost insulting? I’ll never understand what it means to watch your children starve during wartime, or to have every structure that once held your life together collapse (at least I sure hope I won’t). So I suppose it’s a good thing that the novel doesn’t ask me to approve of her decisions because… well, I just don’t. And, as if it had to be said… not a fan of Quimet, BIG fan of Antoni (our little cripple <3)! 

While it’s quite obvious given the title of the book, I was really intrigued by the symbolism of the doves (or rather, pigeons). Quimet fills their apartment with them and they become this obsessive, cooing presence that crowds out Natalia’s sense of self. They are supposed to represent something tender, maybe even romantic. Instead, they just become suffocating. When Natalia shakes the eggs, destroying the fragile lives inside before they can hatch, it’s one of the few moments where she exerts control. It’s violent, yes, but also desperate. And yet, one egg survives… one fragile life pushed through despite her attempt to end it, just like how Natalia herself survives even after imagining the unthinkable. How poetic! 

Sidenote: I can’t be the only one who thought that it probably would have been pretty nice for them to have had some pigeons when they were literally starving to death? Not to blame Natalia for them for going hungry or anything but… karma, right? 

Sidenote #2: This is how I like to imagine Natalia looking at Quimet bringing home more pigeons:

Either way, this was an interesting read. I won’t lie and say that I breezed through it and enjoyed it, but I think it’s important to see how works like this can highlight the devastating implications of political and economic turmoil and how literature can explore sides of the story that we wouldn’t have otherwise been exposed to. Won’t be re-reading, but it sure has given me a lot to think about! 

 

 

 

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Book Reviews Uncategorized

All That and Still No Cake?

After reading Joseph Zobel’s Black Shack Alley, I admit that I feel quite… devastated? Not in a dramatic, bawling-my-eyes-out kind of way, but in a slow, kind of lingering sadness that has stuck with me even now. Don’t get me wrong, the novel is easy to read on the surface. The prose is clear, and the chapters are short — a nice shift from works like Proust’s — but what makes it heavy is how much suffering is normalized. Love is a prominent theme in the story, but it is so closely tied to sacrifice, exhaustion, and loss.

Reading this, I felt especially sad for M’man Tine. Her love for José is expressed almost entirely through work and discipline, and she pushes him toward school relentlessly, even when it means going hungry or being separated from him. When she sends José off without food or refuses to let him miss school, it doesn’t feel cruel, per se, but it does feel brutal. Her love is practical and unsentimental, shaped by the knowledge that education is the only possible escape. From a romance studies context, this made me think about love as something rooted in responsibility, rather than pleasure. There is nothing romantic about her labor in the sugarcane fields, yet it is one of the most intimate relationships in the novel.

José’s personality also reflects this environment. From a very young age, he internalizes obedience and self-surveillance. He is careful with his belongings, anxious about punishment, and deeply attuned to expectations placed upon him. This constant awareness leaves little room for rebellion or even innocence. Moments of play or attraction exist, but they are brief and restrained, always overshadowed by responsibility. Childhood is not presented as a protected stage of life, but rather a training ground for endurance.

One scene that encapsulates this is the episode at school when José refuses food despite his hunger. His decision is not driven by pride alone, but by an ingrained understanding of scarcity and social boundaries. Even in an institutional space meant to offer opportunity, he remains marked by poverty. The moment reveals how deeply inequality shapes not just José’s material conditions, but his sense of what he is allowed to want.

Knowing that the novel draws from Zobel’s own life complicates this reading. On one hand, it introduces the possibility that these sacrifices were not futile. On the other, it underscores how much was demanded of the older generation to secure a future they would never fully share. Rather than offering simple reassurance, I think the autobiographical context sharpens the novel’s tension between hope and loss.

Drawing on this, I ask: do you think Zobel presents love — especially familial love — as a source of hope, or as something that demands constant sacrifice in order to survive?

Categories
Book Reviews

The Summer I Turned… Into a Perverted Mama’s Boy Who Pretends to Have Been Tapped by a 50-year-old Pedo?

I quite miss the days of reading a book and not worrying that the main character is going to perform some questionable acts in the name of being unhealthily attached or attracted to his mother. But alas, here we go again.

I don’t think Agostino is meant to be a comfortable read, and I fear that might be the whole point. The mere fact that Agostino is only thirteen highlights his inability to understand the full nature of what he notices, resorting instead to embarrassment and anger. Nothing about his responses feel graceful or mature, they feel like that of an immature, reactive boy, and I think that’s what makes them so believable.

What bothered me most wasn’t just his jealousy, but how fast his feelings toward his mother turn cold throughout the story. Once he realizes she has a life that doesn’t revolve solely around him, Agostino seems to want to punish her for it. It’s like he needs to paint her out to be the villain so he can justify his resentment. And instead of seeing her as a person who hasn’t changed, he convinces himself that she’s become someone — or rather, something — else entirely.

I think the boys at the beach play an important role in this change, voicing the crude thoughts that Agostino has silently been harbouring all along. Finally feeling seen, and free from the confines of his mansion, he is so desperate to be accepted by the boys at the beach that he’ll take attention in any form, even when it’s clearly at his expense. He wants their approval badly enough to play along with their teasing, laughing when they joke about what he let Saro do to him during their boat ride together. Rather than defending himself, he leans into the humiliation, as if showing he can “take it” will earn him a place among them. It’s awkward and sad, but also a pretty accurate representation of adolescence. Agostino mistakes being mocked for being included, and lets their cruelty pass as camaraderie just so he won’t be left out again.

By the end, it’s hard to know what to do with Agostino except feel two things at once. I feel bad for him — he’s lonely, confused, trying desperately to grow up without any idea how — but that sympathy keeps getting derailed by the way he talks about his mother. The casual cruelty, the fixation on her body, the way he reduces her to something embarrassing or useful makes him deeply unpleasant. He can’t see her as a person with her own life, only as an object orbiting his needs and his shame. He’s a boy who is clearly vulnerable, and yet already practicing the same selfish, objectifying gaze that the older boys model for him. It begs the question,  if Agostino is truly repulsed by the way the boys speak about his mother, why does he still look to them for validation? What does that say about how adolescence and environment shape who we learn to admire?

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