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April is the cruellest month
A lot of the things in life are done so precisely owing to ephemerality. The pace of time seems only to quicken, and so the need for creating something grand, for something eloquent, draws people towards working to leave behind the mark of a meaningful struggle, before any ends are met. Symbols of having existed must be left somewhere in the universe — even if marginal, like a scratch on the moon — to represent the seed of consciousness that carried us from sleep to wakening, as the fossil of an epiphany soon to be covered under the dust of a million years. The line from The Waste Land in the title of this post testifies to the sense of despair, and yet of restoration, in the ends that precede new beginnings. Continue reading
review of Debré
I believe that Love me Tender by Debré is a novel underscoring a woman’s desire for authenticity at the expense of the loss and dissatisfaction involved in this desire. It exposes the beauty of pursuing one’s own course of life … Continue reading
Posted in Debré, Home
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review of luiselli
This was a “quiet” book. There is a quality of mutedness in the narrator’s portrayal of her life. It is as if there is always something deeper to be said but is never ultimately expressed, perhaps out of languidness, fatigue, or meaninglessness. Continue reading
Posted in Home, Luiselli
3 Comments
Stars in a black river flowing tear-like across the immensely lonely regions of the world
I see before me pieces of the human condition, bound together by the umbrella of a narrative that does not quite make any sense. Names reel in and out of sight, like stars in a black river flowing tear-like across the immensely lonely regions of the world. It is obvious that this book is written by someone who does not write merely to communicate, but out of an intrinsic appreciation for words. It reveals a great many truths about the human condition, and its endless perplexities, without shying away from the irreconcilable mystery that lies at the bottom of the universe. Continue reading
Review of Piglia
Money to Burn is rich in scenes involving whirlwinds of chaos, relentless acts of crime, and portrayal of criminality as acts of disregard and recklessness in attaining what specific groups want or desire in society. The scene involving rape and … Continue reading
Posted in Home, Piglia
3 Comments
Transposition
Right from the beginning there is a sense of going back in time, of flipping through the images of the past so as to arrive at some point in time where a certain revelatory experience unfolds from the ordinary narrative of human life, and some distant memory can be uncovered to reveal its treasured meanings. Continue reading
The Desire for Transcendence
THE WRITER: The desire for transcendence is itself a transcendent aspect of human nature, because it entails an already-present awareness of the transcendent, and a recognition of the possibility of becoming transcendent. The writer, Rodrigo, desires for transcendence through writing, through the act of soul-searching and making discoveries about the human condition. Continue reading
Posted in Home, Lispecter, My Favorite Reviews
Tagged death, fiction, identity, life, Lispector, literature, love, reality, reflection, The Hour of the Star
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Silence, Sadness, Perpetual Solitude
A lively swing of events rolls into place at the beginning of the novel, full of musical brilliance, unknown voices, and objects scattered across empty spaces. This is a book of wavering stars. And in this midst of it all there is a shadow of contemplation which is the shadow of the main character, Natalia, flitting in the form of text across cigarette-like pages of ash and ink, carrying all of her sensitiveness and feminine daintiness across the scenes, and, with her own private reflections, uncovers the isolated mysteries of human life beneath its whirlpool of ordinary affairs. Continue reading
Posted in Home, My Favorite Reviews, Rodoreda
Tagged childhood, death, family, life, literature, love, memories, poverty, reality, reflection, relationships, Rodoreda, The Time of the Doves, war
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Review of Deep Rivers
The concept of cultural belonging pervades the beginning of the text, where he describes the appearance of the Old Man, enters the native city of Cuzco, and examines the stones of the Inca wall. The narrative style, which lies at the intersection between realism and stream-of-consciousness, deepens the effect of his memories as a symbol of his attachment to intuition and subsequent rejection of straightforward logic, contributing to a dream-like journey into the heart of the Andes. Continue reading
we are at once conscious of the unspeakable absurdities of life
With the first chapter of the book we are at once conscious of the unspeakable absurdities of life, of a thumping rhythm of isolation carrying its beat across desolate roads, into unsolved conflicts, and through crowds of unknown faces, leading us towards some sort of brighter establishment of purpose towards which the trajectory of our lives are directed. Continue reading
Posted in Home, Laforet
Tagged family, fiction, Laforet, life, literature, Nada, poverty, reality, reflection, relationships
6 Comments