Perec W or the memory of childhood.

I struggle reading this book and not specifically because of translation or aspects like that which has been the case with other books. I struggled because the book is a mix of two different stories which go back and forward and I believe this makes the book much harder to read. It reminded me a little bit of Combray on the way the book is set up with all of the going back and forward between different stories.  Overall I found this book being rather sad at some points which is something that I have been experiencing a lot with the books in the last couple weeks but even with that and the struggle to read it, I still enjoyed it.

Even though I struggled, there are huge things which I believe are rather important in the book. We have been talking in class about the importance of titles in books and I believe the title of this book is very important as the writer could have used “W and the memory of childhood” rather than using the word “or ”. This I believe is a hint onto saying that the two worlds or stories that he is explaining are the same or relate to the same thing. I had not thought much about the title of the book until after I finished reading it but I do believe there is some hidden meaning there. 

The fiction story or W talks about the sport events that happened on an island. But the island and sporting events I believe are tight together with the real story which are the memories of childhood from the second world war and concentration camp. This is shown even more at the end of the book with the last letter of someone explaining a concentration camp and how they used to have “sports” there, which I think is another hint towards saying that W is actually related directly to concentration camps and how people were treated there.

My question for the week is if you found the title of the novel being relevant or important to the story. As said before, I did not realize this until the end of the novel as I reread the title of the book again. But I think the title is hinting since the start about the correlation between W and the memories of childhood.