Last blog!!!

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I literally cannot believe I read 11 books for this class. I was never a big fan of literature classes back in high school and surprisingly this course turned out to be one of my favourite ones this semester. So many times throughout the semester I just wanted to break my contract because I just did not feel like reading a whole book but somehow I managed to make it to the end. It actually felt weird that I didn’t have to read a book for this blog lmao.

My favourite book in this class was definitely “The Shrouded Woman”. I loved the way it was written and it kept me hooked till the end. I liked reading about the concept of multiple deaths throughout a woman’s life and it was interesting being told a woman’s life story through her memories of interactions with other people in her life.

A book I hated was “Money to burn”. There was not a single thing I liked about this novel. I just could not get over the countless unnecessary disgusting comments about literally any woman that was in the book. I thought that the book was so long and it really did not need to be.

Like I said before, I’ve never been a big fan of literature. Honestly, after this class I think the issue wasn’t the books but the way the course was taught. I love the way this course is made because it allows all of us to share our own opinion about the books we’ve read. Professor Jon trusts us to do our job by reading the books and gives us the freedom to write about whatever we want. I don’t know about everyone else, but for me that made all the difference. Writing what I wanted to write, however stupid my blog may have been sometimes, was okay and with the weekly lectures I always learned something.

I love reading and I read all the time. Mostly fantasy, romance and fiction novels. This course made me want to explore more genres in books. Genres that I would normally avoid at all costs. I have a whole shelf of classics in my room that have not been touched since I bought them. This summer, I think I’ll get around to reading a few of them.

Question of the week:

What was your favourite drink paring from all the lecture videos?

Faces in the crowd

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This book gave me the biggest headache ever, but in a good way. I think. Multiple times throughout the book I thought to myself, either I’m an idiot or the author was on crack when she wrote this. It genuinely felt like I read 10 books in one sitting.

The first half of this book was like reading about a mother struggling to adapt to her new lifestyle with 2 kids, while reminiscing about who she used to be back in New York when she was much younger. Now, she doesn’t write as much as she used to, she doesn’t have time. I liked how the book explore this concept of belonging. She no longer belonged to herself. Every time she took care of her kids instead of writing, she lost a piece of herself and gave it to her family. She often says she has no air, or that she’s short of breath and I like to think that it’s due to that constant battle between motherhood and her passion for writing. I think this quote sums up what I’m trying to explain pretty well: “I give her my hand back and she loves me again” (p. 21). She gives a piece of her self to her baby, stoping her from working and making her baby happy.

When the book started I guess shifting towards Owen’s point of view, I was so confused. I didn’t really understand what was happening. The woman is writing a book about Owen and Owen is writing a book about a woman in a red coat. They’re writing a book about each other without knowing it. I still don’t think I fully understood everything that was happening in the second half of the novel. Reality was being warped in that second half. The women’s husband left to go to Philadelphia, wait never mind he didn’t. I had no idea what was real and what wasn’t.

The ending left me with a migraine. The woman and her family are hiding under the kitchen table. Owen is on top of a kitchen table. Everyone hears cockroaches and mosquitoes. All the timelines in the novel merged and yet still I couldn’t make any sense of it. When I was reading the last page of the novel, I was like no way it ends here. It felt so incomplete. Just because of that I’d say I didn’t really enjoy the book. There were so many stories and characters and timelines within this one small novel, but they all felt unfinished.

Question of the week:

Why do you think the author didn’t give names to the woman, her husband, the baby and the boy? Why keep them nameless?

The Book of Chameleons

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This book was so fun to read. Gecko’s and magic, who would have thought that would make a good combination! Also, finally a book with short chapter!!! There were so many interesting characters in this novel.

I found Felix’s job so intriguing. He gave people completely new identities and new background stories, and basically erased who the person used to be. I thought of him as kind of the master of chameleons, if that makes any sense. He was giving people new skin so they could adapt to their surroundings, which is what a chameleon does. He gives people lies as a livelihood: “I fabricate so much, all day long, and so enthusiastically, that sometimes I reach night-time so lost in the labyrinth of my own fantasies” (p. 116). I think this was one of my favourite quotes in this books because it shows how easy it is to loose yourself in lies and your imaginations.

Something that really creeped me out in the novel was the foreigner’s character. When Felix gave him his new identity as Jose, he started forgetting who he really was: ” … he’s taken over the foreigner’s body. He becomes more and more lifelike with each day that passes” (p. 67). The thought of forgetting yourself, of loosing your identity is just so scary to me. He lost himself in a lie.

I found that the narrator, named Eulalio by Felix, had a very complicated relationship with love. The quote: “The worst of sins is not to fall in love” is repeated multiple times in the novel. Eulalio never loved in his previous life and now he can’t help but think that being reincarnated as a gecko is some kind of sick punishment for not having loved when he could. Now he’s a gecko, even if he wants to find love, he can’t. I thought this was so sad because he gets to see people fall in love and experience things he wants, knowing that he missed his chance.

Lastly, I noticed how literature was also an important part in this novel. Felix has countless books in his house. I feel like throughout all the books we’ve read so far, literature is always a constant. I loved the way Felix interpreted his thoughts on literature: “Literature is the only chance for a true liar to attain any sort of social acceptance” (p. 68). In Felix’s opinion, his job is just him writing a story and sending it out to the real world. He is an author of who creates new people.

Question of the week:

Who was your favourite character in the novel and why?

Money to burn

“The Lover” or “daddy issues wrapped up in a fancy book”

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To say the least, this book made me very uncomfortable. Have any of you ever read/watched Lolita? These two books give off very similar vibes in the sense that they both make me want to crawl out of my skin. I will say I did enjoy the structure of the book, how we were revisiting the memories and how the narrator would sometimes say that she cannot remember in clear detail how everything occurred. It made the novel more enjoyable.

I did however find it very interesting the way in which this book approached the topics of beauty and desire. There are so many quotes in this novel that I loved such as: “At the age of fifteen I had the face of pleasure, and yet I had no knowledge of pleasure” (p. 9). She knows she is beautiful, she knows men are attracted to her, but she is still so young that she does not know what that pleasure is. She is used to being the centre of attentions because of her face and her beauty in general. There was another quote that I found interesting: “My hair is heavy, soft, burdensome, a coppery mass that comes down to my waist” (p. 16), her appearance is a burden to her. Her beauty is weight she has to carry on her shoulder from a young age. I couldn’t help but compare this quote to another: ” I tell him I like the idea of his having many women, the idea of my being one of them, indistinguishable” (p. 42). She doesn’t want to stand out, but she does. So much so that she enjoys being part of the girls her lover has had sex with, she’s just one of them.

In the lecture video, Jon talks about who’s in control, who has the upper hand in this relationship. I can see how in the novel, they were both kind of using each other. However, because of his older age, I think the lover was more of a manipulator. He was having sex with a young girl, he has much more experience than her and so automatically I think that she was at a disadvantage in their relationship. Although there are many instances in the novel in which we can see that she also holds power over her lover, because of their age gap I do believe that she was a victim of his manipulation. She is using his money and receiving pleasure from the relationship, but the age gap just makes it so wrong (and you know illegal).

Question of the week:

Who do you think held the power in their relationship?

The Hour of the Star

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This novella was 77 pages of utter confusion. I think this is the type of book that requires multiple readings to be fully understood. It felt like I was reading a very disorganized person’s diary. I personally don’t think I fully understand this novella so this blog is going to be a little messy.

This is a book about a nobody. Macabea is unnoticeable. Why would anyone want to read a book about someone so mundane? This takes me back to a conversation we had in class at the beginning of the semester about why we read. Someone had said escapism. So why read a book about someone who is no one? In the lecture video, Professor Jon said that the novel is doing justice to such a life. Every life has their moment of glory and Macabea’s moment of glory was her death. Not much happened in her life, she had barely begun to live when her death arrived.

In the beginning of the novel, the narrator writes: “She protected herself from death by living less, consuming so little of her life that she’d never run out” (p.24). Towards the end of the novella, after meeting the psychic, she allows herself to feel hope, more so than she ever has before: “Macabea began (explosion) to quiver because of the painful side there is in excessive happiness” (p.68). I can’t help but relate those two quotes together. In that moment with the psychic, she used up all the happiness life had allotted her and maybe that’s why she died as soon as she left.

Macabea was raised in poverty. She could afford no luxuries. She just was. She had very little education and was curious about everything. After she broke up with Olimpico, the narrator wrote: “Sadness was a luxury” (p.53), one that she couldn’t afford. When the doctor told her she had tuberculosis, she didn’t even understand what he meant, she only smiled, further playing the role of just being. Her entire being was surrounded by poverty. She didn’t have an education because she was too poor. Even impoverished, Macabea was content with her life. It made me wonder, would she have been less content if she had more knowledge? Maybe her lack of education and overall poverty allowed her to appreciate every little thing life offered. Maybe it also spared her from bigger burdens. Since she didn’t understand what tuberculosis was, she couldn’t be upset about it, she was spared from that sadness thanks to her lack of knowledge.

Question of the week:

Out of the many options, which title did you prefer for the novella?

Time of the doves

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I feel like I say this every week, and I always mean it, but this is now my favourite book we have read so far. First of, I’d like to say how much I hated Quimet. He took advantage of Natalia’s naive personality and trapped her in a marriage. He was toxic, had major jealousy issues and would gaslight Natalia. Basically, men have been gaslighting women since the 1960s.

I’ve seen many blogs talk about how the doves symbolize freedom, I think it’s a bit more complicated than that. For Natalia, the doves drove her crazy. She felt as though she was being suffocated by the birds. There’s this juxtaposition about the meaning behind the doves if you look at it through Natalia’s perspective.

In the lecture video, Professor Jon talks about how Natalia contemplates killing her children. I won’t lie, I can understand where she’s coming from. Rather than wanting her kids to suffer the consequences of war and slowly dying day by day, she wants a quick end to their life. I don’t think I can judge her when I don’t know what it’s like living through and experiencing the casualties of a war. However, I didn’t see many people talk about how Antoni tried to suffocate Rita when she was a baby? I thought that this was way more drastic than what Natalia wanted to do. Antoni’s only reason to trying to kill his little sister was his jealousy whereas Natalia wanted to kill herself and her kids them to spare them from an awful life. Antoni really needs to get his jealousy in check, much like his father.

I loved how this books portrayed the emotions of someone living through war on the sidelines. Natalia’s worries about keeping her kids alive and getting enough money to survive were so saddening to read about. Her life just became about surviving, not living: “I could barely buy food because I had almost no money and because there was no food to buy” (141). The circumstances in which she was living were heartbreaking.

Finally, I want to talk about Antoni, Natalia’s second husband. I think he was the literal embodiment of what a person’s like after war. “That they’d picked him up half ripped apart on the battlefield and pieced him back together as best they could” (160). People before and after war are not the same, they have seen and lived through horrors that no one should ever have to go through. They try to live the rest of their lives as best as they can after the war tore them apart and left the to mend the pieces of their lives. Natalia and Antoni’s relationship was just that.

Question of the week:

Why do you think the last sentence of the novel is “Happy…” (201)?

Black Shack Alley

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Black Shack Alley is probably my favourite novel compared to the others we have read in this class. I noticed that in most of the books we’ve read so far, literature has a significant effect on the protagonist of the book. For Jose, books allowed him to deepen his knowledge of the world. He saw that all of the novels were about people with blond hair and blue eyes and this inspired him to write his own story, for people like him. Like most of the character from the previous books, literature played a big role in shaping Jose as a person.

In part 1 of the novel, Jose was is innocent and had no real knowledge of the oppressing society his family lived in. All that mattered to him was being free of his M’man Tine and roam the Shack Alley: “We were alone and the world was ours” (p.12). The inevitable punishment he would receive upon arriving home was worth it for the few hours of freedom he had. In parts 2 and 3 of the story we see Jose realize that M’man Tine isn’t who’s keeping him from his freedom, but rather the world he was born into. He lives a difficult life with many challenges at a very young age and looses his innocence to the harsh realities of the world way too soon: “I could do nothing to get accustomed to it nor put an end to it” (p.84). I think this quote really sums up the emotions of not just Jose, but everyone in his community. This was their life and they were well aware that nothing they did would change the system. My heart broke for the feelings of hopelessness Jose felt at such a young age.

I think that it was his time at the lycée that he matured the most. Going to school, reading all these books made him question things. My favourite quote from this books is this: ” I felt within me that she was subjected to an unjust punishment” (P.166). In this moment, he was talking about his M’man Tine, finally realizing how much she had suffered, how carefully she had sheltered him for as long as she could. He was questioning thing about his society, about why they had to live in poverty. His curiosity encouraging his studies. Jose deciding to write his own novel because no one writes about people like him was such an empowering thing to do. He would use his voice even if people did not want to hear about it.

My question this week:

Both Jose and Agostino grew up in poverty, and both novels are somewhat a coming of age story: in what ways do you think that Jose and Agostino are similar/different?

Agostino

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This novel definitely had some interesting characters, however, it made me so unbelievably angry at men. Agostino is a young boy, despite having the privilege to attend school, he doesn’t know much about life. When he meets the group of boys, he starts to discover things about a part of the world he isn’t part of. Agostino is rich whereas all of his “friends” are from poverty. When they tell him what his mother and Renzo were really doing on the boat, Agostino seemed to be burdened by that knowledge. It’s as though, now that he knows what sex is, he can only view his mother in a sexual manner. Him reciting this mantra in his head: “She’s a woman, nothing more than a woman: (44) was so irritating to me. Like, what do you mean “just a woman”? Then he would blame his mother for his attraction by saying that she was provoking him: “Agostino felt as if she were provoking and pursuing him with her maternal immodesty” (69). It was all very misogynistic. It was clear the Agostino was feeling an emotional turmoil between being disgusted by his mother and yet attracted to her simultaneously. But, I still thought that it was repulsive the way in which he viewed women.

I’m sure while reading this novel we all thought of Freud and the Oedipus complex. Agostino being jealous of other men who have his mother’s attention is an obvious factor of this theory. I guess this plays into Agostino growing up and becoming a man. According to Freud, once you rid yourself of the Oedipus complex, you can go to the next stage of your psychosexual development. At the end of the novel, Agostino says: “But he wasn’t a man, and many unhappy days would pass before he became one”, indicating that he is not close to the resolution of this complex, and has a long way to go before he is a man.

What may be the most disturbing part of the novel, in my opinion anyways, is Saro’s character. Why is an old man hanging around a bunch of kids? Agostino says that he is somewhat of a father figure but the scene where he’s alone with him on the boat creeped me out. And when Saro wasn’t addressing the rumours about what happened between them on the boat was so weird, He made me very uncomfortable.

Lastly, another thing about this novel was that since its main character is a 13 year old boy, we know more than the narrator does. For example, the rumours about what happened on that boat between Saro and Agostino, we know what they talking about but Agostino doesn’t. I think that it’s interesting that we get to read the novel through this lens of youthful innocence.

This weeks question:

“He couldn’t say why he wanted so much to stop loving his mother, why he hated her love” (46). This quote reminded my of when we talked about the fine line between love and hate in class. My question to you is why do you think love and hate are so similar despite being such opposite emotions?

“The Shrouded Woman”

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“The Shrouded Woman” is definitely my favourite book so far. I absolutely love the way it was written. In her death, Ana Maria showed us her life through her memories. Out of all the characters Ana Maria interacted with, I was most struck by Maria Griselda. How Maria explained that her beauty was a curse, how it had sentenced her to life of loneliness. I though that it was really sad that in her time, being beautiful was considered a sickness for women. Maria was excluded because of her beauty and hated by other women. Her beauty brought out jealousy from other women in her, Ana Maria hated her but the hatred faded away after she died. I thought that her story was heartbreaking because her beauty pitted her against other women.

One of my favourite quotes from this novel is: “Why, oh why must a woman’s nature be such that a man has always to be the pivot of her life?” (226). In my opinion, everything Ana Maria did was for a man. Even though this novel is from the point of view of a woman, all of her actions are either influenced or are being coerced by a man. This quote reminded me of something professor Beasley-Murray said in the lecture video: “Dead or alive, a woman remains subject to the gaze of others”. This whole novel is us experiencing Ana Maria’s life through others. We only get to see her memories because people are coming to see her.

I loved the way this novel approached the concept of love. Ana Maria’s relationship with Ricardo was so interesting to read about. She was completely consumed by her love for him. In that period of her life, she lived for him. She couldn’t see a life without him. In her death, she realizes that he never truly left her, he was always a part of her life even if she had not known while she was still alive. Her relationship with him affected her for the rest of her life. Her love for her husband, Antonio, was not the same as what she felt for Ricardo. She settled for Antonio whereas she had chosen Ricardo. Her relationship with Fernando also intrigued me because she felt humiliated by him and yet she did not stop seeing him. There is a quote in the novel that I think perfectly describes the different types of love Ana Maria felt in her various relationships: “that one does not love as one wants to, but only as one is able to”. I like to think that after Ricardo, Ana Maria was no longer able to love the same way. She changed as a person and so did her ability to love.

Discussion question:

The last sentence of this novel is: “For she had suffered the death of the living. And now she longed for total immersion, for the second death, the death of the dead”. What do you think she meant by “the death of the living”? And what did she mean by “the second death”?