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?
Nini, it is definitely like 5 different puzzles at the same time! I think the word belonging encapsulates very well the theme of identity in the novel. It’s something pretty much all of the characters struggle with. You provided a very good example and a good quote to back your argument. I think there is an interesting contradiction that she feels without air and with less space in her present whereas her past, with what seems to be a smaller apartment and a number of people coming in and out of her apartment constantly fell more freeing. I’m sure we’ll go over the time frame in class!
Thanks for your comment!
– Tesi
Hi! I think that by keeping the characters nameless, Luiselli emphasizes their interconnectedness and the ways in which their lives intersect and overlap. In a novel where multiple narratives converge, the absence of names highlights the idea that individual identities are intertwined and interconnected.