Tag Archives: memory

We’ve been tricked! “Faces in the Crowd” a 3-in-1 Book

Posted on by under Luiselli

At last, we have arrived at our last book of the semester (summer is near we can do it!) and what a way to end! ‘Faces in the Crowd’ by Valeria Luiselli was an interesting read, it had many layers of story-telling that was only made (semi) clear to me after I had watch the lecture and gotten it explained to me. This was definetly not an easy read! It was confusing and in my mind I compared it to mens 3-in-1 shampoo.

I talked to some people about this book and their interpretation, it seems that there are many interpretations, rightfully so, as I feel this book leaves many loose ends just because of the style its written in. I don’t want to say it doesn’t flow because it does in it’s own way, just not a traditional storytelling way, and I think this leaves out bits and pieces. Anyways the way I initially interoperated it was a women writing a story about her young past (simply put) but I really though about the part where the boy asks what his mothers (our author) book is about to which she responds that its about ghosts.
“It’s a ghost story.
Is it frightening?
No, but it’s a bit sad.
Why? Because the ghosts are dead?
No, they’re not dead.
Then they’re not very ghosty.
No, they’re not ghosts.”
(pg 13-14)
The way I interoperated it was she is writing about people she once knew, their ghost aka the memories she has of those people, the shell of those people, and that maybe she was writing about the ghost of her own past self. I thought about this symbolism of ghost and what it could mean and the first thing I thought of was ghostwriters. A ghostwriter is a person who is hired to write for another person who is credited as an author. This got me thinking a lot about our story, how our narrator goes un-named, and how it seems like the author Gilberto Owen is writing a similar story to our authors life. This then brings up questions of who could be a ghost writer for who? Who is being hidden? Maybe it has something to do with her husband as from my understanding in the lecture he was first written in as a writer as well? There are so many writers and stories within this story that thinking about this long and hard kind of makes my head spin, so I’d love to know what you all think!

Question for you: Who or what do you think she is referring to when she talks of writing about ghosts?

The Shrouded Woman, My Personal Horror Story

Posted on by under Bombay

The Shrouded Woman by Maria Luisa Bombal constantly made me think of memories and death, honestly I didn’t enjoy this aspect of the story, let me tell you why. Often I worry about death and ending and spend a lot of my time fearing them, something I am trying to get over. I often worry about everything really (you could ask any of my family and friends) from earthquakes to crashing planes. So what I didn’t enjoy about this book was the constant looming of death over the entire novella. With every sweet memory the author spoke of I found myself almost forgetting they were dead, I was going through a roller-coaster of emotions.

I think if I passed away I wouldn’t want to be able to think of all my memories. I think I would ponder on them too much, even thought I would be dead, and the anxiousness of what could’ve been if I had done things differently would overtake me. I don’t think I would enjoy that very much.

What I did enjoy about this novel was it was much easier to follow than some we have been reading. In no way am I saying I enjoyed the other books we’ve read less, they were just more of a challenge to dissect. This felt a lot more digestible. Something that did, however, throw me off at points was the point of view, sometimes I couldn’t really figure out who was telling the story. This could just be my own confusion but I also believe that the point of view is what made this novel so unique.

Throughout the story there was a lot of descriptions of nature, lots of forests, rivers, and storms. It all made me think of Mother Nature and the give and take of nature in relation to the story. In a way I think Ana Maria was Mother Nature as she accepts her deaths and just wants to “feel the grass grow, new islands emerge, and on some other continent, the unknown flower bursting open that blooms only on a day of eclipse” (pg.259). There was a sort of mystical-ness to the story as Ana-Maria travelled through what seemed to be a sort of in between of her life and death, an opportunity to silently observe and recall given to her by a figureless light. Sometimes nature represented this in-between with forests and snow.

I also noticed lots of underlying proto-feminism with Ana-Maria, I feel like at this time a story from a women’s point of view, with such a life that Ana-Maria lived, was perhaps a little scandalous. She brings a lot of awareness to the struggles of women, their emotions and their passion, coming to some very forward thinking (for that time). We see this in page 226 when she says “Why, oh why must a woman’s nature be such that a man has always to be the pivot of her life?”. I personally really liked that quote, it made me think a lot about my own life. I also liked the cheeky fact that all the men were in love with her, I feel like it gave her a lot of agency to say no.

Question: Do you think the women in this story act on their agency? Do they use it for gain or fear it?

The Magical land of Combray – Marcel Proust

Posted on by under Proust

Combray, Proust

Combray by Marcel Proust overall gave me an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia. It reminded me very much of, from what I can remember, being a child. I felt connected with these scenarios of family situations, being a child at family gatherings. You know who everything is, you know kind of what’s going on, you know what feelings you are feeling but as a child, you don’t truly understand the gravity of things going on or being said and why you are feeling what you are feeling. I think this is described very well in the book, the boy knows he’s feeling anxious but can’t quite pinpoint why that truly is, all he knows is he wants his mom. I especially related to the scene where he wanted to see his mother even though he was not supposed to be out of bed and the anxiousness you feel as a kid wanting to talk to your parents when you should be sleeping. So in a sense the description of that scene was nostalgic for me.

Maybe it was just my reading into it however I found some bits of the novel and its trajectory hard to understand. I never quite knew where his thoughts were leading, like some thoughts spiralled into others which as a reader caused some confusion. But when I think about children and their sporadic train of thought this thinking process made sense to me. Often the child would see something that would remind him of something else, like seeing a book and remembering that his grandma bought and returned books for him which led to a thought about his grandma’s old spending and gifting habits. Often times I forgot about what the original thought or scene was until it was circled back to.

A recurring action throughout the novel is physical cues associated with memories, tastes, smells, actions, and feelings. There were a lot of combinations of scents that caused powerful and very lucid recollections. For example the smell of varnish that reminded him of a particular staircase, the smell and taste of the madaline and tea, the “dark cool smell of both forest and ancien regime” (pg.75) of a room he used to read in. This boy has a very acute sense of smell! I was amazed at the visual detail that was thoroughly described in some of the memories, not one detail was left out which made picturing scenes in my head very easy. – 50pg

I also thought his relationship/slight obsession (?) with his mother was very almost Freudian. Overall I picked up on the themes of memory, dreams, class and lucid visuals and enjoyed the vivid imagery of the settings in the novel. I found it quite ironic when he talked of places one has not been but heard stories and seen photos of, and how seeing it is almost disappointing all while the author creates this magical land of Combray.

Question: Do you have a childhood memory that is a very vivid memory for you?

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