This week’s reading (and the last book for this term) was definitely something, from trying to figure out what is happening (and the anxiety that comes from within) and also trying to fully understand WHAT is happening. I had a fun time reading Borges, but this book was definitely something to read and now write a blogpost about it. It is not that I didn’t like this book, I actually did find it very interesting from the way it is built to the experience the reader has when reading this book. It’s just that I got lost to the point where I would get frustrated and just wanted to get over this book. That did not happen to me with Borges or Yo-Yo Boing!, which were also books that had me lost, but maybe it was the overall almost-end-of-semester stress that got me.
Either way, I did like this book, it’s just that it was more difficult than expected (hopefully I am not the only one that feels this way so I don’t feel dumb later reading the other blogposts). Something that I really liked about this book was the mother-daughter relationship portrayed, how Amanda always seems to be worried about Nina who is always sick. Maybe it is the fact that I am homesick at this point of the term, but it was nice to witness those moments of their relationship. Unlike the other books that we have read in this term that include difficult relationships between father-son (like Pedro Paramo) or just overall difficult relationships between girls (like in Mama Blanca’s memoirs), it was nice to read these instances of worry that Amanda feels when she doesn’t know how Nina is doing.
One thing that I did not enjoy of this book was David’s character, I just did not like his presence. It was as if he was invading or interrupting a very serious-family incident that was very personal. I did not appreciate his constant need to know every single little detail (but I do have to acknowledge the fact that without his pressure we would not have known what was going on) and I also did not like it when he said stuff in Amanda’s story was not necessary. Maybe it is the hatred I have started to build towards male characters in the books we have read but I think there could have been a more subtle, non-agressive way in which David could have been presented to the reader.
Anyways, I think this is one of the most “negative” blogposts I have written, but I truly did like reading this book, even though it genuinely did feel like a fever dream at some point.
My question for the class is: What did you think of the way the story is built? Did you also get lost? Do you think that a different way to tell the story would have helped you understand it better?
Rebecca, we all feel disoriented reading this book, but as you say, somehow we have been able to enjoy it. You have noted something crucial in the novel: the male characters. There is compassion in the female characters, but the male ones are particularly strange to us, because they are frustrated and frustrating, and that feeling is another plague in the story. There is no problem with this blogpost being “negative”… the sensations of the book have invaded you beyond the moment of reading and have stayed with you.
I also had some trouble with this book and found it less enjoyable than other disorienting writers like Borges or Lispector. That isn’t to say I disliked it, but my reaction was pretty neutral compared to how much I usually love books that play with the reader’s mind. This might have been because I was already aware of its ambiguously environmentalist themes, or because I had more trouble relating to its themes of motherhood than the abstract thought experiments of Borges or the explorations of capitalist alienation in Lispector. Or maybe it is just because this is the end of the semester and I’m too stressed to really engross myself in a book as I could earlier.