Reviews tagging 'Alcoholism'

On a Woman's Madness by Astrid H. Roemer

2 reviews

bookishcori's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective medium-paced

4.75

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ceallaighsbooks's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

“We walked the streets in silence. As if years hadn't gone by, there was still the same thick fruit hanging on the sea grape trees in the back alley, the plain houses concealing deep backyards. The canal slept under pink waterlilies, and people were left alone to go about their business. ‘You know what, Noenka, when I see you again, it's exactly like I'm falling to pieces. It's like it's raining somewhere. Like old things dying, time making a detour, like I'm breathing in a new orchid.’”

TITLE—On a Woman’s Madness
AUTHOR—Astrid Roemer
TRANSLATOR—Lucy Scott
PUBLISHED—orig. 1982; Eng. trans. 2023
PUBLISHER—Two Lines Press

GENRE—literary fiction
SETTING—Suriname
MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—colonialism, racism (incl. internalized & colorism), & slavery, snakes, queer themes, secrets & ostracism, legacy & genealogy, nonlinear chronology—intangible delineations bw the present and the past/memory, women’s agency in patriarchal societies, self-awareness & -identity, misogynistic/homophobic violence, the adaptability of religions & religious oppression, inherited & generational trauma, the horrendous pool of the whitemansworld, fairy-tale-esque fantasies & (day/)dreams, orchids, Surinamese culture & society, tennis, bi/pan-sexual MC

WRITING STYLE—🌕🌕🌕🌕🌖
CHARACTERS—🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗
STORY—🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗
BONUS ELEMENT/S—the orchids.
PHILOSOPHY—🌕🌕🌕🌕🌖/🌕

"Feel this! I'm alive too. I haven't forgotten a single thing. But there's more. Come here! Stand under the light. Look me in the eye.. do you see yourself? Do you recognize your image there? My head is full of you. Give me your hand. Close your fingers around my wrist! Feel how surely my life beats for you. My blood is full of you. Come rest your ear on my chest. Do you hear how my heart whispers your name? I love you."

My thoughts:
With an emotional, human complexity treated with the sensual, delicate touch reminiscent of Maryse Condé’s writing and a wind-swept, tide-pulsed narrative style reminiscent of Emmelie Prophète’s BLUE, this novel was unputdownable for me. Roemer asks a particular level of focus and investment from her readers that she rewards with a story, expertly told in a nonlinear way, interweaving memory and past experiences with the present, and demonstrating (so subtly and effortlessly with such powerful impact) the circular and cyclical nature of pre-(/anti-)colonial conceptions of time.

What I think also really got to me about this book is that Noenka is basically what happens when you have a person who lives their life for themself, *as* their true self—however imperfectly articulated, yet deeply understood—in a world that has been corrupted by the legacies of colonialism and slavery and (re-/de-)formed specifically to suppress (to put it mildly) people who try to do just that. Though fiction, it’s certainly not a fantasy; it’s so realistic as to be shocking. And yet still so tender? so beautiful? And so lighthearted! even in Noenka’s darkest moments of pain and feeling and desperation, she lives and loves so passionately and so lightheartedly.

Noenka is also so generous with her self-centeredness. Her commitment to herself is what allows her to be so generous with and passionate in her love of not just other people but of her life as it is, whatever it is—inspite of everything she cannot control—and of the world around her: just the deep *sanctity* of precious moments and true feeling inspite of the systems that fight against her and those like her. Though is anyone truly *like* Noenka? Maybe. But we are not meant to see them, right? Perhaps we should look a little harder around—and within—ourselves.

At times I felt that I should have stumbled across this book at an indie bookstore in college and binged it overnight in a library cubicle, fueled by triple espressos and stale pastries, when I should have been writing essays for art history. The prose is too beautiful, and the themes and plot too subtle—too inscrutable—for just one reading. An incredibly tender but insistent demonstration against heteronormativity, patriarchy, racism, christian oppression, classism, and monogamy, this book will definitely be a pleasure to revisit.

I would recommend this book to readers who love a beautiful, emotional, queer, challenging—but highly rewarding—read. This book is best read consistently (i.e. don’t let too much time pass between laying it down and picking it back up again) and with intense imaginative focus.

Final note: Noenka means “never again”. And her story declares that never again will she be anyone but herself.

“As long as he could be tender, tender, tender, because pain cracks a dream wide open.”

🌕🌕🌕🌕🌖

Season: Late Summer

CW // rape, domestic abuse, death, grief, abortion (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)

Further Reading—

Favorite Quotes—
“Apples. Nothing but apples, light pink with white bottoms that did no more than quench your thirst unless dipped in salt; deep red apples that brought to mind the angry pouts of old disgruntled aunties but tasted all the sweeter; and colorless ones so delicious that lines of black ants made an endless journey from their nests to the high branches, forcing their way into the cracks. The apples turned ripe all at once. Each morning, they lay in the dark backyard by the hundreds, and they kept falling, the whole day through.”

“At twenty-one, he got married, and from then on his wife's piety guaranteed his loyalty to the authorities, who provided him with bread and circuses.”

“‘We bury our dead within ourselves. We can also keep them alive. Everything that holds a place in our feelings stays alive. Everything we think of comes to life,’ I said firmly…”

“I tried to stand up to express my pain by spitting in his face. In my head, my voice was screaming: How could you hit me, black man? How could you hurt me so bad? Don't you know my wounds still hurt, black man, part of a cancer that is generations old? How could you get an erection while hitting me, black man? How could you repay pain with pain? I want you to be gentle with me, black man, a healer for that ancient cancer. I have nothing to do with that horrendous pool, black man, in which this whitemansworld wants to drown you. I am a sister suffering along with you, black man.”

“A voice in my innermost self wept like an abandoned child. The canopy of the sky covered me, Catholic and blue. Ulcers opened up. It was Easter Saturday: the Bohemian priest pushed me under the water with a salmon-colored cross. All around us, brand-new Bibles and rolled up professions of faith. His breath stinking of the blood of his Christ: the coerced sacrifice to Venus. On that Easter morning, he broke the sacred apostolic bread, and a hellish pain erupted in my chest when I saw him proffering it to us neophytes. Despairing, I left the line.”

“God is Love, and Love shall be made fesh in order to be with human beings.”

“I would marry Louis next year... Full of reservations and fear of him pulling me down into something that I was trying with all my might to rise above, the limitedness of my womanhood, of my blackness, and of my material powerlessness.”

“They scorned me by stroking my vanity and at the same time filled me with embarrassment. At any rate, I was left with nothing more than a neurotic shyness, my feeling of shame every time a man glanced at me, and the wall of hostility thrown up by heaps of women. And that stung me, for the only thing I wanted was to be comforted by love.”

“I didn't want to make any preparations for Tomorrow. Nor learn any lessons from Yesterday.”

“‘It's not men who oppress women, Noenka. It's not whites who oppress blacks. It's the centuries-long hunt for gold.’
‘I am gold,’ I said spitefully.”

“…I looked out at the beetles, hundreds of them, on the well-lit stoop. Some flew again toward the lightbulb, bumped their hard bodies into it, and fell down to the doorstep. Dizzy or dead. What did it even matter? They died by the hundreds at night and in the mornings disappeared into hungry chickens, who in turn were shredded between our carnivorous teeth. And the earth laughs! Only the earth laughs! In her, we all come to the same end.”

“The word ‘Never’ always has significance in suffering…”

“After two days, I also completely transcended the material plane: a new rag doll was added to the puppet show.”

“I've never forgotten how a city can gawk when someone eludes its pettiness. Paramaribo. How can I forget how drearily you breathed on that Monday afternoon? At first, I thought it was the hatred of those I'd left behind that hung over me like a toxic cloud, but when lightning bolts pierced your lead-white sky, I realized you were spitting me out.”

“Before going to sleep, I tried to explain my distress to God. Not to God the Father, God the Son, or God the Holy Ghost. What are you looking for, my mother asked, seeing me thumbing through all the books. I didn't answer. I would not pray again until I found God the Mother.”

“My God, orchids: hanging down in blue and orange clusters, inaccessible and vibrant with a fragrance that knew no name. ‘Shall I pick some for you?’ asked Brother Kofi because I was staring at the magnetic miracle of the flowers. I shook my head. My desire to possess them was of minor importance next to the feeling that only they could give, and taken from the pungent water that fed them, they'd only wilt and shrivel.”

“I went to her, determined to overcome my shyness, to lay my soul bare for once in my life and offer it to another.
‘You're what heals me. You give me life, Gabrielle.’ I grabbed her hand, but she pulled it back and raced out into the sun.
I stood there, dirty, disappointed, and indescribably alone, with the thought of surrendering to the incurable illness of True Love, that tangible horizon... the mirage.”

"I'm Noenka, which means Never Again. Born of two polar opposites, a woman and a man who pull even my dreams apart. I'm a woman, even though I don't know where being female begins and where it ends, and in the eyes of everyone else, I'm black, and I'm still waiting to discover what that means."

“Free, but with the slave's fear and the master's hunger.”

“I'd like to ask my mother. Mama, may I love a woman? May I find a substitute for the love I received from you? Am I supposed to shun the being I know best? Mother of mine, am I the daughter you dreamed of, or am I the daughter who's dreaming? My God, who is stuck in her dream? Or has someone awakened? Mama, nowhere else can I find a substitute for your love but in the heart of another woman. I know, there's no replacement for the real thing, and the real thing is not flesh but spirit. But since Gabrielle became a part of my life, I have found peace.”
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