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4.33 AVERAGE
4.33 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
I have not read the red part, perhaps that would give clarity, but I also feel this stands alone. The prose were good, in that infinitely tender manner, some of the parts I found superfluous for such a long book. Maybe reading this book closer to when it came out would make me like it more, but now the whole style of this book and type of poetry/writing it shows is so normal, that it shiny newness has dulled slightly for me.
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
Maggie Nelson does it again. This books is a remarkable experiment in what poetry can do. Maggie Nelson weaves dreamscapes, newspaper clippings, research, diary entries, and non-fiction prose into a gruesome analysis of her aunt's murder. I could read this book over and over again. Nelson's voice is like no one else's: simultaneously melancholy, assured, unflinching. It takes the best poetic parts of Something Bright Then Holes, combines them with theories she'd later outline in The Art of Cruelty, and whacks it home with Bluets/Argonauts-style honesty. Read this! Read it twice. Read, rinse, repeat.
challenging
mysterious
medium-paced
Maggie Nelson is bible. Due to the large swaths of poetry mixed with short-from prose, this is a book that can be easily burned through. However, with the subject matter and Nelson’s deftly intentional voice, there’s a sort of hold-your-breath quality that comes with reading it. Beautiful and tragic, this book is a fiercely intimate account of inherited trauma, grief, family devotion, curiosity, independence, interdependence, and sisterhood.
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“My mother remembers something about Jane making a call for help—a frantic call from a public phone. But when I ask whom she called or from where, my mother admits her memory on this point is far from clear. I’ve looked and looked, but there’s no record of any call. No: when Jane disappeared, she disappeared whole. It’s a fantasy, I suppose—a way of breathing air into the cramp of that night. It gives my mother another chance to fail; Jane, a chance to fight.”
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“My mother remembers something about Jane making a call for help—a frantic call from a public phone. But when I ask whom she called or from where, my mother admits her memory on this point is far from clear. I’ve looked and looked, but there’s no record of any call. No: when Jane disappeared, she disappeared whole. It’s a fantasy, I suppose—a way of breathing air into the cramp of that night. It gives my mother another chance to fail; Jane, a chance to fight.”
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
Confusing. I feel like it could have been way longer and that would be satisfying? I just felt uncomfortable with her publishing these diaries? It could have still worked without them I think