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glyptodonsneeze's review
1.0
In further proof that one shouldn't choose novels randomly off of Librivox because they're female-authored and short, I have now spent six hours of my life reading Idomen, or the Vale of Yumuri and can never get those hours back, although, in fairness, I was doing other things while I was listen-reading, mainly washing dishes. Idomen is the semi-autobiographical novel of poetess and big fucking racist Maria Gowen Brooks; it's not completely biographical because Idomen drowns herself in the end, but before it ends, one must suffer the beginning, then the middle. Ah, the blissful, blissful end...
Idomen begins with a long essay about why, unrelatedly, suicide is bad and slavery is good. Suicide bad; slavery good. Probably everyone else who has attempted this novel had the sense to give up right there, but I wanted to see where in the pre-Civil War Americas she was going with this. Nowhere, it turns out. Idomen is structured from the point of view of a traveller in Cuba who stops at the estate of an old man who tells him the story of Idomen. The traveller admires the flowering trees and the comely slaves bringing him drinks and leans back to listen to the tale.. Basically, Idomen, despite her funny name, is of European descent and lives on the East Coast with her husband. The Cuban slave owner comes to visit and is captivated by Idomen. Flash forward several years, and widow Idomen arrives in Cuba because her uncle owns land (and humans) there. After a further nothing, Idomen departs for Canada where she writes long poetry (quite good, for what it's worth) and goes on and on about the, I'm going to garble the spelling because I can't find a text copy of Idomen on the whole, cursorily searched, internet, River Lahaduana, which flows to the St. Lawrence and then the sea. She becomes reacquainted with a man, Ethelwald, a cross between Heath Ledger and a statue, who admires Idomen and her long poetry. What's the problem? Well, he visits daily her until the river freezes over, and then, because crossing frozen rivers is treacherous as hell, he ceases visiting her, plunging her into a jarringly realistic depression which, as the denouement of a better novel, could have hammered my heart into a million crying pieces but doesn't make Idomen any better. Like Mathilda, Idomen manages to sort of not kill herself while dying romantically and leaves her Cuban friend in despair. Nobody is happy, except the slaves. Because they have simple lives and are taken care of by fatherly white people.
Read this book: If you want to advocate for the reinstatement of slavery in the sugar-producing world using the most half-assed arguments imaginable. If you hate drama, and want to read a dramatic novel where nothing happens.
http://surfeitofbooks.blogspot.com/2015/06/racism-with-bonus-incest.html
Idomen begins with a long essay about why, unrelatedly, suicide is bad and slavery is good. Suicide bad; slavery good. Probably everyone else who has attempted this novel had the sense to give up right there, but I wanted to see where in the pre-Civil War Americas she was going with this. Nowhere, it turns out. Idomen is structured from the point of view of a traveller in Cuba who stops at the estate of an old man who tells him the story of Idomen. The traveller admires the flowering trees and the comely slaves bringing him drinks and leans back to listen to the tale.. Basically, Idomen, despite her funny name, is of European descent and lives on the East Coast with her husband. The Cuban slave owner comes to visit and is captivated by Idomen. Flash forward several years, and widow Idomen arrives in Cuba because her uncle owns land (and humans) there. After a further nothing, Idomen departs for Canada where she writes long poetry (quite good, for what it's worth) and goes on and on about the, I'm going to garble the spelling because I can't find a text copy of Idomen on the whole, cursorily searched, internet, River Lahaduana, which flows to the St. Lawrence and then the sea. She becomes reacquainted with a man, Ethelwald, a cross between Heath Ledger and a statue, who admires Idomen and her long poetry. What's the problem? Well, he visits daily her until the river freezes over, and then, because crossing frozen rivers is treacherous as hell, he ceases visiting her, plunging her into a jarringly realistic depression which, as the denouement of a better novel, could have hammered my heart into a million crying pieces but doesn't make Idomen any better. Like Mathilda, Idomen manages to sort of not kill herself while dying romantically and leaves her Cuban friend in despair. Nobody is happy, except the slaves. Because they have simple lives and are taken care of by fatherly white people.
Read this book: If you want to advocate for the reinstatement of slavery in the sugar-producing world using the most half-assed arguments imaginable. If you hate drama, and want to read a dramatic novel where nothing happens.
http://surfeitofbooks.blogspot.com/2015/06/racism-with-bonus-incest.html
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