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4.04 AVERAGE
4.04 AVERAGE
Based on reading this and upon a Bookworm interview she gave for it, I believe that all the characters in these stories are actually Kate, including Diane Barrington and her friend Carlotta. Schizophrenia is mentioned in many of Braverman's work mostly in reference to her mother. But there is a splitting that occurred within Kate when it came to her attempts at sobriety. She is haunted by her childhood and by old lovers who fueled her addictions. These subjects recur over and over again and yet Kate, ever the poet, makes it all fresh with her incredible mastery of language. A troubled, brilliant, intense woman who left us far too soon.
Twelve short stories, crafted with acute attention to constructing the perfect sentence, the willful sentiment. "Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta" was by far my favorite, a combination of O'Connor's devil in "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and a West Coast Tama Janowitz heroine.
Blue is a common motif threaded through each story, and while Braverman is a fantastic author I think I should have perhaps spaced out the reading of the stories over more days - the booze/drug fueled women-on-the-verge, dealing with daughters that hate and men that abandon are present in every story, making the collection bleed into one. A friend gave a high recommendation for [b:Lithium for Medea|37785|Lithium for Medea|Kate Braverman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1391042449s/37785.jpg|37587], that will be my next Braverman.
Blue is a common motif threaded through each story, and while Braverman is a fantastic author I think I should have perhaps spaced out the reading of the stories over more days - the booze/drug fueled women-on-the-verge, dealing with daughters that hate and men that abandon are present in every story, making the collection bleed into one. A friend gave a high recommendation for [b:Lithium for Medea|37785|Lithium for Medea|Kate Braverman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1391042449s/37785.jpg|37587], that will be my next Braverman.
So incredibly sad, with too few moments of redemption. Not an easy or enjoyable read.
I fell for Braverman's writing quite deeply in the first pages, and was then pushed out with every subsequent turn of the page. Her use of words and imagery do not make up for many manifestations of privileged disaffection and ennui that mirror each other. Over and over she writes about things coalescing, but it feels more like emptiness merging with emptiness with nothing to say and nothing to anchor.