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adriennel's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.25
fwlichstein's review against another edition
5.0
Deeply beautiful and affecting. I've read this book about 10 times.
msjaquiss's review against another edition
1.0
Perhaps the single most boring book I’ve ever read. No part of it interested me. And the device of slipping back in time to tell stories that affected decisions in the present was overdone and a waste of words in every instance.
leleroulant's review against another edition
4.0
Check out my review on my blog http://melsbooksandblatherings.blogspot.com/
_alyosha_'s review
dark
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
teaganjane7's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
phenixsnow's review against another edition
Listened to almost an hour of the audiobook on a road ttip. Literally nothing happened in that hour. Was so bored I pulled the car over and downloaded another book.
editrix's review
This was a lot a lot like “The Lying Life of Adults” (which is a lot a lot like “My Brilliant Friend”), and also like "Atonement," with a bit of "Children's Bible" wafting in here and there (although noticeably more European than American). It's a book about loss and disillusionment and coming to terms with unfortunate realities—histories, presents, and futures. If you like watching angst develop in real time in teenaged girls trying to figure out how the world works, this is one to try. It's complicated and imperfect and uncomfortable, and it contains more questions than answers, and I'm not sure if I *liked* it as much as I appreciated it (although I appreciated it a whole lot; the author has a fascinating mind), and I can't think of any specific person I'd recommend this to, but maybe you'll like or appreciate it too?
Here are some killer vocab words, followed by some quotes that capture the big-smallness/close-vastness of the book's arc:
cicatrise: to heal by scar formation
bibelots: small, decorative ornaments or trinkets
pullulate: multiply or spread prolifically or rapidly, or to be full of or teeming with
chevelure: head of hair
soughing: making a moaning, whistling, or rushing sound, as of the sea
shantung: a type of silk weave fabric
estival: belonging to or appearing in summer
tentacular: equipped with tentacles
medusa (adj): like a free-swimming sexual form of a coelenterate such as a jellyfish
marabout: a shrine marking the burial place of a Muslim holy man or hermit
nacreous: having a play of lustrous rainbow colors, like mother-of-pearl
flense: to slice the skin or fat from a carcass
abscission: the natural detachment of parts of a plant, typically dead leaves and ripe fruit
"But fourteen is not an age a which you ask outright for answers: not yet. Those in-between years are a haze of second-guessing and dialogues entirely of the mind. The possibility of human proximity seems greater than it ever will again, trailing still the unreflective clouds of childhood, the intimate, unsentenced dialogue of laughter or of games. Children do not have the words to ask and so do not imagine asking; not asking and not imagining, they eradicate distance: they take for granted that everything, someday, will be understood. // Adolescence, then is a curious station on the route from ignorant communion to our ultimate isolation, the place where words and silences reveal themselves to be meaningful and yet where, too young to acknowledge that we cannot gauge their meaning, we imagine it for ourselves and behave. Only with the passage of years, wearied, do we resort to asking. With the inadequacy of asking and the inadequacy of replies comes the realization that what we thought we understood bears no relation to what exists, the way, seeing the film of a book we have read, we are aghast to find the heroine a strapping blonde when we had pictured her all these years a small brunette; and her house, which we envisaged so clearly and quaintly on the edge of a purple moor, a vast, unfamiliar pile of rubble with all its rooms out of order."
"When you are fourteen—or fifteen, or sixteen—none of it on such a morning after seems at all possible....Blithley to say it seems unreal is not to capture the complexity of the state: what has come before hovers like a dream, and what is yet to come is unimaginable. The future stretches far to the horizon, but between now and it a chasm has opened, for which no possible bridge can be seen. This was my second encounter with such rupture, and already I was learning that such times, when all that was fixed is suddenly inchoate, are perhaps more real than any other: the passage of time inflicts itself in each ticking of the clock, the light is brighter, the outlines of objects painfully distinct. And mixed with fear and dismay lies an undeniable, glittering anticipation, a detached curiosity: something must happen that I cannot foresee; none will come, and evening, and tomorrow; that bridge from here to there must be built and must be crossed, and when I turn back from the other side, the very chasm will have closed up as if it had never been."
"I wanted, really, to write an essay about what it was like to be penned into a corner where every choice was wrong, where nobody would trust you and where the truth could not be told because it didn't exist. Camus knew it, and in my little way I knew it too. We all knew it, in my house, but we didn't talk about it."
"Words, meaningless though they might ring, as wrongly as we may interpret them, are the only missiles with which we are equipped, which we can lob across the uncharted terrain between our souls."
"I was asked why I had done it [jumped into a fountain at age four]. I announced—and it was true; I remember precisely the instant of teetering—that, aware I was going to fall willy-nilly, I had assumed my fate by making it my intention. What I actually said was simpler, of course: 'I was falling, so I jumped.' // Already at four, from somewhere, I had faith in intention—as if the fact that it had been willed altered the quality of my wetness, and the cold that ensued....And that, always, was the lesson of my family's stories....The implication was clear. Severance, departure, once mooted, must be seen as inevitable: that has always been my unquestioned belief. If choice is illusory, the aim must be to keep the illusion intact. With this corollary: there is no returning. We need the might-have-been because we know it will not ever be; the imaginary is our sustenance, but the real is where we live, a reality of fragments. We move the pieces when movement is possible, because possibility and necessity, on some plane, are one; because what is fated and what will be are inescapably the same, and the illusion our only choice, choice our illusion."
On death: "Even now, when I lock myself out of my apartment, and yet can see, in my mind, the exact position of my keys on the kitchen counter, ready to be snatched up—I cannot quite accept that those keys are inaccessible to me, that in the instant in which I slammed the door they became irretrievably, unsalvageable distant, on the other side, in the might-have-been, the ought-to-have-been; and it is only belatedly and with greater reluctance that I summon the super, or the locksmith—depending on the hour—admitting thereby that I cannot will the keys—and yet I see them, so exactly, and can feel their slippery coldness, their jagged runs—into my present pocket; that my error cannot be undone."
Here are some killer vocab words, followed by some quotes that capture the big-smallness/close-vastness of the book's arc:
cicatrise: to heal by scar formation
bibelots: small, decorative ornaments or trinkets
pullulate: multiply or spread prolifically or rapidly, or to be full of or teeming with
chevelure: head of hair
soughing: making a moaning, whistling, or rushing sound, as of the sea
shantung: a type of silk weave fabric
estival: belonging to or appearing in summer
tentacular: equipped with tentacles
medusa (adj): like a free-swimming sexual form of a coelenterate such as a jellyfish
marabout: a shrine marking the burial place of a Muslim holy man or hermit
nacreous: having a play of lustrous rainbow colors, like mother-of-pearl
flense: to slice the skin or fat from a carcass
abscission: the natural detachment of parts of a plant, typically dead leaves and ripe fruit
"But fourteen is not an age a which you ask outright for answers: not yet. Those in-between years are a haze of second-guessing and dialogues entirely of the mind. The possibility of human proximity seems greater than it ever will again, trailing still the unreflective clouds of childhood, the intimate, unsentenced dialogue of laughter or of games. Children do not have the words to ask and so do not imagine asking; not asking and not imagining, they eradicate distance: they take for granted that everything, someday, will be understood. // Adolescence, then is a curious station on the route from ignorant communion to our ultimate isolation, the place where words and silences reveal themselves to be meaningful and yet where, too young to acknowledge that we cannot gauge their meaning, we imagine it for ourselves and behave. Only with the passage of years, wearied, do we resort to asking. With the inadequacy of asking and the inadequacy of replies comes the realization that what we thought we understood bears no relation to what exists, the way, seeing the film of a book we have read, we are aghast to find the heroine a strapping blonde when we had pictured her all these years a small brunette; and her house, which we envisaged so clearly and quaintly on the edge of a purple moor, a vast, unfamiliar pile of rubble with all its rooms out of order."
"When you are fourteen—or fifteen, or sixteen—none of it on such a morning after seems at all possible....Blithley to say it seems unreal is not to capture the complexity of the state: what has come before hovers like a dream, and what is yet to come is unimaginable. The future stretches far to the horizon, but between now and it a chasm has opened, for which no possible bridge can be seen. This was my second encounter with such rupture, and already I was learning that such times, when all that was fixed is suddenly inchoate, are perhaps more real than any other: the passage of time inflicts itself in each ticking of the clock, the light is brighter, the outlines of objects painfully distinct. And mixed with fear and dismay lies an undeniable, glittering anticipation, a detached curiosity: something must happen that I cannot foresee; none will come, and evening, and tomorrow; that bridge from here to there must be built and must be crossed, and when I turn back from the other side, the very chasm will have closed up as if it had never been."
"I wanted, really, to write an essay about what it was like to be penned into a corner where every choice was wrong, where nobody would trust you and where the truth could not be told because it didn't exist. Camus knew it, and in my little way I knew it too. We all knew it, in my house, but we didn't talk about it."
"Words, meaningless though they might ring, as wrongly as we may interpret them, are the only missiles with which we are equipped, which we can lob across the uncharted terrain between our souls."
"I was asked why I had done it [jumped into a fountain at age four]. I announced—and it was true; I remember precisely the instant of teetering—that, aware I was going to fall willy-nilly, I had assumed my fate by making it my intention. What I actually said was simpler, of course: 'I was falling, so I jumped.' // Already at four, from somewhere, I had faith in intention—as if the fact that it had been willed altered the quality of my wetness, and the cold that ensued....And that, always, was the lesson of my family's stories....The implication was clear. Severance, departure, once mooted, must be seen as inevitable: that has always been my unquestioned belief. If choice is illusory, the aim must be to keep the illusion intact. With this corollary: there is no returning. We need the might-have-been because we know it will not ever be; the imaginary is our sustenance, but the real is where we live, a reality of fragments. We move the pieces when movement is possible, because possibility and necessity, on some plane, are one; because what is fated and what will be are inescapably the same, and the illusion our only choice, choice our illusion."
On death: "Even now, when I lock myself out of my apartment, and yet can see, in my mind, the exact position of my keys on the kitchen counter, ready to be snatched up—I cannot quite accept that those keys are inaccessible to me, that in the instant in which I slammed the door they became irretrievably, unsalvageable distant, on the other side, in the might-have-been, the ought-to-have-been; and it is only belatedly and with greater reluctance that I summon the super, or the locksmith—depending on the hour—admitting thereby that I cannot will the keys—and yet I see them, so exactly, and can feel their slippery coldness, their jagged runs—into my present pocket; that my error cannot be undone."
dmahanty's review
4.0
Set in France 1990's, Sagesse LaBasse (a teenager of French-American decent)learns about her family's past and their role in the Frech/Algiers war. She also learns of the private history of her father. All of those histories come together to develop Sagesse into the woman she becomes and relects upon in this novel. Beautifully written.
kirstiecat's review
4.0
This was a much better book in many ways than The Emperor's Children but still revolves around the legacy of a wealthy family. Most of the book is set in France and Algiers but some of it is set in the United States on the East Coast. At its core, this book is an exploration of identity centered around a protagonist female who is "coming of age." At the same time, growing up with a brother who has a serious disability (from the sounds of the description, severe profound cognition and physical disabilities), changes any sibling and her/his own experience of life. In many ways, what we also see is the tremendous effect that leaving Algiers had on the family. The protagonist learns about the traumatic exit of her own father.
This book is political and, in my opinion, deals with a plethora of issues that many books don't ever explore. For example: racism and sexism, classism, adolescence, family, disability, national identity vs. personal identity, infidelity, and history. It has already encouraged me to read more about The Battle of Algiers and I expect to continue that. The 4/5 rating basically means I think this book is well worth reading. I don't give books a 5/5 rating unless I think every word is pretty much brilliant and you should stop whatever you're doing right this second and read something that is profoundly life changing. That said, this one is still a keeper. Messud also has a way of language...it's poetic without knocking you over the head with it most of the time.
Memorable quotes:
pg. 47 "It would have been so easy not to go: the plunge into the sleeping night seemed like an enormous effort, a question mark."
pg. 113 "I laughed. I lay back too, and could hear the tiny tickings of the grass blades. The earth smelled like pennies. "The sky is incredible." I agreed. There was no breeze, but high above clouds were chasing across the ether, their shapes erratic and amusing."
pg. 120 They had been examining men's bones for years but it occurred to them that the peculiar afflictions of women required special attention, that their secrets lay in the osteal geography of the fairer sets. Their conclusions revolutionized not only medical but social understanding. Woman, the scientists explained to scores of German medical students, all eyes on the female skeleton dangling cheerily at the lectern, Woman has a smaller brain, and wider hips. Her constitution is lower to the ground and that great gaping cavern in her abdomen is the center of her soul. Woman is mother, a separate creature from man, with a distinct and scientifically proven role. She is the Angel in the House , they said, or others said after them: it's bred in the bone.
What the scientists did not mention, perhaps forgot themselves, was that the woman on whom this analysis of Woman was based wasn't one. Her hands and head and hips and ribs were not born together. They were all bones of different women, wired together. The scientists threw the pieces into the air, and this is what came down. And there were no more tosses, mo more chances. Women were stuck with Her, even though she didn't really exist. It made me wonder, how much is pretending.
pg. 317 "My father chuckled, 'Good, very good. Why did the man beat his head against the wall?'"
It was an old joke in our house. 'Because it felt so good when he stopped.' I kept my tone flat."
This book is political and, in my opinion, deals with a plethora of issues that many books don't ever explore. For example: racism and sexism, classism, adolescence, family, disability, national identity vs. personal identity, infidelity, and history. It has already encouraged me to read more about The Battle of Algiers and I expect to continue that. The 4/5 rating basically means I think this book is well worth reading. I don't give books a 5/5 rating unless I think every word is pretty much brilliant and you should stop whatever you're doing right this second and read something that is profoundly life changing. That said, this one is still a keeper. Messud also has a way of language...it's poetic without knocking you over the head with it most of the time.
Memorable quotes:
pg. 47 "It would have been so easy not to go: the plunge into the sleeping night seemed like an enormous effort, a question mark."
pg. 113 "I laughed. I lay back too, and could hear the tiny tickings of the grass blades. The earth smelled like pennies. "The sky is incredible." I agreed. There was no breeze, but high above clouds were chasing across the ether, their shapes erratic and amusing."
pg. 120 They had been examining men's bones for years but it occurred to them that the peculiar afflictions of women required special attention, that their secrets lay in the osteal geography of the fairer sets. Their conclusions revolutionized not only medical but social understanding. Woman, the scientists explained to scores of German medical students, all eyes on the female skeleton dangling cheerily at the lectern, Woman has a smaller brain, and wider hips. Her constitution is lower to the ground and that great gaping cavern in her abdomen is the center of her soul. Woman is mother, a separate creature from man, with a distinct and scientifically proven role. She is the Angel in the House , they said, or others said after them: it's bred in the bone.
What the scientists did not mention, perhaps forgot themselves, was that the woman on whom this analysis of Woman was based wasn't one. Her hands and head and hips and ribs were not born together. They were all bones of different women, wired together. The scientists threw the pieces into the air, and this is what came down. And there were no more tosses, mo more chances. Women were stuck with Her, even though she didn't really exist. It made me wonder, how much is pretending.
pg. 317 "My father chuckled, 'Good, very good. Why did the man beat his head against the wall?'"
It was an old joke in our house. 'Because it felt so good when he stopped.' I kept my tone flat."