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alexreads22's review
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
Weird!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Drug use, Gaslighting, Mental illness, Incest, Misogyny, Gore, Religious bigotry, Animal death, Antisemitism, and Death
blacksallyrooney's review
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
2.5 / 5 stars
Existence is futile, Sarah Bernstein’s Giller Prize-winning second novel offers flat-out, from its first to its last page. The possibility of a peaceful, or peaceable, life is outright denied, and this conclusion is decisive in the novel’s respective study (or, even, a fable) of Jewish life and diaspora, of power among intimacy, of land, and of the shroud of the Holocaust that Europe willfully wound around itself yet writhes against.
Existence is futile, Sarah Bernstein’s Giller Prize-winning second novel offers flat-out, from its first to its last page. The possibility of a peaceful, or peaceable, life is outright denied, and this conclusion is decisive in the novel’s respective study (or, even, a fable) of Jewish life and diaspora, of power among intimacy, of land, and of the shroud of the Holocaust that Europe willfully wound around itself yet writhes against.
I appreciate Bernstein’s attempt to ‘unspool’ (a word she loves—perhaps too much) this immersive insight into social degradation and power’s effects on the psyche, as well as the powerful mundanity of cruelty, exclusion, and genocide.
However, I was continually unconvinced by the narrator’s placidity, which goes beyond the bounds of stylistic preference and felt like a fundamental rift between myself and Bernstein in what this book’s philosophy is. At times the novel worked in examining ‘how much’ the unnamed narrator could take, psychically—I felt these worked best in more surreal scenes, like the diner scene, which is probably among the best writing. Yet the shakiest parts were these repeating, droning flashbacks that recounted in minute detail the slights and terrors that the narrator had experienced from girlhood onward, so similar in its restrained tone, so fatalistic and deferential to the world’s inevitable cruelty, it wasn’t devastating—it was annoying.
Now, this may be intentional on Bernstein’s part, to evoke a guilt in the reader for becoming so fed-up with a woman staying down after being knocked down. Even, maybe, to implicate the reader in the narrator’s subjection. If it’s the case that it’s intended, it’s even more grating.
I’m not sure if we can both—if a character so totally isolated her entire life from a crumb of fairness and self-determination can also be so articulate about the conditions of her own suffering, without, 1) uttering the word “antisemitism” (which is not erased by any means, but is designed to be the invisible, throttling force—I’m still thinking-through this, but how might this book have been more productive if blatantly voiced?); and 2) uttering a howl?
Here’s my idealism bubbling up—my fault—I believe, like the arc of the moral universe, the human heart bends toward justice. Bernstein’s narrator and I won’t see eye-to-eye on this. But I’m not sure if she’s designed to be able to see into very much, including her own agonies, and that might be a bug, not a feature.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, and Gore
Moderate: Xenophobia
Minor: Emotional abuse and Antisemitism
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