Reviews - Nadja | The StoryGraph

You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.

334 reviews for:

Nadja

André Breton

3.37 AVERAGE

hannavazquez's review against another edition

3.0

I finished this while pooping

bookishboggoblin's review against another edition

2.0

i appreciate this books importance for the surrealist movement and some of the philosphical messages it relays, however oh boy do i do not like André Breton. He controlled and manipulated the story of a mentally ill woman that was not his to tell, and he told it from a very fetishy, egocentric, thinks he's an intellectual mastermind, kind of way. Instead of being sensitive to a woman's experience of intense mental suffering and illness, Breton fetished her and her experience as some kind of epitome for surrealism. I think it's worth reading once at least, but i didn't like Andre Breton's attitude at all.

jpmatt's review against another edition

3.75

adventurous challenging lighthearted reflective medium-paced

bedcarp's review against another edition

4.0

for the first 10 pages of breton's memoir i was convinced i wouldn't encounter a more impenetrable book this year -- and then, much like the looseness one feels under intoxication (tip for reading this book: get decently buzzed over lunchtime margaritas and just breeze through the entire thing in one sitting, it's fun) the wavelength of ideas this book operates on suddenly revealed itself, through the murky depths of its subconscious into mine. for me nadja's central motif, inasmuch as it can be said to contain one, is the freedom of the surreal, the isolated convulsions that hint at a truth outside of the vain presuppositions that pervade our existence. its titular character, inasmuch as she can be called one in all conventional sense of the word, can never be known except through the image she casts of herself in relation to breton's world. nadja is a celebration of the non-didactic subconsciousness that recasts the mundanity of parisian streets into a collage of anomalies, unknowable joys and griefs, much as the best surrealist art can and should aspire to. i'd venture, even, to call it strangely beautiful.

edit: reread this over the weekend. one of the best love stories of all time, all the more for not trying to be. tu n'es pas une énigme pour moi... je dis que tu me détournes pour toujours de l'énigme <3