Reviews with content warning for Suicidal thoughts - Activities of Daily Living

Activities of Daily Living is a book that’s grown on me the more I’ve thought about it. Which is good because I initially wasn’t sure if it was going to be a book for me. There are two main strands to the novel, both involving Alice, and they intertwine and interrelate with each other. The first is a loosely defined project that she’s working on, involving the work of performance artist Tehching Hsieh. The second involves her relationship with her father who has developed dementia. As I read I struggled with the art storyline. It was quite cerebral and abstract, I’m not familiar with the art world and don’t really understand the concepts involved in more contemporary art. The second storyline, involving her father and his dementia was fine intellectually, but challenged me emotionally since I have a close family member with dementia. As I read more and began to comprehend the connections between the two storylines, particularly when it came to time - what it means and how we use and value it - my appreciation of this book began to grow. It’s abstract and philosophical, and not for every reader. Readers need to be okay with idiosyncratic stylistic choices, such as the terms “the Father” and “the Artist”. I do think art lovers would enjoy this book and probably get more out of it that I did. But it left me with plenty to think about, and I keep returning to thoughts that it prompted. I’m very glad I stuck with it.

“Wasting time only has a negative connotation when we accept the narrow idea that time is money…What if wasting time were not negative at all, but the very essence of what it means to be creative and live a life? The production of such a life would have nothing to do with commodity.”

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challenging emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

3.5

Activities of Daily Living portrays a slice of Alice’s life–the years her father’s health rapidly deteriorates from severe dementia, moving from his house into several nursing homes based on his care needs. Simultaneously, she is fixated on both the Taiwanese performance artist Tehching Hsieh for what she calls The Project, and the concept of projects as a coping mechanism against the durational performance that is life. The book flips between the history of Hsieh’s practice and Alice’s visits to California to see her dad, with clear parallels made between their experiences with isolation and battles with time.

This story hit home for me in so many ways. My grandma was recently admitted into a care home after many unmanageable instances over the years. I worked in art for a decade, focussing on contemporary Asian art, in which Tehching Hsieh is a legend. And I know how Alice feels as she busies herself with projects that either don’t manifest or don’t pay, and how she tries to understand life through art, theory, and literature, holding onto these coping mechanisms that are ultimately ineffective. I loved the heart of this novel and the writing style–how it connected plot to Sontag, Levé, etc. in meandering ways, yet was approachable to read. Still, something needed to be tweaked. Perhaps it needed to be in first-person POV vs. third, as the narration was very “stream of consciousness” but was hindered by its detached feeling. I was also jarred when reality mixed with fiction–Alice attended real-life exhibitions, but then the story at times shifted into a bit of a Tehching Hsieh fan fiction; the mix left me not knowing how to position my headspace.

Overall, this was tender and introspective, and gave me a lot to think about. Fans of art history and critical theory would especially enjoy it.

Thank you to NetGalley and W.W. Norton & Company. Activities of Daily Living comes out on April 12.

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