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3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Sofia Papastergiadis - half-Greek, with a surname inherited from her father that nobody seems to be able to pronounce - travels to Almería in the south of Spain, seeking answers for her mother Rose’s mysterious paralysis. Sofia has stopped the pursuit of her PhD in Anthropology to look after her mum almost full-time, a relationship that is wrought with codependency.
Hypnotic encapsulates what the feeling of reading this book was like. The atmosphere that Levy created was so rich, something about it that transported me right to the heart of Andalusia, and yet while I was there it was akin to the feeling of lazing around during a hot summer afternoon by the beach, where everything feels hazy, a version of reality that doesn’t seem quite the same. A lot of what occurs in this book you have to question as to whether it’s real or a product of Sofia’s imagination and a lot of the dialogue feels unnatural, each character that we come across more bizarre than the previous. Some of the interactions felt as if we were missing half the context, as if Sofia was transcribing the events in a way that only she could understand, or how she wanted to see things.
I can’t claim to have understood all of the symbolism in this book, but I can appreciate that it is expertly crafted. Medusa is concurrent theme throughout the entire book, as the story opens up with her being stung by medusas (as jellyfish are called in Spanish), with references to her story in Greek mythology referenced throughout, which I thought held a lot of symbolic value in terms of Sofia’s grapplings with her identity and her relationships. At one point in the book, she decides to travel to Greece to meet her estranged father who she hasn’t seen she was 14; here, the wider macroeconomic crisis that Greece was facing at the time is linked seamlessly to her own personal relationship with her father, one of my favourite quotes being: ‘I have come to Athens to call in a debt my father owes me for never being around … but his debts go back a long way. As a result of his first default, my mother has a mortgage on my life.’
I went into this book fully aware of the possibility that I won’t understand everything, that some references will fly over my head. Perhaps this was the best way for me to go about it, because I let myself be carried by the atmosphere of this book, and I’m still constantly thinking of how I can interpret and unpack what occurred in this story. It’s not a book that I expected to enjoy so much, but I feel completely enchanted by it, a book that I will struggle to forget.
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Well, the narrative created compelling imagery, and the hyper focus on the small elements that make human interactions meaningful was fascinating to read especially in the broader context of an anthropologist assessing the different layers of human experience through the lens of a “sociologist”, it felt like the ending was more confusing than I would’ve liked. The mother ends up not being dead but the closing conversation seems to invoke more question marks than meaningful resolves. And I find that frustrating especially from a book which rather lazily gives too few answers.
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Very atmospheric, place was a character and set the tone. Felt like a fever dream, one I don’t particularly remember well after just a week or two. I enjoyed it as I was reading it, though! Good if you want a well written, quiet book.
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes