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diana_raquel's review
3.0
Did you ever buy a book just because the title caught your attention? You don't know anything about the book or its author, but the title is interesting and eye-catching, so you get curious. This is what happened to me: I was looking for a play that I could use in a school project, and I came across this book. I didn't use this one in the project, but I brought it nonetheless. And, the first time that I read it, I loved it and even recommended it to some of my friends.
Based on Noren's personal life, Night is the Mother of Day or Natten är dagens mor (original title) is a Swedish play that portrays the life of a dysfunctional family. In it, David, a young boy, is confronted with the double-faced daily life of this father, who suffers from severe alcohol abuse, while his mother is dying of cancer, and his elder brother frowns upon him and his love of jazz and literature (I think that David is codded as gay, but I'm not sure). It's a play about the effects of alienation from both family and society. Therefore, there's a couple of content warnings to be aware of: consumption of alcohol and discussion of alcohol abuse; use of strong (homophobic and sexist) language; depictions of violence; and depictions of physical, psychological, and emotional abuse.
At face value, this is one of those plays/books that I would love. The themes are interesting; the characters are extremely complex and human; the tone is fatalistic, and it has a really interesting mix of hyper-realism and poetic symbolism. The characters are in a permanent state of war with each other, using words as weapons, where everybody shouts but no one listens or is heard. And I really liked all of these elements. But I didn't love the play.
I don't know what happened. As I said, I used to love this play and even recommend it. However, in this second reading, I'm kinda disappointed with it. It's a very interesting and complex story, but I don't feel anything- I don't hate it, but I don't like (or even love) it either. It's more of a "meh" to me. Having said that, I think that I would like it if I saw it being performed. However, speaking of it in their text form I don't like it very much. Nonetheless, I'm giving it a 2.9 stars rating because there's a lot of elements that I like. They just didn't work this time.
So, do I recommend this play/book? Yes...I guess. Look, just because I didn't like it, that doesn't mean that this is a bad play/book. I think that my feeling towards it is more of a "me-thing" than a "book-thing", so, yeah, if you like to read about dysfunctional families, maybe give this a try.
Based on Noren's personal life, Night is the Mother of Day or Natten är dagens mor (original title) is a Swedish play that portrays the life of a dysfunctional family. In it, David, a young boy, is confronted with the double-faced daily life of this father, who suffers from severe alcohol abuse, while his mother is dying of cancer, and his elder brother frowns upon him and his love of jazz and literature (I think that David is codded as gay, but I'm not sure). It's a play about the effects of alienation from both family and society. Therefore, there's a couple of content warnings to be aware of: consumption of alcohol and discussion of alcohol abuse; use of strong (homophobic and sexist) language; depictions of violence; and depictions of physical, psychological, and emotional abuse.
At face value, this is one of those plays/books that I would love. The themes are interesting; the characters are extremely complex and human; the tone is fatalistic, and it has a really interesting mix of hyper-realism and poetic symbolism. The characters are in a permanent state of war with each other, using words as weapons, where everybody shouts but no one listens or is heard. And I really liked all of these elements. But I didn't love the play.
I don't know what happened. As I said, I used to love this play and even recommend it. However, in this second reading, I'm kinda disappointed with it. It's a very interesting and complex story, but I don't feel anything- I don't hate it, but I don't like (or even love) it either. It's more of a "meh" to me. Having said that, I think that I would like it if I saw it being performed. However, speaking of it in their text form I don't like it very much. Nonetheless, I'm giving it a 2.9 stars rating because there's a lot of elements that I like. They just didn't work this time.
So, do I recommend this play/book? Yes...I guess. Look, just because I didn't like it, that doesn't mean that this is a bad play/book. I think that my feeling towards it is more of a "me-thing" than a "book-thing", so, yeah, if you like to read about dysfunctional families, maybe give this a try.
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