Reviews tagging 'Abortion'

Memorie di una reginetta di provincia by Valeria Gennero, Alix Kates Shulman

3 reviews

calicocola's review against another edition

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-The relationship between Frank & Sasha reminds me a lot of Nora & her husband in A Doll’s House, since he clearly values her for beauty & infantilises her but doesn’t acc take her srsly or think of her wishes as things to b respected (another protofeminist text, focused on expressing how marriage & heterosexual patriarchal conventions hv been a trap 4 sm women in history) 
-I think Sasha has body dysmorphia (she struggles to tell what she looks like, her letters to Roxanne making Roxanne think the clap had “disfigured” her but she looks normal upon return)
-the abortion scene was SO harrowing I actually had to stop reading 4 a while Jesus Christ 
-the descriptions of Andrea r very cute lol but her recount of motherhood is honestly exhausting & depressing, I feel so bad for her. The fact that she casually drops that she has to wait until Andrea reaches puberty to kill herself is so fucked up. Even the joyous moment feels foreboding bcuz u can tell that Sasha’s happiness is pinned entirely on Andy & that’s nvr a good idea. It’s also so depressing how uninvolved Will is :/. ALSO SOOOO ANNOYING how Sasha’s entire life, she’s been criticised 4 not being maternal but when she is anxious over her kid, Will gets angry UGH
-it’s also interesting how timeless some of her observations are, like how for a lot of men, touching & holding r only precludes for sex, her exhaustion at being unable to engage in romantic intimacy w/out sex being the next port of call - common sentiment I’ve heard from friends w bf’s in the past 
-HATED the ending, I think it’s meaningful that the last action of the book is calling Roxanne (finding companionship w women, solidarity of a kind) but I wish it had ended with the absurdist dream about the philosophers judging her in a beauty pageant. That would’ve been unsatisfying but at least it would’ve given me something to chew on. The actual ending is unsatisfying AND unextraordinary. I also think that introducing the book as a memoir she’s writing at 60yrs makes it annoying that the memoir stops at 30 & we miss half her life - like did she ever catch Will cheating? I guess I can assume it’s more of the same? Just more motherhood? But even motherhood changes with age so I think the story feels very unfinished, given the beginning giving the age 60. Altho maybe ending at 30 is right, since Sasha did always say that was when she would be destroyed
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ajs1906's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No

3.0

I found the book hard to get into at first, but after the first hundred pages I was fully immersed. This book is the embodiment of men being The Worst. Even the men who were not that bad were only that because the bad ones were so horrible.
By the end of the book, Sasha has been stripped of all her individuality and interests (reading, studying philosophy, not wanting a child and seeming almost polyamorous in ideals) to nothing other than what she feared being the most, a house wife/stay at home mother. It’s not even that I don’t think being a wife and a mother is a bad thing, it just seems really sad to me that the only real thing she wanted to do with her life was study philosophy and make a career for herself, and almost every single person she meets does their best to squash that instinct in her.
For example, her second husband, Will. He starts of respectful and loving and helped Sasha get out of her horrible marriage to her first husband, Frank. They have a loving, fulfilling relationship, I even think he would have supported Sasha if she wanted to continue her studies at that point. Until Sasha decides to have Will’s baby (because WILL wants one, not her), and suddenly he can’t handle it. Why should he be inconvenienced with having to raise his own child, or to share his wife with someone else. By the end, he couldn’t even put up with Sasha getting a hair cut, let alone being any kind of individual. She’s just a possession to him.
Then there’s the abortion. My god, was I not prepared to read the most graphic and gruesome description of the ending of a pregnancy I’ve ever read. Honestly, the less said about that, the better.
My favourite part of the book was the friendship between Sasha and Roxanne. Neither of them exactly fit the ideals laid out for them and they bonded at University over poetry and not taking anyone’s bullshit. Even when life forced them apart, they still stayed in touch and helped each other through all of the major events in their lives. It’s refreshing to see a relationship based on mutual respect rather than sex, like a lot of the relationships in the book.
I hope that after this story, Sasha would teach her two young girls that they could be whatever they wanted to be, didn’t have to be house wives or mothers if they didn’t want to be, let them be themselves in the way that no one let her when she was young.
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eleria's review against another edition

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emotional funny reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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