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4.02 AVERAGE
4.02 AVERAGE
I have a love affair with books I only half understand.
It's difficult to find words to express my reaction to this book. Sasha's plans to study philology (in the sense of language as used in literature) seemingly get sidetracked-but then, not really. Maybe philology as taught at the Institute of Special Technologies is the knowledge of society or culture as understood through language. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis always intrigued me in college, as did philosophy classes. This book brought me back to both experiences with Sapir-Whorf gone gobal (an inadequate word) and philosophy at advanced classes that I never took. For me, this was a fascinating and challenging book. I greatly enjoyed the characters and the story line but I wish I could have better appreciated some of the mental gymnastics involved. I suspect that reading this in Russian would have provided a different experience, but I also think that the translator, Julia Meitov Hersey, deserves great praise and expressions of appreciation for what must have been a Herculean task. I completely understand the review extremes for this book and, for that reason and others, I would hesitate to recommend it to family and friends. Sometimes I tell folks that they will know by the first several chapters if a book is for them, but not with this one. I think this is a very individual "like/dislike" and I can easily understand the extremes. I can only say that I'm very glad I gave it a chance.
Fucking amazing, what else can I say? The fact that a book that honestly doesn’t have a very clear plot or structure or characters can be so goddamn thrilling is insane. Most of the philosophical stuff went over my head but I was in for the ride anyway and what a ride it was!
started this thinking it was weird, finished it thinking it was very weird.
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
It felt quite flat, and never really piqued my interest. When they started talking about virginity as an actual thing I gave up lmao. Cause as an anthropologist... virginity is just not a real thing, at all
adventurous
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
challenging
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Painful book of extraordinary genius. After the first third (Kafka/Dostoevsky), I grew to love it. But I know very few people to whom I can recommend it. It asks questions, does not answer them, and will only leave you with a peculiar sense of acceptance, not clarity. As if you have faced a great rent inside of yourself, and almost, but not quite, come to terms with it, but must still awake in the morning and go about your day.
I don't understand.
Once, I let myself be hypnotized at a Renaissance Festival. It was hokey and weird, but I'm apparently very susceptible to suggestions. While in it, I knew exactly where I was and what I was doing at all times. But I also felt foggy and warm, like being wrapped in a blanket. It just kinda felt nice to do what the man was telling me to do, so I went along with it--I had a choice to stop, I felt, but it was nicer to drift along.
This book evoked many of those same sensations--but in the Complete Opposite Direction. Rather than embracing that warm, sleepy glow of comfort, I felt nothing but frightened, shivery, panic. For the entire book. It was incredibly exhausting to muddle through the convoluted text and never get an answer. Sasha figured it out in the end, but I never did.
It's a story about a young girl who is forced to attend a specific university way out in the rural hinterlands by a horrifying figure who punishes her family with mutilation and murder if she cannot pass her coursework. Some of the classes are mundane normal ones like English or Math, but the exciting Specialty courses are the ones that alter her mentally and physically, transforming her in all kinds of baffling, logic-bending ways. Trying to keep track of what she was doing and studying made my own thoughts ache. The worst logic puzzles you can imagine, multiplied by eleven. Every anxiety you ever might have had about school is emphasized here. The fun of learning new things is there, I suppose, but it's buried under immense, twisted pressures and abuse.
It might be the Russian culture, but there's chunks of it that just felt awkward and wrong. Her professors often felt less than competent when speaking to students beyond the Specialty coursework, and the conversations they had with her about her virginity? Eurgh. It wasn't dry, dark humor, it was just uncomfortable and unpleasant. Just another thing to slog through, trying to get to the light at the end of the tunnel all the while praying the light isn't the headlight of a train coming your way.
Also, it's definitely first in a series. Maybe I blitzed through so quickly, relieved to be at the back pages, that I missed it, but I don't think there was anything like a proper ending, and the chance of all the rest being translated are debatable, so I guess we did get flattened by a train.
I can't lie: the book has a lyrical movement to it, and it toys with its characters and scenes in intensely memorable ways. While I never was allowed to be more than a distant observer, the natural transformation for Sasha, from frightened first year to over-confident third year student, was impressive and masterful. And I couldn't tear myself away from the book, sure enough--hypnotized by the text and the twists and turns it was taking. But while I respect it, I do not appreciate the holes it poked in my brain, nor the relentless fear it made me feel while reading it.
I guess Halloween is this week, so it's an appropriate read.
EDIT: read a review that said it's sort of like what it's like to be a twenty-something growing up and finding a place in this unforgiving world with its twisting rules and casual abuses and mind-numbing-logic-leaps. Which I can respect a little more. So, I'll give it half a star more, but I'm not changing my rating. It's just a 2.5 instead of a solid 2. :)
Once, I let myself be hypnotized at a Renaissance Festival. It was hokey and weird, but I'm apparently very susceptible to suggestions. While in it, I knew exactly where I was and what I was doing at all times. But I also felt foggy and warm, like being wrapped in a blanket. It just kinda felt nice to do what the man was telling me to do, so I went along with it--I had a choice to stop, I felt, but it was nicer to drift along.
This book evoked many of those same sensations--but in the Complete Opposite Direction. Rather than embracing that warm, sleepy glow of comfort, I felt nothing but frightened, shivery, panic. For the entire book. It was incredibly exhausting to muddle through the convoluted text and never get an answer. Sasha figured it out in the end, but I never did.
It's a story about a young girl who is forced to attend a specific university way out in the rural hinterlands by a horrifying figure who punishes her family with mutilation and murder if she cannot pass her coursework. Some of the classes are mundane normal ones like English or Math, but the exciting Specialty courses are the ones that alter her mentally and physically, transforming her in all kinds of baffling, logic-bending ways. Trying to keep track of what she was doing and studying made my own thoughts ache. The worst logic puzzles you can imagine, multiplied by eleven. Every anxiety you ever might have had about school is emphasized here. The fun of learning new things is there, I suppose, but it's buried under immense, twisted pressures and abuse.
It might be the Russian culture, but there's chunks of it that just felt awkward and wrong. Her professors often felt less than competent when speaking to students beyond the Specialty coursework, and the conversations they had with her about her virginity? Eurgh. It wasn't dry, dark humor, it was just uncomfortable and unpleasant. Just another thing to slog through, trying to get to the light at the end of the tunnel all the while praying the light isn't the headlight of a train coming your way.
Also, it's definitely first in a series. Maybe I blitzed through so quickly, relieved to be at the back pages, that I missed it, but I don't think there was anything like a proper ending, and the chance of all the rest being translated are debatable, so I guess we did get flattened by a train.
I can't lie: the book has a lyrical movement to it, and it toys with its characters and scenes in intensely memorable ways. While I never was allowed to be more than a distant observer, the natural transformation for Sasha, from frightened first year to over-confident third year student, was impressive and masterful. And I couldn't tear myself away from the book, sure enough--hypnotized by the text and the twists and turns it was taking. But while I respect it, I do not appreciate the holes it poked in my brain, nor the relentless fear it made me feel while reading it.
I guess Halloween is this week, so it's an appropriate read.
EDIT: read a review that said it's sort of like what it's like to be a twenty-something growing up and finding a place in this unforgiving world with its twisting rules and casual abuses and mind-numbing-logic-leaps. Which I can respect a little more. So, I'll give it half a star more, but I'm not changing my rating. It's just a 2.5 instead of a solid 2. :)