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venneh's review
4.0
I feel like any of the books I read during shelter in place should come with their own special marking system, or a huge disclaimer of “yo I started this before/during shelter in place and that has a ton to do with my interpretation of this”. You have two stories going on in parallel here - one of Eleanor, a woman who’s finding that her life isn’t what she thought it would be, and the act of her laptop being stolen and what can best be described as the slight unhinging that happens in the wake of that, and the other of the narrator, who may also be the author (was unclear to me), and the critic she’s interacting with as she writes about Eleanor, who has more than a passing resemblance to the life of the critic. Very postmodern in how the two are in conversation with each other and eventually merge in the final part. I don’t know how long this will sit with me, but I enjoyed the read.
ladywaterbear's review
3.0
Really enjoyed until the third part, then it kind of lost me. But the writing is gorgeous
jacob_wren's review
5.0
Two short passages from Eleanor, or, The Rejection of the Progress of Love:
At this point, Eleanor's thinking became unfamiliar. Had she not been aware of just how familiar her thinking was to her in general, how expected it had become, even in its extremes, in its total enthusiasm and its total skepticism, its most rational gestures and its most impulsive ones? All of it now seemed dull and pathetic, as if thought were a giant mountain and she had spent her life so far considering one side of it only, attempting to scale it, duly scraping her hands and knees, her sights set on the mountains unattainable peak, without it ever once occurring to her - how stupid she'd been! - to relinquish her frontal perspective, to let the mountain become unrecognizable. As if it had never occurred to her to walk to the other side.
(I had experimented, after reading his comments, with removing the lover completely, which entailed among other things losing several scenes in which sex acts were described. But my decision to include these in the first place was made deliberately, in response to a sense – which I didn’t share with the critic now, too embarrassed to bring it up in person while still absorbing his candid marginal responses to my portrayal of said acts – that depictions of sex and sexual dynamics in novels, especially heterodynamics, especially in novels by women, tend to invite a particular kind of reductive critique, or else sensationalism when such dynamics happen to be central to a book. For reasons that remained obscure to me, I had an urge to face this vulnerability – to some extent, at least – rather than defend against it by writing a novel in which nobody fucks.)
At this point, Eleanor's thinking became unfamiliar. Had she not been aware of just how familiar her thinking was to her in general, how expected it had become, even in its extremes, in its total enthusiasm and its total skepticism, its most rational gestures and its most impulsive ones? All of it now seemed dull and pathetic, as if thought were a giant mountain and she had spent her life so far considering one side of it only, attempting to scale it, duly scraping her hands and knees, her sights set on the mountains unattainable peak, without it ever once occurring to her - how stupid she'd been! - to relinquish her frontal perspective, to let the mountain become unrecognizable. As if it had never occurred to her to walk to the other side.
(I had experimented, after reading his comments, with removing the lover completely, which entailed among other things losing several scenes in which sex acts were described. But my decision to include these in the first place was made deliberately, in response to a sense – which I didn’t share with the critic now, too embarrassed to bring it up in person while still absorbing his candid marginal responses to my portrayal of said acts – that depictions of sex and sexual dynamics in novels, especially heterodynamics, especially in novels by women, tend to invite a particular kind of reductive critique, or else sensationalism when such dynamics happen to be central to a book. For reasons that remained obscure to me, I had an urge to face this vulnerability – to some extent, at least – rather than defend against it by writing a novel in which nobody fucks.)
drewsof's review
3.0
Starts strong, following two narratives (one, the story of an author; the other, the book she's writing), but I found that I lost interest each time I picked it up after about 25 pages. Might just be a me thing, b/c there IS quite a bit to admire here.
eriknoteric's review
4.0
In Anna Moschovakis' post-modern entrance into the world of fiction and autobiography, she tells the story of Eleanor from multiple perspectives as Eleanor tries to piece together her life in the middle of it, after having recognized perhaps it isn't exactly how she had planned.
In an experimental fashion that is reminiscent of her own poetic work, Moschovakis weaves together the story of Eleanor while also telling a semi-autobiographic tale of how she arrived at Eleanor the character through her own engagement with an Eleanor in her life. Though at times this process seems contrived and overdone, Moschovakis' does ultimately do a good job weaving these two together intricately. Admittedly, though, this makes reading the book more of a challenge for the readers - having to constantly be on guard, sometimes paragraph to paragraph, about who the writing is discussing at the time.
Nonetheless, the book itself does a nice job discussing the cynicalism of life and love and does it in a way that is, fortunately, not too on the nose. This leaves the reader with a feeling of having been emotionally moved by an encounter with the book but without any explicable reason as to why. The book itself is far from quotable - and unlike most books on this topic won't have many paragraphs that leave you weeping or self-reflective. But this book does take you to the edge, to the precipice of cynicism and forces you to think about your own self in retro-spect and as such has the power of a book with twice the emotional heft.
In an experimental fashion that is reminiscent of her own poetic work, Moschovakis weaves together the story of Eleanor while also telling a semi-autobiographic tale of how she arrived at Eleanor the character through her own engagement with an Eleanor in her life. Though at times this process seems contrived and overdone, Moschovakis' does ultimately do a good job weaving these two together intricately. Admittedly, though, this makes reading the book more of a challenge for the readers - having to constantly be on guard, sometimes paragraph to paragraph, about who the writing is discussing at the time.
Nonetheless, the book itself does a nice job discussing the cynicalism of life and love and does it in a way that is, fortunately, not too on the nose. This leaves the reader with a feeling of having been emotionally moved by an encounter with the book but without any explicable reason as to why. The book itself is far from quotable - and unlike most books on this topic won't have many paragraphs that leave you weeping or self-reflective. But this book does take you to the edge, to the precipice of cynicism and forces you to think about your own self in retro-spect and as such has the power of a book with twice the emotional heft.
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