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3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
A complex, uncompromising modern reinvention of the Oedipus myth, about troubled mother-daughter relationships, mythical river beasts, dementia, gender fluidity, fate and lexicography. And it’s as wild and weird as that all implies.
At only 28 (!) Daisy Johnson is a fresh and exciting new voice in literature and I am keen to read more of her work. This debut novel is a bravura piece of storytelling and some of the prose is truly remarkable. However, after highlighting several passages early on, I found myself not doing so at all in the second half. Overall, an unsettling and bizarre work of fiction!
At only 28 (!) Daisy Johnson is a fresh and exciting new voice in literature and I am keen to read more of her work. This debut novel is a bravura piece of storytelling and some of the prose is truly remarkable. However, after highlighting several passages early on, I found myself not doing so at all in the second half. Overall, an unsettling and bizarre work of fiction!
The story of a lexicographer who attempts to look after the angry alzheimer's inflicted mother who abandoned her in childhood. She attempts to reconstruct what happened to their lives before as river people, entwined with the mysterious Margo/Marcus who came into their lives. I struggled to keep up with the novel as an audiobook as while lucid & engaging it can also be strangely dense and elusive (blink & you'll miss it) too.
2.5 stars. Half a star for the beginning which I loved.
A little like one of those pointillist pictures you need to squint at for shapes to take hold - took me a while to get in the groove of this, but once I did was thoroughly hooked. Structure helps simplify a story that's both narratively and thematically complex; language, and diverse voices, lend it a real weight.
My reading year is off to a good star with this book, a read like a cold river current. Retelling an old myth in a modern setting is a tricky business: set up too much realism and the entrance of mythic elements can jar in a way that rings false, or end up feeling absurd rather than powerful. Stick too close to the original and the project of retelling can seem forced, or a bit pointless. To my mind, Daisy Johnson (whose previous collection of short stories, Fen, had a knack for liminal atmospheres, blending the mundane and arcane, and the weight of gendered bodies) gets it right here. There's enough going on in the interwoven narratives - telling different stages of the same story - that the thread of myth throughout is mostly a glimmering hint until it all falls into place with appropriate crushing solidity. Along the way we get forays into words and their meanings, a riverboat life on the fringes of society, haunting by a strange beast, and a daughter hunting for a lost mother.
'There are more beginnings than there are ends to contain them.'
Gretel searches for her mum Sarah, who abandoned her at sixteen. On the hunt and afterwards she pulls together clues to the weird events when Marcus stayed with them on their canal boat, the winter they hunted the Bonak. The more she remembers and learns, the more there is to understand.
There is so much to love about this novel. I read it a month ago and here's what still bothers me:
Language - Gretel updates dictionaries and is fascinated by words' biographies and meanings. She thinks and dreams in she and Sarah's charming private dialect, recalling more and more. The writing is lyrical, transfixing.
Setting - this is a book set in forgotten places, avoided places. Most of the action takes place on wasteland, or on muddy river banks outside small towns, in service stations hotels and sticky old restaurants. It is often cold, and damp, messy and lonely.
Character - strongly drawn eccentrics, unexpected and flawed and never wholly knowable, struggling with and against themselves.
Storytelling - a flipping clever structure, sliding between equally urgent timelines and points of view, experienced, remembered, perhaps imagined, always teasing between truth and doubt.
Atmosphere - I've seldom been so unnerved by a book, so uneasy that I also wish to remain uncertain, suspended between truth and doubt.
I'm not only bothered by this novel, I've also been inspired it and believe others interested in oddity and eeriness will be too. Read it.
Gretel searches for her mum Sarah, who abandoned her at sixteen. On the hunt and afterwards she pulls together clues to the weird events when Marcus stayed with them on their canal boat, the winter they hunted the Bonak. The more she remembers and learns, the more there is to understand.
There is so much to love about this novel. I read it a month ago and here's what still bothers me:
Language - Gretel updates dictionaries and is fascinated by words' biographies and meanings. She thinks and dreams in she and Sarah's charming private dialect, recalling more and more. The writing is lyrical, transfixing.
Setting - this is a book set in forgotten places, avoided places. Most of the action takes place on wasteland, or on muddy river banks outside small towns, in service stations hotels and sticky old restaurants. It is often cold, and damp, messy and lonely.
Character - strongly drawn eccentrics, unexpected and flawed and never wholly knowable, struggling with and against themselves.
Storytelling - a flipping clever structure, sliding between equally urgent timelines and points of view, experienced, remembered, perhaps imagined, always teasing between truth and doubt.
Atmosphere - I've seldom been so unnerved by a book, so uneasy that I also wish to remain uncertain, suspended between truth and doubt.
I'm not only bothered by this novel, I've also been inspired it and believe others interested in oddity and eeriness will be too. Read it.
Hard to get into at first. But as the plot unfolded I got into this more and more.
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A captivating, dreamlike novel, that was so compelling, I couldn't put it down. I didn't read the blurb so I didn't realise it was a retelling of the Oedipus myth but I think that the story was stronger when you don't know that in advance. So, I'd recommend reading this without reading about the plot beforehand.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Incest, Suicide, Violence
Minor: Vomit