Reviews tagging 'Stalking'

Little Birds by Anaïs Nin

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wrenxavier's review

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dark fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
I'm not sure what I expected; primarily picked this up because of curiosity and her connection to Henry Miller. Altogether I found this to be very much a product of its time, with radical scenes added for shock value only, not substance. Edit: As I finish summarizing what I've read, I've grown even more depressed and disgusted. Everyone here is awful. There's nothing erotic in these pages, especially when coupled with the pedophilia, racism, sexism and sexual assault. Madonna-whore complexes everywhere you look.

Little Birds - a man goes to extreme lengths (completely renovating a dilapidated apartment and purchasing exotic birds to create a little zoo) in order to live across an all-girls' school and lure little schoolgirls into his apartment when his wife is gone. Manuel's narrative is very explicit in describing his pedophilic desires

The Woman on the Dunes - man and woman hook up on the beach, after which she tells him of how she was sexually assaulted while they were watching a public execution. The text says that the man paused every now and again to see if she would try to stop him and she says that she felt pleasure at the end, but considering that it's hammered in how the crowd was crushing them to the point that she couldn't move and was consumed by fear at what she was witnessing, it just reads repulsive

Lina - Lina is a jealous, toxic lesbian who is homophobic. That's it.

Two Sisters - it begins with a father who sits his beautiful children on his lap so he can put his hands up their dresses and their brothers who practice sex with their sisters. Those sisters find men, cheat on those men and ultimately end up miserable.

Sirocco - racism. So much racism. "I was marrying China. I could barely see him as an ordinary man. [...] Somehow I was in love with the idea of China, so much that it seemed to me that my husband was no longer a white but an Oriental. I thought he smelled different from other men." What.

The Maja - wife doesn't want to be naked for husband, doesn't want him painting other women. Her anxiety and jealousy grow to a point that she has to take sleeping pills; said husband takes advantage of her drugged sleep so he can strip her and paint her without her consent. Some time passes, she walks in on him humping her naked paintings and proceeds to have sex with him in order to establish dominance

A Model - the one story with the only likable character. A brief sketch about the highs and lows of the modelling world, being prized, rewarded and commodified for beauty.

The Queen - an ode to Bijou, herein described as a frigid and faithless queen of the whores

Hilda and Rango - big yikes. (I mean all of it has been yikes so far.) Hilda resents her husband because she has to make the moves in the marriage. She meets Rango, tries to make a move and is rejected because she "made the gesture of a whore". Hilda confesses that her husband forced her to be like that (but no, he literally doesn't do anything); which is enough to redeem her to Rango, who is interested in breaking her into submission, which he does. "She learned to be active, bold, but she suffered, because she was by nature extraordinarily feminine. Deep down she had the belief that woman could easily control her desire, but that man could not, that it was even harmful for him to try to. She felt that woman was meant to respond to man’s desire." No. Just no.

The Chanchiquito - slight sexual attraction to animals helps facilitate love life

Saffron - sixteen year old Fay marries forty-six year old Albert. She thinks it's real love, then finds him having sex with his servants and is abruptly heartbroken because he's never been able to do so with her until she comes back after shopping for saffron.  This is the last line: "Afterwards he said happily, “You smell like a colored woman.” And the spell was broken."

Mandra - brief description of two affairs

Runaway - Jean, who originally had noble intentions to help a lost child, has sex with her. She then goes on to have sex with his much older roommate, who he described as not being worried about because "he did not believe Pierre could take a real interest in her; she was too much of a child."

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