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sere_rev's review against another edition
1.0
I appreciate Ducornet's active imagination, but in this book it does not coalesce into anything of substance. Also, this contains more talk of excrement and ejaculation than I ever needed read in my life.
shesnorikkiducornet's review against another edition
3.0
Mmm? Well written but feels unfinished and rushed. Interested in the author's other work now.
freewaygods's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.25
george_salis's review against another edition
4.0
"...sleeping minds are the crystal balls of some other universe."
This is a brief but vivid and evocative dream of a book. Ducornet's prose is magical, musical, and masterful. The Fountains of Neptune is still my favorite but we'll see if I can change that with more Ducornet. Finishing this one gives me an excuse to buy another.
This is a brief but vivid and evocative dream of a book. Ducornet's prose is magical, musical, and masterful. The Fountains of Neptune is still my favorite but we'll see if I can change that with more Ducornet. Finishing this one gives me an excuse to buy another.
sarahreadsaverylot's review against another edition
5.0
The book jacket suggests that this is "Jonathan Swift meets Angela Carter via Jorge Luis Borges," but I'll go one further and suggest that this is also "Sexing the Cherry meets Don Quixote via The Tempest".
The prose is rich and brilliant like avocado; as decadent as bitter chocolate. For some, it will be an acquired taste.
This is whimsy and lyricism and eroticism and imagination all elegantly entwined into a phantasmagorical wonderland of a story.
The prose is rich and brilliant like avocado; as decadent as bitter chocolate. For some, it will be an acquired taste.
This is whimsy and lyricism and eroticism and imagination all elegantly entwined into a phantasmagorical wonderland of a story.
jainabee's review against another edition
2.0
I gave up at page 78. I hear this isn't her strongest work, so I will try another one.
jeremiah's review
A novel with quite a bit going on, Ducornet's Phosphor in Dreamland is, in some sense, the creation of a world without God, or, at least, some a religious deity; however, there is still a powerful, mechanistic force underlying "Birdland," the island Ducornet creates and whose history the narrator details. This force is a sort of eroticism and sensuality. Significant attention is given to the island's animal and plant life so as to draw one into this world, and yet, in the foreground, is human sexuality. Through her characters, Ducornet dismisses God, as one character exclaims that "there is no Heaven...only this one life. It is a fire rekindled each time lovers embrace with hunger" (132). Further, the novel's discorporate Jonathan Swift scholar at one point is referred to as having said that "It is sexual love that liberates the libido and sets the lover to dreaming. And so, becoming..." (138). The idea of "becoming" through sex suggests, to me anyway, that the island had, in retrospect, grown because there is a human presence to "eroticize" it.
This idea of growth as dependent on human sexuality is tied to the novel's primary tension: the capturing and preservation of history through language. The novel's narrator is documenting the world in which the eponymous Phosphor helped create, began to preserve, as he helped contribute to the island's library. Phosphor began documenting the island himself through his invention of a camera obscura. The island, or growth and becoming itself, is captured by humans, but Ducornet doesn't attribute nature to a God; instead, she gestures back toward the human being, in some way, and the human being continues to forward this becoming through its own trapping and preservation, language. The novel's apparent retrospective understanding of a world, sex, and language is ultimately reflexive of fiction itself.
This idea of growth as dependent on human sexuality is tied to the novel's primary tension: the capturing and preservation of history through language. The novel's narrator is documenting the world in which the eponymous Phosphor helped create, began to preserve, as he helped contribute to the island's library. Phosphor began documenting the island himself through his invention of a camera obscura. The island, or growth and becoming itself, is captured by humans, but Ducornet doesn't attribute nature to a God; instead, she gestures back toward the human being, in some way, and the human being continues to forward this becoming through its own trapping and preservation, language. The novel's apparent retrospective understanding of a world, sex, and language is ultimately reflexive of fiction itself.
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