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3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
I can appreciate how this could be seen as a brilliantly written book. The prose has an odic yet unfortunately tenuous quality to it. I however did not connect emotionally to it and often felt lost until the one moment of clarity. Then I felt confused and lost again
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The places we are born come back. They disguise themselves as migraines, stomach aches, insomnia. They are the way we sometimes wake falling, fumbling, for the bedside lamp, certain everything we've built has gone in the night. We become strangers to the places we are born. They would not recognize us but we will always recognize them. They are marrow to us; they are bred into us. If we were turned inside out there would be maps cut into the wrong side of our skin. Just so we could find our way back. Except, cut wrong side into my skin are not canals and train tracks and a boat, but always: you
So begins this magical, eerie, mythical retelling. Johnson's sentences are candy, and this tale transports to a wondrous and creepy place that seems between dream and waking. It is a stunning novel about memory, family, home, language and the power of myth.
So begins this magical, eerie, mythical retelling. Johnson's sentences are candy, and this tale transports to a wondrous and creepy place that seems between dream and waking. It is a stunning novel about memory, family, home, language and the power of myth.
Despite being listed for several awards for 2018 (shortlisted for the Man Booker and a Shirley Jackson award nominee) this strange little experimental darling is one I haven’t heard much buzz for.
A thoughtful, deconstructed, gender-fluid take on the Oedipus myth, Everything Under follows several different timelines to tell the story of Gretel, her mother, and Marcus. The plot is much too twisted to offer a concise summary but suffice to say that this is a book that it is better to take your time with.
I was constantly in awe of the lush sentences even as I wasn’t always exactly clear what was going on. Reading Johnson’s prose was like trying to watch a movie from the bottom of a river, all the water, silt, fish, and debris flowing over top, obscuring and distorting the view. But at the same time, there is a strange compulsive magic to her writing that had me clinging to the page. This is a debut novel, everyone—be on the lookout for more to come from Johnson.
I’m sure there is so much in this book that I missed, so many references and allusions, it really does call for a second reading.
I personally wouldn’t have picked this one up if it hadn’t been on the list for the Shirley Jackson award—I love how diverse the books are for that award and I always find some good reads from it!
A thoughtful, deconstructed, gender-fluid take on the Oedipus myth, Everything Under follows several different timelines to tell the story of Gretel, her mother, and Marcus. The plot is much too twisted to offer a concise summary but suffice to say that this is a book that it is better to take your time with.
I was constantly in awe of the lush sentences even as I wasn’t always exactly clear what was going on. Reading Johnson’s prose was like trying to watch a movie from the bottom of a river, all the water, silt, fish, and debris flowing over top, obscuring and distorting the view. But at the same time, there is a strange compulsive magic to her writing that had me clinging to the page. This is a debut novel, everyone—be on the lookout for more to come from Johnson.
I’m sure there is so much in this book that I missed, so many references and allusions, it really does call for a second reading.
I personally wouldn’t have picked this one up if it hadn’t been on the list for the Shirley Jackson award—I love how diverse the books are for that award and I always find some good reads from it!
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.