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hiiiiiinat's review
2.5
I don't feel that I really grasped this. It's more a book of ephemeral feeling than story - a little disappointing as I loved Sweet Days of Discipline, which I think had both. The experience of reading this is like waking up from a dream and knowing it was a little off-putting but not being able to remember the details. Somnambulant fiction.
emsemsems's review
2.0
'Doesn’t it bother you that we live so briefly? I think it does. It seems that time — though you aren’t much older than me — has gnawed at your cheeks a little, but has left your girlish features intact. And now I must leave you, I must invent a farewell I can place in my souvenirs.'
Unfortunately this didn't leave much of an impression on me. Slipped from my memory just as I finished reading it. I don't even remember what I've just read. Read it quickly without much trouble but I didn't really get the point of it all. The writing is not terrible, but I just wasn't moved by any of it. I know I've taken a big risk choosing this book as my first Jaeggy, and well - it is what it is - I probably won't dive into another Jaeggy anytime soon.
laraloi's review
Im not sure how good the translation is, especially at the beginning the sentences feel abrupt, and a flow is missing. I think it must be better in Italian. The sentences are confusing and it takes a lot of concentration to understand them. It’s a book you need to read multiple times to fully be able to appreciate its complexity.
alectastic's review
4.0
I looked at her face, there was something wild and at the same time ascetic about her, and if she glanced at me furtively I caught in her eyes the desire to penetrate into the mind of another so as to find there the same distaste for life that tormented her.
This is void work. Jaeggy writes pure desolation.
Some of the best sentences I’ve ever read. But I cannot grasp this book. It’s obtuse, terse, secretive, oceanic, completely abyssal. Jaeggy, when she writes, leaves us readers behind.
Try another book: no one prepares for this one. This barely-a-book dangles precariously over the edge of literature. Jaeggy is writing at the risk point here and is a writer who always is.
He had a horror of anything hereditary, because whatever comes to us by natural inheritance belongs to the dead.
Her syntactical play is masterly and her phrases fearsome, abstract, witchy. Maintaining a fragmentary style, barely sentences, Jaeggy leaps often and explains nothing.
The whole thing is haunted.
The small joys of childhood had left a lovely clear light in their eyes and when they lowered their lids, I realized that they were chipped.
alienreader's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
No idea what I read but it was nice.
“Don’t you find it flows too quickly (time)? That it sweeps us away too soon, only certain trees are centuries old, shouldn’t there be an extra century of existence?”
“Doesn’t it bother you that we live so briefly?”
“Don’t you find it flows too quickly (time)? That it sweeps us away too soon, only certain trees are centuries old, shouldn’t there be an extra century of existence?”
“Doesn’t it bother you that we live so briefly?”
rm14's review
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
nathansnook's review
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
3.0
How Jaeggy manages to drop you in what feels like a ghost's dream astounds me.
Vague. Slow. Seeping. Faint. Dewy. Cold. Distant. Jaeggy has immense, impenetrable prose. Who is speaking? I haven't a clue. Are they real? Are the statues talking? Who is protecting who? Who is lonely? Jaeggy?
How I imagine Jaeggy to write is the same way Kawakubo creates clothes, to be out of touch with the internet, to be locked up in a furniture-less room with only a window view out into her wet blue garden. Grabbing at every image that spares her fascination and imagination.
Though I'm not sure exactly what happens in the book, the ending monologue offers a tremendous scope of time and age, being and un-being, that it drained me of something. I felt empty yet hopeful. I felt as if I was reaching for something that wasn't there. An itch formed from nowhere. From an invisible spider, but where that invisibility comes from, is exactly where Jaeggy's language derives from.
Vague. Slow. Seeping. Faint. Dewy. Cold. Distant. Jaeggy has immense, impenetrable prose. Who is speaking? I haven't a clue. Are they real? Are the statues talking? Who is protecting who? Who is lonely? Jaeggy?
How I imagine Jaeggy to write is the same way Kawakubo creates clothes, to be out of touch with the internet, to be locked up in a furniture-less room with only a window view out into her wet blue garden. Grabbing at every image that spares her fascination and imagination.
Though I'm not sure exactly what happens in the book, the ending monologue offers a tremendous scope of time and age, being and un-being, that it drained me of something. I felt empty yet hopeful. I felt as if I was reaching for something that wasn't there. An itch formed from nowhere. From an invisible spider, but where that invisibility comes from, is exactly where Jaeggy's language derives from.