You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
literarywanderess 's review for:
Malina
by Ingeborg Bachmann
Malina was an uncomfortable, often unpleasant read. It is dense, melodramatic, painful. A book where so much remains elusive. Who is real? Who is an alter ego of whom? What is real and what is fantasy? Where does one realm begin and the other end? There are various theories and hints throughout, but the text still remains difficult to penetrate. Finishing this book was an overwhelming and dizzying experience. Yet at the same time, there’s something in Bachmann’s writing, stunning sentences and passages of lyrical language, sometimes even moments playful language, that dazzled me, pulled me in, and forced me to turn the page.
It is essential to go into this book without expectation of a real narrative, to realize it will be an experience more than a story. You can grasp at certain themes as you are violently hurled around at the mercy of Bachmann's pen -- internalized suffering, patriarchy, relationships between men and women, fascism, post-war ruins and guilt. However, it is also very much about the inability to grapple with horror, let alone find the language for it, as the narrator’s inner toil is engulfing her and her psyche is disintegrating. This is taken to whole other levels in sections such as the second chapter, my favorite, which feels like being dropped even deeper into her internal inferno as she grapples with the horrors and abuse at the hands of her father:
“The ice breaks, I sink beneath the pole into the center of the Earth. I am in Hell. The wispy yellow flames wreathe about, the fiery curls hang down to my feet, I spit the fires out, swallow the fires down.”
Published two years before her death, Malina was meant to be the first in a trilogy called Todesarten (Ways of Dying). However, we are left with this single novel by Bachmann and we can only imagine what the rest of this tumultuous journey would have taken us.
It is essential to go into this book without expectation of a real narrative, to realize it will be an experience more than a story. You can grasp at certain themes as you are violently hurled around at the mercy of Bachmann's pen -- internalized suffering, patriarchy, relationships between men and women, fascism, post-war ruins and guilt. However, it is also very much about the inability to grapple with horror, let alone find the language for it, as the narrator’s inner toil is engulfing her and her psyche is disintegrating. This is taken to whole other levels in sections such as the second chapter, my favorite, which feels like being dropped even deeper into her internal inferno as she grapples with the horrors and abuse at the hands of her father:
“The ice breaks, I sink beneath the pole into the center of the Earth. I am in Hell. The wispy yellow flames wreathe about, the fiery curls hang down to my feet, I spit the fires out, swallow the fires down.”
Published two years before her death, Malina was meant to be the first in a trilogy called Todesarten (Ways of Dying). However, we are left with this single novel by Bachmann and we can only imagine what the rest of this tumultuous journey would have taken us.