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A review by keegan_leech
Strangers I Know by Claudia Durastanti
emotional
informative
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
What a fascinating book. A quote from the afterword:
"Genre, in the end is just a game of possibilities and clues; it takes only a little misstep to slip out of a novel, to fall into an autobiography and resurface again in an essay, all in the short span of a sentence."
The whole book feels like exactly that. I didn't realise going in just how much of this "novel" was actually memoir, though I suspected that much of it was drawn from life. And so much of it is drawn from elsewhere. At times I felt like I was reading an academic essay on literature or philosophy, before the book slipped into what felt like fable, memoir, or idle train-of-thought. Even the references felt anarchic and eclectic. Durastanti makes reference to everything from Nautilus magazine to Beverly Hills, 90210. Bob Dylan is mentioned, and so is the controversy over his 2016 Nobel prize win.
The closest comparison I could make (very favourably) was to the writing of Patti Smith. Especially her memoirs, which can also seem at once like impossibly normal banal diary entries, bizarre modern fables, and literary musings. It's fitting that Smith too is mentioned in the book.
It's such a strange, wonderful experiment that I can't help but love it (how could I dislike any book that includes a list of influences strange enough to encompass Ursula Le Guin, Leonard Cohen, Luc Besson's Léon, and Remedy Entertainment's Max Payne). I'm sure the oddness of the novel will put some off, but if you too love experimental writing, you couldn't hope for anything better.
Oh and thematically it is an absolute tour de force. I gather Durastanti was very disappointed at the novel's (necessary) change in title in translation, but Strangers I Know is a wonderful promise of exactly what's to come in the book. Love, language, communication and community, the bizarre and horrible and wonderful experience of trying to understand another.
I'll definitely be rereading this in future, and maybe next time I will follow the original plan for the novel, and read it out of order, picking sections as I'm drawn to them.
The whole book feels like exactly that. I didn't realise going in just how much of this "novel" was actually memoir, though I suspected that much of it was drawn from life. And so much of it is drawn from elsewhere. At times I felt like I was reading an academic essay on literature or philosophy, before the book slipped into what felt like fable, memoir, or idle train-of-thought. Even the references felt anarchic and eclectic. Durastanti makes reference to everything from Nautilus magazine to Beverly Hills, 90210. Bob Dylan is mentioned, and so is the controversy over his 2016 Nobel prize win.
The closest comparison I could make (very favourably) was to the writing of Patti Smith. Especially her memoirs, which can also seem at once like impossibly normal banal diary entries, bizarre modern fables, and literary musings. It's fitting that Smith too is mentioned in the book.
It's such a strange, wonderful experiment that I can't help but love it (how could I dislike any book that includes a list of influences strange enough to encompass Ursula Le Guin, Leonard Cohen, Luc Besson's Léon, and Remedy Entertainment's Max Payne). I'm sure the oddness of the novel will put some off, but if you too love experimental writing, you couldn't hope for anything better.
Oh and thematically it is an absolute tour de force. I gather Durastanti was very disappointed at the novel's (necessary) change in title in translation, but Strangers I Know is a wonderful promise of exactly what's to come in the book. Love, language, communication and community, the bizarre and horrible and wonderful experience of trying to understand another.
I'll definitely be rereading this in future, and maybe next time I will follow the original plan for the novel, and read it out of order, picking sections as I'm drawn to them.
Content Warnings
Minor: Ableism, Addiction, Alcoholism, Suicidal thoughts, Kidnapping, Death of parent, Gaslighting, and Classism