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A review by eyeowna
Indelicacy by Amina Cain
reflective
relaxing
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
This is a hard book for me to rate. It’s short and I read it basically in one sitting, so it for sure grabbed my attention. There are so many ideas and lines that I’ll think about for a while, but I’m not sure how I feel about the book as a whole. The book’s concept (it’s not really a plot) is that a cleaning woman at an art museum marries a rich husband in an unspecified time/place that reads as Victorian, maybe. The woman, Vitoria, wants to be a writer more than anything else and most of the novella consists of her reflections on writing: her descriptions of paintings that made an impression on her and her observations about friendship, marriage, and wealth.
The writing is sparse & easy to read with some killer lines. Much of Vitoria’s passion about books and writing is relatable, such as when she says “in books I found even more strongly my desire to write, to write back to them and their jagged, perfect words. I found life that ran close to my own” (20). I’ve always loved writing partly because it felt like a conversation with whatever was inspiring me. Vitoria is an interesting character because she has so much to say, she’s our narrator writing in this confessional/diary style, and yet she has this deep conflict with communicating her ideas or true personality with the people around her. If this book has any plot or conflict, I would say it’s Vitoria’s progress on expressing and living as her inner/writer self.
The emotional distance makes the narrative feel dream-like. There’s some commentary on art, gender, class, etc., all of which feel like this book is meant to read like a classic literary work. I think maybe my problem with this book is that there was too much emotional distance? As our narrator character, Vitoria even admits she’s afraid of being fully honest in her writing. I wanted more from this book in most of the things it was trying to do, and that’s not even because of how it ended. To scratch this itch I have now, I want to go reread the Yellow Wallpaper or some Emily Dickinson poetry or Wide Sargasso Sea (which Cain took inspiration from and says she used short passages in this book—not sure where).
The writing is sparse & easy to read with some killer lines. Much of Vitoria’s passion about books and writing is relatable, such as when she says “in books I found even more strongly my desire to write, to write back to them and their jagged, perfect words. I found life that ran close to my own” (20). I’ve always loved writing partly because it felt like a conversation with whatever was inspiring me. Vitoria is an interesting character because she has so much to say, she’s our narrator writing in this confessional/diary style, and yet she has this deep conflict with communicating her ideas or true personality with the people around her. If this book has any plot or conflict, I would say it’s Vitoria’s progress on expressing and living as her inner/writer self.
The emotional distance makes the narrative feel dream-like. There’s some commentary on art, gender, class, etc., all of which feel like this book is meant to read like a classic literary work. I think maybe my problem with this book is that there was too much emotional distance? As our narrator character, Vitoria even admits she’s afraid of being fully honest in her writing. I wanted more from this book in most of the things it was trying to do, and that’s not even because of how it ended. To scratch this itch I have now, I want to go reread the Yellow Wallpaper or some Emily Dickinson poetry or Wide Sargasso Sea (which Cain took inspiration from and says she used short passages in this book—not sure where).