Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by stlake
The Bathroom by Jean-Philippe Toussaint
4.0
The way I make sense of this is that “the bathroom” refers not only to that one room in his small apartment but also his entire room in the large empty hotel. They mirror each other. In his bathroom at home, he is confined to the tub, yet he is never alone. He is rather immobilized but yet interactive. In Venice, on the other hand, he moves about the hotel at whim, yet its labyrinths— containing lots of bathrooms in each room— confine him internally from the love of his wife. Without this movement of the heart, despite his roaming around, his mind atrophies and he becomes depressed. Reclusive and dissociative and even mean. It is not until he leaves the big bathrooms to return home to his little tub with his wife that he is again able to enjoy presence.
I interpret the ending— a really fun loop, that was actually genius I think— as the sort of comedic, tragic reminder that the big labyrinths of bathrooms called society will come find you when you’ve found the still mobility of love and presence, and they will insist you have obligations to leave and die inside.
Another interpretive moment was when the octopus was skinned and cleaned in the kitchen by the Polish painters. Our main character has a penchant for living in his tub, meanwhile society is available to him; and an octopus who dwells in the abyss of the deep ocean, is now dead in the tiny sink… Maybe not interpretive. That’s it. That’s all there is to say.
I’m tempted to give it a 5/5 because I read it in 3 hours and was satisfied by it. But for petty reasons completely internal to the plot, I cannot. I have such a crush on Edmondsson and the main character really fumbled the bag with her. (Well, to be frank, this puts it lightly. The main character loses me completely and quite swiftly by his behavior towards her)
I interpret the ending— a really fun loop, that was actually genius I think— as the sort of comedic, tragic reminder that the big labyrinths of bathrooms called society will come find you when you’ve found the still mobility of love and presence, and they will insist you have obligations to leave and die inside.
Another interpretive moment was when the octopus was skinned and cleaned in the kitchen by the Polish painters. Our main character has a penchant for living in his tub, meanwhile society is available to him; and an octopus who dwells in the abyss of the deep ocean, is now dead in the tiny sink… Maybe not interpretive. That’s it. That’s all there is to say.
I’m tempted to give it a 5/5 because I read it in 3 hours and was satisfied by it. But for petty reasons completely internal to the plot, I cannot. I have such a crush on Edmondsson and the main character really fumbled the bag with her. (Well, to be frank, this puts it lightly. The main character loses me completely and quite swiftly by his behavior towards her)