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A review by ausma23
Permagel by Eva Baltasar
4.0
Eva Baltasar’s name is one I’ve seen floating around literary spaces a lot lately, so not knowing much about her or her writing, I recently picked up a copy of Permafrost on eBay (and found it’s actually an apt Pride Month read!)
At the heart of the novel is an aimless, suicidal lesbian at odds with her mortality, corporeality, sex life, family, and all of the heteronormative societal pressures and expectations that surround her. “My life is an accident, predicable and transgressive,” she reflects. “I am a rebellious daughter — against everyone, even myself.”
It’s clear that Baltasar was a poet before she was a novelist: her writing is saturated by witty, vivid, grotesque — and at times almost overbearing — metaphors and poetic flourishes that nonetheless speak uniquely to experiences like depression and disillusionment. According to the translator’s note, this novel grew out of a writing exercise in self-reflection assigned to Baltasar by her therapist; she gradually fictionalized themes in her own life into a novel, and indeed the acuity with which she writes about these issues suggests proximity to them. Her protagonist’s voice is sharp and self-deprecating, providing her with the armor necessary to face the world that’s seemingly always trying to get at her vulnerable, gelatinous center.
In all her cynicism and nihilism, Baltasar tactfully endears her character to the reader; she never becomes too whiny or edgelord-y or completely hopeless. Though it took a while for her to grow on me, she eventually did. By the book’s end, she finds glimmers of humanity in the cruel world that she’s rejected for so long, and she succumbs, becoming both more amorphous and more wholly human. By then, I found that I loved her.
At the heart of the novel is an aimless, suicidal lesbian at odds with her mortality, corporeality, sex life, family, and all of the heteronormative societal pressures and expectations that surround her. “My life is an accident, predicable and transgressive,” she reflects. “I am a rebellious daughter — against everyone, even myself.”
It’s clear that Baltasar was a poet before she was a novelist: her writing is saturated by witty, vivid, grotesque — and at times almost overbearing — metaphors and poetic flourishes that nonetheless speak uniquely to experiences like depression and disillusionment. According to the translator’s note, this novel grew out of a writing exercise in self-reflection assigned to Baltasar by her therapist; she gradually fictionalized themes in her own life into a novel, and indeed the acuity with which she writes about these issues suggests proximity to them. Her protagonist’s voice is sharp and self-deprecating, providing her with the armor necessary to face the world that’s seemingly always trying to get at her vulnerable, gelatinous center.
In all her cynicism and nihilism, Baltasar tactfully endears her character to the reader; she never becomes too whiny or edgelord-y or completely hopeless. Though it took a while for her to grow on me, she eventually did. By the book’s end, she finds glimmers of humanity in the cruel world that she’s rejected for so long, and she succumbs, becoming both more amorphous and more wholly human. By then, I found that I loved her.