Scan barcode
A review by corvidquest
Last Vanities: Stories by Fleur Jaeggy, Tim Parks
dark
slow-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
For those new to Fleur Jaeggy, I think her very short and brilliant novel Sweet Days of Discipline is much more approachable. Last Vanities is a collection of compact short stories, and the cumulative effect may be disorienting for the uninitiated.
Jaeggy writes in crystalline prose as incisive as a scalpel. You won’t find American-style fiction here. She is uninterested in psychological insight, aspirational politics, or introspective characters searching for meaning or self-actualization. This collection is set in towns in the Swiss Alps, where the characters live their lives according to their social station, facing each day with grim boredom. They don’t expect much from life and life doesn’t expect much from them.
She is a brilliant writer, rendering whole lives in a few spare pages. Whether her prose is full of sardonic wit or malevolence is a matter of perspective. I often found laughter escaping my throat before being choked by disquiet. A picture of Jaeggy on the back cover shows a handsome woman inhaling a cigarette and transfixing the viewer with a gaze like the cold light of the universe.
One story here contains this line: “Aside from rotting, there’s little flowers can do, and in this they are not unlike human beings.” If you love this line, you will probably love this collection. And if you hate it, then move on, dear reader, move on.
Jaeggy writes in crystalline prose as incisive as a scalpel. You won’t find American-style fiction here. She is uninterested in psychological insight, aspirational politics, or introspective characters searching for meaning or self-actualization. This collection is set in towns in the Swiss Alps, where the characters live their lives according to their social station, facing each day with grim boredom. They don’t expect much from life and life doesn’t expect much from them.
She is a brilliant writer, rendering whole lives in a few spare pages. Whether her prose is full of sardonic wit or malevolence is a matter of perspective. I often found laughter escaping my throat before being choked by disquiet. A picture of Jaeggy on the back cover shows a handsome woman inhaling a cigarette and transfixing the viewer with a gaze like the cold light of the universe.
One story here contains this line: “Aside from rotting, there’s little flowers can do, and in this they are not unlike human beings.” If you love this line, you will probably love this collection. And if you hate it, then move on, dear reader, move on.