A review by eakuntze
The Water Statues by Fleur Jaeggy

3.0

Contained beautiful and deeply evocative imagery but also a slog to get through (and it's less than 100 pages). There is something here about the loneliness and hollow, brittle, constrictive self-obsession of privilege. One of the characters seems to literally want to drown in a cemetery of his own superego and memories. Another disengages into tradition and triteness so far that he ceases to experience anything at all. The hired help are so mangled by their proximity to the wealthy that they cannot exist on their own. Perhaps too much subtle beauty is lost in translation but it felt like too much work to be poetic.