Scan barcode
A review by furbae
Book of Mutter by Kate Zambreno
5.0
I had to sit with this book for a minute after I read it, letting the emotions wash over me before I could sit down and write my thoughts on it. Kate Zambreno takes us along as she wades through the debris of her grieving in her usual fragmented style. A work thirteen years in the making, we are privy to Zambreno's mourning. It is a intertextuaal experience, as she draws from her own interior life, while making reference to the work of Louise Bourgeois, Henry Darger, and Roland Barthes.
While sparse, Book of Mutter was a difficult read, elegiac in its writing and also heavy in content. Zambreno brings forth questions about one's presence after death, what gets left behind, and whose duty it is to retell the stories of the deceased. Wading through the ephemera her mother left behind as well as the fragmented memories that she and her family carry, the end result is akin to gallery where certain thoughts and ideas are framed, tied together by the single running thread of loss and mourning. Zambreno contends with contradictions, explores her mother's life in juxtaposition to art and artists and tries to make sense of such a monumental experience.
It would do a disservice to the work to try and fit it into a certain genre -- such is the nature of grief, I feel. To try and resolve anything neatly seems daunting.
Anyway, this just elevates my immense love for Kate Zambreno love. I'm a proud member of the KZ hive *waves flag*
While sparse, Book of Mutter was a difficult read, elegiac in its writing and also heavy in content. Zambreno brings forth questions about one's presence after death, what gets left behind, and whose duty it is to retell the stories of the deceased. Wading through the ephemera her mother left behind as well as the fragmented memories that she and her family carry, the end result is akin to gallery where certain thoughts and ideas are framed, tied together by the single running thread of loss and mourning. Zambreno contends with contradictions, explores her mother's life in juxtaposition to art and artists and tries to make sense of such a monumental experience.
It would do a disservice to the work to try and fit it into a certain genre -- such is the nature of grief, I feel. To try and resolve anything neatly seems daunting.
Anyway, this just elevates my immense love for Kate Zambreno love. I'm a proud member of the KZ hive *waves flag*