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Will need a moment to process this book.
It takes a while to get into the narrator's flow since it's from Sophia's point of view and it feels removed, very anthropological. At times it felt like a slog but then Levy offers a moment of prose or a nugget of wisdom that stops my eyes mid-sentence. For that reason I can't say I'd recommend or that I enjoyed it, but I'm grateful to have read it. Will give this novel some time for the seeds it planted in my soul to sprout.
"I can't deny that her symptoms are of cultural interest to me, even though they drag me down with her. Her symptoms do all the talking for her. They chatter all the time. Even I know that. [...] Sometimes, I find myself limping. It's as if my body remembers the way I walk with my mother. Memory is not always reliable. It is not the whole truth. Even I know that." (pg 26)
"I kept on walking in a daze, I had made something happen. I was shaking and I knew that I had held myself in for too long, in my body, in my skin..." (pg 39)
"Did I want to be bold like her? What shade of bold was I after?" (pg 77)
"The Kiss. We don't talk about it but it's there in the coconut ice cream we are making together. It's there in the space between us as Ingrid scrapes the seeds from a vanilla pod with her penknife. It's lurking in her long eyelids and in the egg yolks and cream and it's written in blue silken thread with the needle that is Ingrid's mind. I don't know what I want from Ingrid or why she enjoys humiliating me or why I put up with it." (pg 101)
"I am not sure how much desire I am entitled to possess." (pg 141)
"Am I self-destructive, or pathetically passive, or reckless, or just experimental, or am I a rigorous cultural anthropologist, or am I in love?" (pg 175)
It takes a while to get into the narrator's flow since it's from Sophia's point of view and it feels removed, very anthropological. At times it felt like a slog but then Levy offers a moment of prose or a nugget of wisdom that stops my eyes mid-sentence. For that reason I can't say I'd recommend or that I enjoyed it, but I'm grateful to have read it. Will give this novel some time for the seeds it planted in my soul to sprout.
"I can't deny that her symptoms are of cultural interest to me, even though they drag me down with her. Her symptoms do all the talking for her. They chatter all the time. Even I know that. [...] Sometimes, I find myself limping. It's as if my body remembers the way I walk with my mother. Memory is not always reliable. It is not the whole truth. Even I know that." (pg 26)
"I kept on walking in a daze, I had made something happen. I was shaking and I knew that I had held myself in for too long, in my body, in my skin..." (pg 39)
"Did I want to be bold like her? What shade of bold was I after?" (pg 77)
"The Kiss. We don't talk about it but it's there in the coconut ice cream we are making together. It's there in the space between us as Ingrid scrapes the seeds from a vanilla pod with her penknife. It's lurking in her long eyelids and in the egg yolks and cream and it's written in blue silken thread with the needle that is Ingrid's mind. I don't know what I want from Ingrid or why she enjoys humiliating me or why I put up with it." (pg 101)
"I am not sure how much desire I am entitled to possess." (pg 141)
"Am I self-destructive, or pathetically passive, or reckless, or just experimental, or am I a rigorous cultural anthropologist, or am I in love?" (pg 175)