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A review by frasersimons
After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz
4.0
This is one flighty book. One which defies classification too, as even it admits, in the afterward. And the purpose is the main point of the book, so revealing it would be a spoiler and ruin the fun. But it is a series of vignettes, fictional mixed with non-fiction, through various characters. It charts around 150 years of history. It’s form and function is paired to Sappho’s fragmentary work.
This, to be honest, made it simultaneously fast to read and difficult to actually pay attention to. You are constantly getting resituated in space and time and a new character. It’s a bit of a puzzle, and one that can be really frustrating sometimes. Things do come together with enough patience. And I do typically gravitate towards stuff that is unconventional, so I’m somewhat predisposed to extending a fair amount of good faith to even new-to-me authors. I doubt this is actually a novel, though comprised technically of a lot of short snippets of stories. I am also not sure what else it is, though it goes into that after the end, if you’re curious, and you can figure where you’re at with it yourself.
Prose wise, I liked it. The format makes it so it’s quite poetic but it is also grounded in what is concretely happening in the life of the character, typically. It gets in, gets out. It’s unabashedly angry, rightly so, when charting the path of men oppressing women. Probably put some people off but it didn’t bother me even slightly.
And a special note: I highly recommend you get this in the hardcover binding from the US coming, because the paperback UK has really crap binding. The gutter is terrible and so tight, it’s actually annoying to keep the pages apart, almost like a mass market paperback, but oversized.
This, to be honest, made it simultaneously fast to read and difficult to actually pay attention to. You are constantly getting resituated in space and time and a new character. It’s a bit of a puzzle, and one that can be really frustrating sometimes. Things do come together with enough patience. And I do typically gravitate towards stuff that is unconventional, so I’m somewhat predisposed to extending a fair amount of good faith to even new-to-me authors. I doubt this is actually a novel, though comprised technically of a lot of short snippets of stories. I am also not sure what else it is, though it goes into that after the end, if you’re curious, and you can figure where you’re at with it yourself.
Prose wise, I liked it. The format makes it so it’s quite poetic but it is also grounded in what is concretely happening in the life of the character, typically. It gets in, gets out. It’s unabashedly angry, rightly so, when charting the path of men oppressing women. Probably put some people off but it didn’t bother me even slightly.
And a special note: I highly recommend you get this in the hardcover binding from the US coming, because the paperback UK has really crap binding. The gutter is terrible and so tight, it’s actually annoying to keep the pages apart, almost like a mass market paperback, but oversized.