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A review by robotswithpersonality
The Iliac Crest by Cristina Rivera Garza
Well, what little I heard about this book, indeed verbatim of the blurb on the back, that caused me to pick it up, wasn't a lie.
It's just that the experience of actually reading it was so far from what I expected that it feels less like a disappointment and more a displacement.
Surreal, perhaps feminist, it seems to be grazing both the injustice of misogyny/patriarchy robbing women of respect and recognition, and also the spectrum beyond the gender binary, except that it's also got the backdrop of a dystopian/police state society and a cruel sanitarium for society's unwanted, shuttered away to die.
The floaty, nightmarish quality of the narrative didn't help me connect the dots, and I found myself focusing less on certain plot points the author was obviously drawing the reader back to, and more on the part where evidently the protagonist's original form was a tree. Never explained. Kind of wanted that story more, or at least to have it hook up more securely to one of the other fragments involved.
I think if this had been a short story in the 50-75 page mark, this level of ambiguity wouldn't phase me, but 130 page novella? At some point the line between reinforcing the theme (if one is confident the theme has been clearly conveyed) and redundant repetition starts to blur. 🤷🏼♂️
It's just that the experience of actually reading it was so far from what I expected that it feels less like a disappointment and more a displacement.
Surreal, perhaps feminist, it seems to be grazing both the injustice of misogyny/patriarchy robbing women of respect and recognition, and also the spectrum beyond the gender binary, except that it's also got the backdrop of a dystopian/police state society and a cruel sanitarium for society's unwanted, shuttered away to die.
The floaty, nightmarish quality of the narrative didn't help me connect the dots, and I found myself focusing less on certain plot points the author was obviously drawing the reader back to, and more on the part where evidently the protagonist's original form was a tree. Never explained. Kind of wanted that story more, or at least to have it hook up more securely to one of the other fragments involved.
I think if this had been a short story in the 50-75 page mark, this level of ambiguity wouldn't phase me, but 130 page novella? At some point the line between reinforcing the theme (if one is confident the theme has been clearly conveyed) and redundant repetition starts to blur. 🤷🏼♂️