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A review by sleightoffeet
Parakeet by Marie-Helene Bertino
2.0
I'm not entirely sure what I've read. I get that it's supposed to be surreal, but this book goes way out there.
The description got me. A woman is visited by a parakeet who is her reincarnated grandmother to warn her about her upcoming wedding.
The beginning of the book was great, and I was excited for the journey, unfortunately, that was the last we saw of the grandmother. What happens next is episodes of a woman spiralling out of control, most of it reading like a dream sequence, where I wasn't sure what was happening to her, what was in her mind, or if it was all happening in a magical realism type of way?
I did enjoy the vignettes about her past and how she got to this point, and I also loved the search for her brother. It was these sections that kept me going, and kept me hoping that it would all make sense in the end.
It's not a bad book, it's just not quite what I thought it was going to be. I was expecting a whole different kind of weirdness than the kind that I got. I also think that this is one of those books that I will probably unwillingly reflect upon for a while and my feelings on it could change.
The description got me. A woman is visited by a parakeet who is her reincarnated grandmother to warn her about her upcoming wedding.
The beginning of the book was great, and I was excited for the journey, unfortunately, that was the last we saw of the grandmother. What happens next is episodes of a woman spiralling out of control, most of it reading like a dream sequence, where I wasn't sure what was happening to her, what was in her mind, or if it was all happening in a magical realism type of way?
I did enjoy the vignettes about her past and how she got to this point, and I also loved the search for her brother. It was these sections that kept me going, and kept me hoping that it would all make sense in the end.
It's not a bad book, it's just not quite what I thought it was going to be. I was expecting a whole different kind of weirdness than the kind that I got. I also think that this is one of those books that I will probably unwillingly reflect upon for a while and my feelings on it could change.