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A review by margaret_adams
The End of the Story by Lydia Davis
This is a book about a love affair that has ended, but it’s also a book about a narrator writing a novel about her own life, and it’s also a book about the incredible slipperiness of memory and perceived experience. It has no chapters and no dialogue, and that lack of clear delineations fits with the surprisingly lucid fluidity of the material. I’m pretty sure it’s straight fiction but I didn’t really care if it was or wasn’t.
I liked this. Odds were against it working. But I thought it did.
Quotes:
“A friend of mine once told me about a love affair he had had. [...] My friend told me he could not stop writing down certain things about it. He could not speak to her because she would not listen to him, so he wrote things about it that other people would read, so that she might read it, too, and be not only affected by it but more affected because it was public. If she was not, he would at least have the satisfaction of telling it all out loud, and also of turning that love affair, which had not lasted as long as he had wanted it to, into something that would last longer.”
“A part of me had grown into him at the same time that a part of him had grown into me. That part of me was still in him now. I looked at him and saw not only him but myself as well, and saw that that part of myself was lost. Not only that, but I saw that myself in his eyes, as he regarded me, as he loved me, was lost, too. I did not know what to do with the part of him that had grown into me.”
“By writing about him, I thought, I was taking him away from himself and doing him harm, even though he might never know it. This troubled me, not because I was doing him harm, but because I did not mind doing it.”
I liked this. Odds were against it working. But I thought it did.
Quotes:
“A friend of mine once told me about a love affair he had had. [...] My friend told me he could not stop writing down certain things about it. He could not speak to her because she would not listen to him, so he wrote things about it that other people would read, so that she might read it, too, and be not only affected by it but more affected because it was public. If she was not, he would at least have the satisfaction of telling it all out loud, and also of turning that love affair, which had not lasted as long as he had wanted it to, into something that would last longer.”
“A part of me had grown into him at the same time that a part of him had grown into me. That part of me was still in him now. I looked at him and saw not only him but myself as well, and saw that that part of myself was lost. Not only that, but I saw that myself in his eyes, as he regarded me, as he loved me, was lost, too. I did not know what to do with the part of him that had grown into me.”
“By writing about him, I thought, I was taking him away from himself and doing him harm, even though he might never know it. This troubled me, not because I was doing him harm, but because I did not mind doing it.”