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A review by inspiredbygrass
Open Door by Iosi Havilio
3.0
Read this book as part of #invisiblecities2020 project where we are reading books from Argentina in Jan 2020.
I had picked this as it suggested an exploration of loss , life on the margins and the ignored but in a rural setting instead if the usual urban one. The unnamed protagonist's life in Buenos Aires is upended by the disappearance of her lover ( a narrative rich with meaning in Argentina ) in an apparent suicidal jump from a bridge , which she witnessed without realising it's personal meaning . She holes up in a rural backwater with a much older man and the portrait of her passivity and the subsequent flat disengaged story is both the strength and weakness of the novel . It reminded me of Morvan Callar ( Alan Walker ) where a story is told without emotion , the protagonist using sex and drugs as if they are as neutral and meaningless as television, shopping or breathing . The story is directionless, related as a series of scenes , time drifts like dust around a poor and decaying landscape.
We learn that Open Door is the name of an experimental psychiatric settlement founded a century before with a policy of freedom and lack of intervention . The novel looks at these issues sideways and elliptically, allowing the reader to ask questions about where the boundary of sane and insane , freedom and incarceration lies .
While at times the prose is stunning at other points I was simply bored and the book falls away until the last few pages .. primarily it's hard to engage with such a flat, passive and apathetic narrator even as I can admire her deliberate determination not to become what society expects of her. There is liberal use of the word " loonies " which I found old fashioned and jaring.
I had picked this as it suggested an exploration of loss , life on the margins and the ignored but in a rural setting instead if the usual urban one. The unnamed protagonist's life in Buenos Aires is upended by the disappearance of her lover ( a narrative rich with meaning in Argentina ) in an apparent suicidal jump from a bridge , which she witnessed without realising it's personal meaning . She holes up in a rural backwater with a much older man and the portrait of her passivity and the subsequent flat disengaged story is both the strength and weakness of the novel . It reminded me of Morvan Callar ( Alan Walker ) where a story is told without emotion , the protagonist using sex and drugs as if they are as neutral and meaningless as television, shopping or breathing . The story is directionless, related as a series of scenes , time drifts like dust around a poor and decaying landscape.
We learn that Open Door is the name of an experimental psychiatric settlement founded a century before with a policy of freedom and lack of intervention . The novel looks at these issues sideways and elliptically, allowing the reader to ask questions about where the boundary of sane and insane , freedom and incarceration lies .
While at times the prose is stunning at other points I was simply bored and the book falls away until the last few pages .. primarily it's hard to engage with such a flat, passive and apathetic narrator even as I can admire her deliberate determination not to become what society expects of her. There is liberal use of the word " loonies " which I found old fashioned and jaring.