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A review by kuhkeke
SS Proleterka by Alastair McEwan, Fleur Jaeggy
4.0
After reading “Sweet Days of Discipline” and “I Am the Brother of XX,” it’s become clear that Fleur Jaeggy has an obsession with death and emotionally unavailable parents. The narration of the female protagonist’s youth is dissociative as she volleys between between first and third person narration. Presumably, her objective detachment is a method of coping with the absence of warm parental figures.
Perhaps in an effort to provoke her father to care, she engages in a series of sexual relations with sailors aboard the voyage she and her father are on. They are rough and callous towards her, underscoring the protagonist’s inability to seek romance from compassionate figures. Regardless, there’s an apparent desperation of wanting to be wanted. There’s a telling moment where she expectantly gazes back at the ship with the hopes that one of the crew members will acknowledge the intimacy they shared by looking for her when she departs. He does not.
Perhaps in an effort to provoke her father to care, she engages in a series of sexual relations with sailors aboard the voyage she and her father are on. They are rough and callous towards her, underscoring the protagonist’s inability to seek romance from compassionate figures. Regardless, there’s an apparent desperation of wanting to be wanted. There’s a telling moment where she expectantly gazes back at the ship with the hopes that one of the crew members will acknowledge the intimacy they shared by looking for her when she departs. He does not.