gabriel_sakoda's reviews
66 reviews

dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

The Stranger offers a hyper-contradictory, but hyper-accepting portrait of what it means to stop giving a shit. Camus approaches the titular stranger, Meursault, by having him live in a vacuum of himself, only ever concerned about what life means to him in only the most practical terms. He is punished by constant reminders that life is inherently impractical, but continues to double down on his privileged position due to his chauvinistic belief in radical meaninglessness. This book is undoubtedly not fantasizing about his way of life; it is vilifying it. Meursault is such an openly terrible person that his belief in existentialism collapses under the weight of real human emotion. He so ardently believes that no one, under any circumstances, should feel compelled to put any effort into existence beyond the bare essentials that he is completely blind to his own hubris.

The Stranger is an easy read and an excellent example that an author's writing does not have to be "complex" to convey complexity. Furthermore, the balance between intellectual ramblings and noir elements provide for a rather fun story about some loser ass loser. I will undoubtedly revisit it at some point for a class and dissect every letter, but until then, I am going to appreciate this book as a kind of fucked up look at how not to live life.

The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector

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dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

La Hora de la Estrella (The Hour of the Star) is a rather beautifully ugly story. It is by no means abject, but the narrator is so curious about the character he (Lispector writes as a fictional, male narrator) writes that the story as whole comes off as equal parts woeful and pitiful. His character, Macabéa, is sincerely unaware of just how bad her entire life is. Everyone, from all social classes, treats her like she is a fly waiting to be swat and she just keeps living in ignorant spite of it. On one hand, it is easy to see how this kind of humble living can be interpreted as mildly inspiring, like Macabéa has unintentionally made peace with her oppressive circumstances. But the more I read, the more I realized that her life was never her own to experience, so she never had the opportunity to create an identity in the first place. At which point, the story just became dreadful. And the narrator understood that too. The narrator would frequently interject with his own feelings about his character and how he feels sorry for her and the toll that it is taking on him to continue writing.

Looking at the complete story, with both Lispector's narrator and Maca in mind, Lispector critically examines the kinds of stories where only bad things happen and the struggle authors face in writing stories of endless suffering. The narrator felt backed into a corner by the turn of the final parts, like Maca was irredeemably written to fail. What gives this experiment greater meaning, however, is that the narrator wrote Maca based on a random woman he saw who had a "glimpse of perdition." This gave the narrator the motivation to write a story about a woman who was not sinful or damned in a magically "divine" way, she was just born poor. The affluent narrator was ultimately responsible for giving his fiction a voice and telling the story of someone whom he did not understand. The narrator's nihilist awakening mirrors that of the reader as they come to terms with Maca's life of punishment.

Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life by Bryan Lee O'Malley

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emotional funny hopeful lighthearted relaxing fast-paced