gwyl's reviews
3 reviews

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

dark hopeful inspiring reflective slow-paced

4.0

it is strange to think of this as a "book", or an instance of the epistolary form, when it is the real correspondence between real men who lived in the eighteenth century. and for that reason, i had my reservations, sceptical about whether the musings of an eighteenth-century austrian poet would have any bearing on me today (asian girl, 21st century). to my delight, i was highlighting passage upon passage from these letters which were so much more sincere and compassionate than i anticipated. the introduction in my edition emphasised that these were both letters to and by a young poet as rainer maria rilke was only 26 when he penned the first one. a truly unexpected source of comfort, advice that cuts to - and also warms - the heart of early adulthood and its landscape of solitude. 

my favourite takeaways: to love and live the question, that all the dragons in our lives may be princesses waiting to see us act with beauty and courage, to do things because they are difficult, the future comes upon us in the quiet and uneventful moment so much more than when it seems to come from the outside in that noisy and accident point

A Spy in the House of Love by Anaïs Nin

emotional reflective tense medium-paced

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

3.75

the prose was dizzying, effusive, run-on sentences that did not wait for your five senses to keep up, words that dripped from the page, dense and decadent. indulgent prose fitting for a story all about indulgence - but more so what condemns one to it and how it all unravels. sabina falls neatly into the category of morally ambiguous literary hot girls, the tortured femme fatale, the yearning girl at the heart of it all. this book took me by surprise in the way it pulled me under. trust that sabina is also taking her time to reveal herself to readers, growing more authentic and vulnerable as the pages go by, the mysterious persona confronted with hard truths. the epiphany, absolution of the final act feels almost theatrical in its denouement: the collision of narrative threads that rearranges the assumed chronology, the collapsing of space and the blurring of reality. a torrid collection of love affairs but a story of non-love. 

The Details by Ia Genberg

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

the title is spot on - the devil (along with the magic, the saving graces, the silver linings, the whole point of all of this) is in the details. at its heart, this book is composed of the details of the four people the author has encountered throughout her life. though it is so intimately personal to the author, her connections also feel so achingly familiar. this book captures the beautiful irony of autobiographies: through the intricacies, fine print, and details of one person's life, we see that we are more similar than different.