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joanaprneves's reviews
47 reviews
The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy by Rachel Cusk
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
4.75
I have the unnerving habit of always reading the lesser known books of famous writers. After a failed attempt to read Cusk's better known trilogy, lo and behold, I find an unknown Cusk in a charity shop, with an unappealing cover, as trite as her topic: an English family (her own) spends the three months of Summer in Italy, somewhere in time. The title is as descriptive as can be: The Last Supper, A Summer in Italy. The reference to religious art (The Last Supper) introduces the long passages about all the paintings, sculptures and murals described with a dry intelligence and the calm emotional depth of a traveller away from home, and its occasional darkness; the subtitle, (A Summer in Italy) introduces the distanced view the author takes upon her family, never naming them, and hardly including her husband in her vivid descriptions and abyssal introspections.
I had stopped reading Cusk's Outline, which I found exciting at first, and mannerist as it went (basically a character, Faye, is spoken to, and never spoken about, never analysed, like a wall of lamentations, all throughout her trips across Europe for her writing). After I'd researched the author, I understood the restraint in her writing, as well as her carefully edited neutrality - through that sort of mirror-character, Faye. In fact, her previous books had been memoirs about motherhood and then divorce, which provoked unwanted vitriol. This book, The Last Supper, is caught between the book about motherhood and the book about divorce, suspended between two calamities, if certain critics and members of the public are to be believed.
What I enjoy about Cusk's writing here, is that it is where she really wants to be, I sense. Her famous trilogy is the result of unwanted attention and polemic directed at her very specifically and at times viciously. Because she doesn't like stories and aims for the truth, the memoir was a far more suited endeavour for the author. But because she seems to say exactly what rubs people the wrong, way - she is either two white or too female, or too privileged - she chose a sort of fiction that avoids story.
But here, she devised the perfect non-story: a clear cut timeline - the summer - and the typical middle-class experience, the long stay in a country with the family, saying in Airbnb's, and in the last week in tents across Italy and Europe back to the UK because money was running out. The family is rich enough to go, but not wealthy enough to stay in a 5 start resort - that they despise anyway, either because they can't or because they simply prefer to immerse themselves in local life as much as possible. In fact, at the end, they are forced to spend a night in an incredibly rich hotel and Cusk cleverly weaves these two facts, the preference and the impossibility, without ever giving away their relation together (is one caused by the other, or is it simply a reality one cannot step out of?).
The ability that the author has to not tell stories and to describe relentlessly and calmly makes for an incredibly profound and wonderfully written book about a middle class summer abroad for an average, intellectual British family.
The reason why I didn't give it a full five star is that I have a very high suspicion of neutrality and universalism. This book is everything but that, and yet, one sees, in the way opinions are written and at times witty and comic cruelties are said about the people they meet, that there is a certain patriarchal way of offering very personal views as facts. There are uncomfortable passages where for instance the author compares the city of Naples - I think - to a "violated woman" that feel careless, with a male detachment. But this is also why I gave it a 4,75 rating: Cusk's position as a white woman of a certain privilege is to plead for modernism (she says in an interview that by reading fiction today, you'd think that The Waves by Virginia Woolf was never written and that modernism didn't happen), for truthful writing, for fierce description. Her flaws, her blindspots, are contained in her writing. And that is why it so compelling to read: because, unlike what she thinks, it is not neutral, nor universal. It is a portrait of a certain type of family, from a certain educated background. And there is nothing wrong with that, the reader takes what they can, what they want, critically. For my part, I found the absence of the husband incredibly painful and telling, and the lack of awareness of climate change, of ecological concerns, of class guilt and a certain clichéd view of Italians and nationalities interesting as a valid snapshot (not yet an instagram image with all its reflective anxiety) of a certain socio-economic mindset. At the end, the author realises that her love for Renaissance art and its beauty is an antidote for the ugliness of modern life, but that it might also be a misplaced nostalgia. There are a lot of reflective and insightful moments like this one, much better phrased and analysed than my account of them.
I had stopped reading Cusk's Outline, which I found exciting at first, and mannerist as it went (basically a character, Faye, is spoken to, and never spoken about, never analysed, like a wall of lamentations, all throughout her trips across Europe for her writing). After I'd researched the author, I understood the restraint in her writing, as well as her carefully edited neutrality - through that sort of mirror-character, Faye. In fact, her previous books had been memoirs about motherhood and then divorce, which provoked unwanted vitriol. This book, The Last Supper, is caught between the book about motherhood and the book about divorce, suspended between two calamities, if certain critics and members of the public are to be believed.
What I enjoy about Cusk's writing here, is that it is where she really wants to be, I sense. Her famous trilogy is the result of unwanted attention and polemic directed at her very specifically and at times viciously. Because she doesn't like stories and aims for the truth, the memoir was a far more suited endeavour for the author. But because she seems to say exactly what rubs people the wrong, way - she is either two white or too female, or too privileged - she chose a sort of fiction that avoids story.
But here, she devised the perfect non-story: a clear cut timeline - the summer - and the typical middle-class experience, the long stay in a country with the family, saying in Airbnb's, and in the last week in tents across Italy and Europe back to the UK because money was running out. The family is rich enough to go, but not wealthy enough to stay in a 5 start resort - that they despise anyway, either because they can't or because they simply prefer to immerse themselves in local life as much as possible. In fact, at the end, they are forced to spend a night in an incredibly rich hotel and Cusk cleverly weaves these two facts, the preference and the impossibility, without ever giving away their relation together (is one caused by the other, or is it simply a reality one cannot step out of?).
The ability that the author has to not tell stories and to describe relentlessly and calmly makes for an incredibly profound and wonderfully written book about a middle class summer abroad for an average, intellectual British family.
The reason why I didn't give it a full five star is that I have a very high suspicion of neutrality and universalism. This book is everything but that, and yet, one sees, in the way opinions are written and at times witty and comic cruelties are said about the people they meet, that there is a certain patriarchal way of offering very personal views as facts. There are uncomfortable passages where for instance the author compares the city of Naples - I think - to a "violated woman" that feel careless, with a male detachment. But this is also why I gave it a 4,75 rating: Cusk's position as a white woman of a certain privilege is to plead for modernism (she says in an interview that by reading fiction today, you'd think that The Waves by Virginia Woolf was never written and that modernism didn't happen), for truthful writing, for fierce description. Her flaws, her blindspots, are contained in her writing. And that is why it so compelling to read: because, unlike what she thinks, it is not neutral, nor universal. It is a portrait of a certain type of family, from a certain educated background. And there is nothing wrong with that, the reader takes what they can, what they want, critically. For my part, I found the absence of the husband incredibly painful and telling, and the lack of awareness of climate change, of ecological concerns, of class guilt and a certain clichéd view of Italians and nationalities interesting as a valid snapshot (not yet an instagram image with all its reflective anxiety) of a certain socio-economic mindset. At the end, the author realises that her love for Renaissance art and its beauty is an antidote for the ugliness of modern life, but that it might also be a misplaced nostalgia. There are a lot of reflective and insightful moments like this one, much better phrased and analysed than my account of them.
A Country for Dying by Abdellah Taïa
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
The story line has happened before at first and then another one will happen. Meaning that the reader is suspended between past and future in the limbo of a traumatized but hopeful, gentle, present. The tone of the book, always reflecting the character, is dramatic, like a complaint seeking enlightenment.
No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July
challenging
dark
funny
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
This book has one of the best short stories I’ve read, called This Person. But although I was intrigued while reading it, that pang of curiosity and sheer eeriness wasn’t enough for the stories, in their majority, to stay with me. But the ones who did I will never forget.
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
This book seems to grab the collective occidental, social media-driven brain and abstract its quintessence while being g impeccably and originally written. But the second part is far more than that: it’s a love letter to a being removed from that reality, which is suddenly in the background, like a lonely band playing to a drunk in an otherwise empty pub.
Babylon by Yasmina Reza
dark
funny
sad
tense
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
Yasmina Reza writes beautifully and knows how to draw the reader's attention through an uncanny focus on small anecdotes, bizarre characters, objects and dialogue. However, what happens in the book, the plot hinge, that shifts everything, is slightly unbelievable and doesn't make a lot of sense. Which, I believe, is the point, to reveal how unfathomable human nature is, but it is delivered without any sense of purpose. There are some beautiful passages though, before the aforementioned plot turn.
Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone by Minna Salami
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
This book is a beautiful re-balancing of feminist theories through intersectional thinking by an the author who is mixed race (black and white), and draws both on her own personal experience and her readings such as Audre Lorde or Toni Morrison. Her notion of erotic thinking is drawn from the former, certainly, but works almost as an exercise in applying Lorde's theory to contemporary thought. Her philosophy also includes ancestral narratives, which are welcome as a way to embrace non euro-centric histories.
Open City by Teju Cole
challenging
emotional
reflective
tense
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0