Scan barcode
nohoperadio's reviews
262 reviews
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
4.0
I really enjoyed the central narrative conceit here. The way the narrator’s primary antagonist is herself, the alternate self she (along with we the readers!) has no conscious access to who is rebelling against her attempts to smother her own consciousness long-term through sedative drugs. It’s a very smart way to take a character whose sole desire is to lie in bed doing nothing and give her not just a plot but a genuinely thrilling and believable one.
I don’t give a shit about whatever clever satire Ms Moshfegh thinks she’s up to–rich assholes in Manhattan are “bad” yeah whatever–but I very much enjoyed my time with this particular asshole. Uncertain whether this will translate into any of her other books being good but I’ll probably try at some point
Hot Milk by Deborah Levy
3.0
On paper this is so my thing. Has a lot in common with what I love in Iris Murdoch: that particular kind of relationship where one character feels powerlessly in thrall to another but where that other isn’t being obviously controlling (there’s a couple of these in here); overthinkers trying fruitlessly to philosophize themselves into some kind of freedom; lots of weird ambient sexual energy. But although the characters are well-realized in themselves, their relationships with each other aren’t. I can see Deborah Levy moving them around like pieces on a chessboard. And another thing is, Levy is a Freud enthusiast, and I can’t remember now whether I learned that before or after reading the book but I just–
Hold on. Is “hot milk” as a title supposed to imply, like, cum? Is this like a cum thing? Cos I literally just got that if so. Okay I’ve googled it and at least one other person thinks it’s supposed to be a cum thing, I guess it’s also a breast thing, I mean the narrator’s relationship with both her mother and father are a big deal in the book so that makes sense. Okay cool.
Anyway whatever, I can’t be bothered to finish my thought, Deborah Levy is pretty boring it turns out, oh well. Fun fact, several years ago I tried to buy this book because I’d read a good review but I got confused and accidentally bought Milkman by Anna Burns instead. That’s a way better book, I recommend it!
Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
3.0
Only my second Orwell since reading the obvious one as a young teen, read this via the Orwell Foundation’s free email serial. The Paris half with its descriptions of the insanity of kitchen work in the 1920s is by far the more memorable: horrifying to hear just how recently working as an unskilled wage labourer basically meant living full-time in Hell, but also fascinating to hear about the social dynamics in those very overcrowded and overworked workplaces, and the mindsets people had to cultivate to make that life livable (step one being, I guess unsurprisingly, to never not be drunk). The crazy twists of both good and bad luck that gain and lose him each job are also very entertaining.
The London half, which covers Orwell’s few months of homelessness walking from shelter to shelter, for whatever reason dragged for me (even in the very bite-size daily serial format) and not much stands out in my memory. Whether the failure is in Orwell’s ability to compellingly narrativize that particular kind of drudgery or in my own powers of imaginative sympathy, I couldn’t tell you.
Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple
3.25
Mostly unmemorable writing with a memorable whiplash structure: first half is quite a benign comedy about a snooty French girl (of modest background) coming to live with a middle class but unsnooty English family and the silly ways they predictably fail to live in harmony. At almost exactly the midpoint of the book the husband runs off with the French girl and suddenly the novel is now a psychological study of the shock and depression his wife and daughter are thrown into that almost reminded me of a less full-on version of Elena Ferrante’s Days of Abandonment. I said the writing was mostly unmemorable and that’s true, I don’t think either half of this novel would amount to much without the contrast with the other half, but it wasn’t bad either. I did enjoy this.