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peytonaaa's Reviews (926)
emotional
reflective
"I say things and then unsay them. It was love. It was not love. It is raining. It is not raining
Contradictions are a sign we are from god. We fall. We don't always get to ask why."
Contradictions are a sign we are from god. We fall. We don't always get to ask why."
emotional
reflective
This is one of those books that's really hard to reduce to a coherent numerical rating. Its flaws are obvious and significant and yet sometimes it seems like Anne Rice understands concepts like the patriarchal family or communion with the other like virtually no one else. I'm reminded of something V.C. Andrews' editor, Ann Patty, said about Andrews, which is also applicable here: "I'm not pretending this woman is Tolstoy. But she's a fantastic storyteller with a world view. What separates the writers who really hit is a world view." Also the anticlimax of the ending feels ahead of its time, like something you'd see in a prestige TV show now.
"... I thought that when the pain was gone you would forgive me for what part I played in her death. She never loved you, you know. Not in the way that I loved you, and the way that you loved us both. I knew this! I understood it! And I believed I would gather you to me and hold you. And time would open to us, and we would be the teachers of one another. All the things that gave you happiness would give me happiness; and I would be the protector of your pain. My power would be your power. My strength the same. But you’re dead inside to me, you’re cold and beyond my reach! It is as if I’m not here, beside you. And, not being here with you, I have the dreadful feeling that I don’t exist at all. And you are as cold and distant from me as those strange modern paintings of lines and hard forms that I cannot love or comprehend, as alien as those hard mechanical sculptures of this age which have no human form. I shudder when I’m near you. I look into your eyes and my reflection isn’t there..."
"... I thought that when the pain was gone you would forgive me for what part I played in her death. She never loved you, you know. Not in the way that I loved you, and the way that you loved us both. I knew this! I understood it! And I believed I would gather you to me and hold you. And time would open to us, and we would be the teachers of one another. All the things that gave you happiness would give me happiness; and I would be the protector of your pain. My power would be your power. My strength the same. But you’re dead inside to me, you’re cold and beyond my reach! It is as if I’m not here, beside you. And, not being here with you, I have the dreadful feeling that I don’t exist at all. And you are as cold and distant from me as those strange modern paintings of lines and hard forms that I cannot love or comprehend, as alien as those hard mechanical sculptures of this age which have no human form. I shudder when I’m near you. I look into your eyes and my reflection isn’t there..."
informative
"This, [18th century historian Ghulam Hussain Khan] wrote, was quite different from the system of the Mughals, who though also initially outsiders determined 'to settle forever [in India] and to fix the foot of permanency and residency in this country, with a mind of turning their conquest into a patrimony for themselves, and of making it their property and inheritance'... In contrast, he wrote, the British felt nothing for the country, not even for their closest allies and servants. This was why those Indians who initially welcomed the British quickly changed their minds because 'these new rulers pay no regard to the concerns of Hindustanis, and suffered them to be mercilessly plundered, fleeced, oppressed and tormented by those officers of their appointing.'"
Really great balance of comprehensive history and a readable, engaging narrative
Really great balance of comprehensive history and a readable, engaging narrative
dark
emotional
reflective
Mary Gaitskill you stare into my soul... TFW you finally meet someone who you think understands you and the only thing worse than realizing that they don't is realizing that they do, but not completely. Also love the Nabokov epigraph (and Justine's surname being Shade is presumably a Pale Fire shoutout) which also reminds me that Gaitskill has the correct Nabokov take: trying to imitate his prose makes you look stupid but he's still thrilling to read and can perhaps influence you in less obvious ways
"What he said bore no relation to what she felt, but she was seduced by the idea of herself prancing through his imagination as a tiny porn queen while the truth of what had happened lay safely hidden in a pocket of misunderstanding. At the same time, she felt a compulsion to make him understand her, and she was disconcerted to realize that the more he refused to do so, the more desperate the compulsion would become. 'Really,' she said, smiling. 'It wasn’t like that.' And she told the story again."
"What he said bore no relation to what she felt, but she was seduced by the idea of herself prancing through his imagination as a tiny porn queen while the truth of what had happened lay safely hidden in a pocket of misunderstanding. At the same time, she felt a compulsion to make him understand her, and she was disconcerted to realize that the more he refused to do so, the more desperate the compulsion would become. 'Really,' she said, smiling. 'It wasn’t like that.' And she told the story again."
informative
"Not long after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the relationship between independent Haiti and the United States considerably cooled. An article published in the October 17, 1804, issue of Haiti’s Gazette politique et commerciale and written by Joseph Rouanez provided a prescient analysis of the more metaphysical meanings, rather than the purely material effects, of the change that U.S.–Haitian trade relations underwent once the pro-slavery Thomas Jefferson became president. Rouanez wrote that the United States would one day inevitably 'occupy a distinguished rank among the masters of the Sea.' The justification for this prophecy now seems so clairvoyant that it is worth quoting from the piece at length. Averring the inevitable decline of France and England, the article reads: 'The same thing will befall the powers that are presently dominant; they will undergo an unmistakable decline, while the United States will assume the rank to which it is destined. But this era will become deadly for the Caribbean. It will simply change masters. It will come under the yoke of the United States.' The Caribbean was not in danger of being overrun by Haitians. The real danger, according to Rouanez, was the United States. Rouanez found it was obvious that the United States had designs to take over the whole continent. Louisiana was a case in point. As for ongoing U.S. slavery, 'in the states of the south, [it] is a fire that smolders under the ashes, the eventual explosion of which will one day make tremble the hardened and deaf masters who still maintain it, despite the prudent advice of their fellow citizens of the north.' Like Boisrond-Tonnerre, who urged that the 'keys to liberty' were already in the hands of the enslaved people across the Americas, Rouanez, who likewise fought in the Haitian Revolution, warned that one day 'some audacious avengers will reclaim with interest their natural rights that have been violated.'"
adventurous
dark
funny
reflective
"Shall we look for this wonderful book? Shall we stop being dead people? Shall we find our way out of all expectations?"
funny
reflective
"He spent every moment of the day trying to escape from the imagined virus snaring him into its grips and finally killing him. He could not get the thought out of his mind that he was an at-risk child. Anyone could see that but who was doing anything about it. He lived in a state of emergency, of total vigilance, of trying to second-guess the invisible paedophiles out to get him. Nowhere felt safe. Hey! What monsters lurked, that created a child’s hell ex nihilo? Was it done intentionally? What felt definite in Tommyhawk’s mind was not infinite time, not far-distant time, but an eight-year-old’s heightened imagination for anticipating a very dangerous situation – albeit, one created by the highest authority governing the country – where he felt it was immanently moments before he would be attacked. The only great news came at daybreak when Tommyhawk could not believe he had survived another day, but this only deepened the next item of his apprehension, of having another night to deal with. Another sleepless night, of how to stop suspecting the worst. He was like a rat cornered by cats. How was he going to escape? You tell me…"
mysterious
"If only I had paid attention, he said to himself for the second or third time in recent days. He even stopped for a moment in the hallway to try to recall the substance of the song, but what he remembered was so vague he couldn't determine the sense of it. There was an ant, a cave, a mountain, a kernel of corn. He scratched his neck and heard raised voices in the distance, too loud for the palace. The world has gone to shit, he said to himself..."
emotional
reflective
"If anyone asks me now, how long he stayed with us, how many years, months or days, I won’t be able to answer. In my fifty-eight years of life I have truly lived for six or seven years—the rest have been only repetitions."
dark
reflective
"I’ve never been much good at keeping things in the right order; sometimes I reveal the outcomes first or I confuse them with the causes. It’s a symptom of my illness. The two were always connected, but there was no way I could know it. Right now, as I share my testimony with you, I think that perhaps the Nadine Ayotchow speaking to you today is the wrong part of me, the fate that wasn’t meant to be."
4 of these 6 stories were fine but not amazing which was kind of disappointing bc this felt like it would be right up my alley BUT the other 2 made up for it especially since they were the longest
4 of these 6 stories were fine but not amazing which was kind of disappointing bc this felt like it would be right up my alley BUT the other 2 made up for it especially since they were the longest