I feel like the way I think about literature has changed a lot. At the beginning, I kind of just saw literature as stories. But now, I see it more as something shaped by history, politics, language, and social structures. It is not just about what is written, but also about who is writing, under […]
The main thing I learned from this book is that “being a dude” is more like a pattern of behavior rather than a biological sex. When I was reading the parts where she calls the women as “number 1” and “number 2,” I felt quite uncomfortable. At first, I thought it was because the content […]
When I first started reading My Brilliant Friend, I thought the “brilliant friend” was Lila. She stands out as exceptionally intelligent, sharp, and fearless, someone whose brilliance seems to surpass everyone around her. Compared to her, Lenù feels more ordinary, more hardworking than gifted. But as I kept reading, I started to realize that the […]
After reading Money to Burn by Ricardo Piglia, I kept thinking about a phrase people often say to children: “Money doesn’t grow on trees.” Parents usually say this to their kids in order to remind them that money is hard to earn and shouldn’t be wasted. But after reading this novel, another thought came to […]
While reading The Lover by Marguerite Duras, I was immediately struck by the unusual relationship of the story. The novel describes a relationship between a fifteen year old French girl and an older Chinese man in colonial Vietnam. Because of the large age difference, the story initially reminded me of another well known novel, Lolita […]
This is my favorite novel so far! I really like how the story is told in a straightforward way, without constantly jumping back and forth between the past and the present. The narration feels simple, but also very comfortable to read, just like the protagonist Natalia herself. She is an ordinary woman, but she feels […]
While reading Black Shack Alley, I kept feeling that what moved me the most was the fact that the world is seen through a child’s eyes. This is not a world that has already been explained or analyzed, but one that is simply felt. Children do not always understand what is happening around them, yet […]
While reading Agostino, I kept having this strong feeling that the novel is full of GAZES. It never explicitly talks about “looking” or “being seen,” yet almost every uncomfortable moment in the story seems to come back to it. Even the setting already hints at this. The story took place on a beach, which may […]
What struck me the most in this book is how often Bombal shifts the narrative perspective. At first, I thought it was just a stylistic experiment, but the more I read, the more it felt like something much deeper. The constant switching between first person and third person narration doesn’t feel random at all. Instead, […]
