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Starting off, The Time of the Doves by Rodoreda, I was immediately intrigued with the dancing scene. Call me cheesy but I enjoy a little bit of drama. It was entertaining to read how the man was ready to make her his wife and his queen. Along with that, him calling her “colometa” or little […] read full post >>

Hi everyone! This week I will be reflecting on Clarice Lispector’s novel The Passion According to G.H. Initially, I chose... read full post >>

Although Mercè Rodoreda’s The Time of Doves was a fairly easy read with its short chapters and simple narrative style, I found myself getting frustrated with a particular character. In particular, my frustration wasn’t caused by the actions of the narrator, Natalia, but instead revolves around her love interest, Quimet. Quimet displayed a few red flags […] read full post >>

I found this novel to be very metaphysically intense. The preface of the novel addressing the reader that “this is a book like any other book. But I would be happy if it were only read by people whose souls are already formed” reminded me of my beloved Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him. Muslims […] read full post >>

Hey everyone! The Time of the Doves by Mercè Rodoreda was quite a peculiar read. The story was a bit... read full post >>

Lispector’s novel The Passion According to G. H. was a peculiar, eerie, and illuminating read. The plots of the novels we have read in this class have been rich with events, details, characters, and so on. I enjoyed Lispector’s story … Continue reading → read full post >>

I enjoyed this week’s reading as the novel portrayed many lifelike details from Natalia’s life that illustrate the love story took place in early 20th century Catalonia. At the beginning of the book, “Placa del Diamont” is repeatedly brought up, as it is not only the place where Natalia cut off her connection with Pere, […] read full post >>

Clarice Lispector’s The Passion According to G.H. was not at all what I expected it to be. Given the position of the protagonist and certain details about her way of life, I read through more than a little of the novel assuming that there would be some kind of message relating to intersections between gender […] read full post >>

 In Diamond Square (aka The Time of The Doves, The Pigeon Girl, and The First Half Was A Drag But We Got Going In The Second Half) was surprisingly difficult for me to get through. I really expected to zoom through this relatively short book because I'm interested in the Spanish Civil War and subsequent dictatorship, and because my copy has an endorsement from Gabriel Garcia Marquez on the front cover. In hindsight, I should've known to not pay too much attention to that praise though, because I'm not even a big fan of his novels either. Oh well.

It was only towards the end of the novel when I started to connect some dots about why it was a difficult read. Throughout the book, Rodoreda uses a combination of short, simple sentences, and some very long ones like "Another father was carrying a young boy round his neck and he was clutching a small white front with a blue silk bow and twinkling diamond star, and the crowd was pushing the two fathers, and without noticing, they got closer and closer until the boy started snatching cherries from Matthew's daughter's front and by the time we cottoned on half the frond was missing its cherries." (p22). That is a very long sentence. By the way, the translation I read has different names for the characters than the Time of the Doves translation, in case you were wondering about who Matthew is.

Rodoreda also has some "paragraphs" that I only call paragraphs for lack of a better word because they literally go on for pages. Not a single indentation. My English teachers are screaming, and all the old prescriptivist linguists are rolling in their graves. Chapter 35 has an example of a 3-page-long paragraph. And on top of that, she has an awful lot of sentences that start with 'and' (see what I did there?) I was going to make another comment on the traditional grammarians being upset again but I'll give benefit of the doubt that the language 'rules' are different in Catalan. Though I frequently got frustrated with the long paragraphs and the abundance of ands, having to reread parts multiple times because my eyes were just skipping across the page, I finally realised that maybe this was all just another reflection into Natalia's mind. 

If that's the case, then Rodoreda certainly pulled it off effectively because how can a narrator who's on the way to insanity narrate all of her story in a comfortable, easily-digestible way? After finishing the book I felt a little silly at my assumption that I should find the narrative easy to comprehend. Why should I have to expect clarity and coherence from a narrator who herself is having difficulty with those things?

Truthfully, this novel was quite humbling for me to read, and definitely tempered my expectations of a book; sometimes you're not meant to find reading easy - though some writers make everyone's life difficult just to show off their grandiose lexicon, sometimes there's a legitimate reason for making your reader labour through your writing.

I was going to talk more about certain themes in the novel but instead I got on my soapbox about sentence length and paragraphs-that-really-shouldn't-be-considered-paragraphs. I guess I'll pass that on to you all. My question is: What is the significance of the pigeons? What do they represent? Are they even a symbol at all? Am I just overthinking things?

read full post >>

 In Diamond Square (aka The Time of The Doves, The Pigeon Girl, and The First Half Was A Drag But We Got Going In The Second Half) was surprisingly difficult for me to get through. I really expected to zoom through this relatively short book because I'm interested in the Spanish Civil War and subsequent dictatorship, and because my copy has an endorsement from Gabriel Garcia Marquez on the front cover. In hindsight, I should've known to not pay too much attention to that praise though, because I'm not even a big fan of his novels either. Oh well.

It was only towards the end of the novel when I started to connect some dots about why it was a difficult read. Throughout the book, Rodoreda uses a combination of short, simple sentences, and some very long ones like "Another father was carrying a young boy round his neck and he was clutching a small white front with a blue silk bow and twinkling diamond star, and the crowd was pushing the two fathers, and without noticing, they got closer and closer until the boy started snatching cherries from Matthew's daughter's front and by the time we cottoned on half the frond was missing its cherries." (p22). That is a very long sentence. By the way, the translation I read has different names for the characters than the Time of the Doves translation, in case you were wondering about who Matthew is.

Rodoreda also has some "paragraphs" that I only call paragraphs for lack of a better word because they literally go on for pages. Not a single indentation. My English teachers are screaming, and all the old prescriptivist linguists are rolling in their graves. Chapter 35 has an example of a 3-page-long paragraph. And on top of that, she has an awful lot of sentences that start with 'and' (see what I did there?) I was going to make another comment on the traditional grammarians being upset again but I'll give benefit of the doubt that the language 'rules' are different in Catalan. Though I frequently got frustrated with the long paragraphs and the abundance of ands, having to reread parts multiple times because my eyes were just skipping across the page, I finally realised that maybe this was all just another reflection into Natalia's mind. 

If that's the case, then Rodoreda certainly pulled it off effectively because how can a narrator who's on the way to insanity narrate all of her story in a comfortable, easily-digestible way? After finishing the book I felt a little silly at my assumption that I should find the narrative easy to comprehend. Why should I have to expect clarity and coherence from a narrator who herself is having difficulty with those things?

Truthfully, this novel was quite humbling for me to read, and definitely tempered my expectations of a book; sometimes you're not meant to find reading easy - though some writers make everyone's life difficult just to show off their grandiose lexicon, sometimes there's a legitimate reason for making your reader labour through your writing.

I was going to talk more about certain themes in the novel but instead I got on my soapbox about sentence length and paragraphs-that-really-shouldn't-be-considered-paragraphs. I guess I'll pass that on to you all. My question is: What is the significance of the pigeons? What do they represent? Are they even a symbol at all? Am I just overthinking things?

read full post >>