After reading “The Time of the Doves” by Merce Rodoreda, I enjoyed how deeply personal and intimate Natalia’s voice feels like as the novel throughout presents her life not only through dramatic events but through small, everyday struggles that slowly build into something heavy and overwhelming. I realized as well how powerful simplicity can be […]
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with identity, merce Rodoreda, resilience, war
??? Why are all those lovers (that we have read) so toxic?? Natalia’s identity and self is being gradually erased during the marriage and the war. Firstly, at the very beginning, she meets a young man who invites her to dance with him. She rejects him not because she considers her own wishes, but because […]
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with identity, love, The Time of The Doves
After reading Deep Rivers, this book taught me how deeply culture, language, and environment can shape an individual’s sense of identity, as through Ernesto’s experiences, growing up is not only simply about age, but about becoming aware of social hierarchies, and cultural conflict. Ernesto’s connection to Indigenous traditions and the natural world made me realize […]
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with culture, identity, Jose Arguedas
After reading Agostino, what stayed with me most was how uncomfortable and strange it made me feel, not because anything especially shocking happens, but because Moravia captures that awkward and unsettled feeling of being in between stages of life so well. Also, I do not think the novel gives us a clear “lesson” about growing […]
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with adolescence, book-review, book-reviews, books, fiction, identity, sexuality, writing
The novel takes us through Ana María’s memories, which resurface as certain key figures from her life enter the room where her body lies. Each presence unlocks a different part of her memories with that person. Because she speaks from death, there’s a new honesty to the way she looks at herself and others, which […]
Posted in Blogs, Bombal | Tagged with death, identity, memory
Confusing. Figuring things out not by their form but by the convoluted trails of meaning formed by dense sentences, juxtaposing verses, and half-conscious dreams. This book is a forest of question marks. “I am no puzzle-maker, no wizard of chess, no ph…
Posted in Blogs, Breton | Tagged with absurdity, Home, identity, life, literature, love, nadja, reality, Surrealism
Trigger warning: suicide and attempted suicide Song of the week: mother, i’m sorry – Kamal. This book was a real pleasure to read, especially after Combray. I loved the humour throughout it, as well as the narrator’s descriptions of the different settings that gave me a vivid image of the scenes as they were playing out. […]
I genuinely spent almost the entirety of yesterday reading Mad Toy by Roberto Arlt. To my surprise, I actually fairly enjoyed this piece of literature. However, one thing I struggled with was the number of characters that were introduced in the first couple pages. It normally takes me a lot of time to remember character […]
Posted in Arlt, Blogs | Tagged with class, crime, education, identity, money, power
Hey everyone! First of all, I literally cant believe we’re almost done and this is our last book. In a way it feels like it has been so long and challenging but the fact we have read SO MANY BOOKS in such a short time is crazy to me. Personally, I had to really dedicate […]
Posted in Blogs, Luiselli | Tagged with gender, history, identity, life, memory, narration, reality
“Faces in the Crowd” by Valeria Luiselli was definitely not an ordinary novel. Its complex style of writing made it very hard to find meaning through the novel, which made me kind of sad because this is the last reading and I was expecting a lot from it. Luiselli deftly weaves a fragmented and profound […]
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with Faces in the Crowd, family, identity, spaces, time
