Georges Perec, W, or the Memory of Childhood
A conversation with Vincent Gélinas-Lemaire
It is scarily interesting how much Natalia’s nickname Colometa foreshadowed the way her life would turn out to be and how her first husband, Quimet would later treat her. Pigeons, being wild animals that became domesticated for human usage align much with what the protagonist experiences after marrying Quimet. She is formed into the ideal wife and forced to care…
First things first, this book was strangely comforting to read. I enjoyed how the Rodoreda’s writing was smooth and simple just a description of Camila’s day to day life, raw and human, I guess it just felt relaxing the way it was so familiar. Now onto the actual story, the progression from seeing the relationship […]
I enjoyed the time of the doves. I thought the writing was nice and although I don’t typically enjoy stream of consciousness, Natalia’s narration was wonderful and incredible. I felt like I was there, along with her to witness her life. For the entire …
I enjoyed the time of the doves. I thought the writing was nice and although I don’t typically enjoy stream of consciousness, Natalia’s narration was wonderful and incredible. I felt like I was there, along with her to witness her life. For the entire …
This was such an interesting story, including the writing style. Sentence after sentence was started with ‘and’ even when the sentences use it as a conjunction: “And I stuck up for Quimet’s mother and said yes, she had put salt in the food. And the neighbour said if she ate food that was too salty…” […]
In most ways, the novel contained important commentary on life during a war and the daily struggles that slowly weigh you down, but in others, it felt like I wasn’t taking the right things away from it. For the first part of this book, I almost felt that I was missing something. Her sentence structure […]
Reading this book was a pain. Natalia’s stream of consciousness was worse than Proust- I think I enjoyed proust better. I swear there was like 20 pages of her just describing the bourgeois family’s house. I know the tiny details contribute to the setting and placing the reader, but the book was the slowest 200 […]
War and poverty has sucked the life out of these people. Even Cintet “…said how sad he was that peaceful, happy people like us had gotten mixed up in a piece of history like that” (pg. 63). Even as Natalia goes about her life without the passionate revolutionary feelings that Quimet possesses, war impacts her […]
