Macabéa, ridiculed, bullied, deemed irrelevant. She “wasn’t an idiot but she had the pure happiness of idiots” (60). She “got up early in order to have more time to do nothing” (26). She “didn’t know what she was just as a dog doesn’t know it’s dog” (19). She was “a hair in the soup [that] […]
Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star
Georges Perec, W, or the Memory of Childhood
“The time of the doves” is interesting in the sense that we’re put in the shoes of Natalia, who seems to be emotionally confused at first and simply allows things to happen, someone does not seem to be in control of their life. She leaves her husband to be with Quimet, a charming personality that […]
Joseph Zobel, Black Shack Alley
When i read Black Shack Alley it honestly felt less like reading a novel and more like listening to someone quietly telling the reader about their childhood. What stayed with me most wasn’t a single dramatic event, but the steady, exhausting rhythm of everyday life, the work, the hunger, the discipline, the waiting. The novels […]
Deep Rivers was oddly inspiring yet challenging. I say inspiring because I love the notion of Ernesto travelling across many towns with his father, the author takes you into his perspective of curiosity and willingness to learn and it makes me want to explore more of the world, even if its in the same country […]
This time, I would recommend reading Nada when you are already feeling a lil… empty, it goes well with some mellow-ish tunes. This is not a comforting book and I do not think it is meant to be. Laforet does not guide you gently through Andrea’s life, she drops you into it and lets you […]
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 […]
Something that hit me while reading The Shrouded Woman is its narrative perspective. Bombal chooses to tell Ana María’s story almost entirely from the moment after her death, as she lies in her coffin waiting to be buried. At first, this feels like a purely experimental or modernist choice an “impossible” point of view meant […]
