Awescape

One of the most brutal and raw books in the world, one of my favorites. Some of the imagery feels so visceral years after reading it, it still filters into my brain. Ferrante's writing style is my favorite writing in the world. It both deeply submerses you in the emotion and reality of another human being, it's like being in your own head. It moves as effortlessly as though it's unfolding in your own unconscious. The movement of emotions and rationalizations as one moves through heartbreak, the dissolution and reconstitution of reality, it's so beautiful and painful. Ferrante is so good at saying things that I have never heard named

A clear theme in Ferrante's work is "becoming" like someone else- be it children becoming their parents, someone's narrative or personal magnetism getting inside you and changing from the inside, or escaping or failing to escape our fate. The fact we can never tell if this a fear or paranoia of the narrator, or a reality, makes it even better.

This mysterious power that warps you without your will, changing your nature before you even realize it, is a palpable sticky energy in the book. Do we have our own essence or are we just shaped by the forces that touch us? Can a fate be rejected, can we choose who we are?

This book is about a child becoming an adult. A young girl hears her parents compare her to the aunt they hate, and she becomes with obsessed with what is so bad in her that her parents see her like this, to the point of seeking a closeness with the aunt. The child begin to learn more about the adults her parents are, and over time begins to readjust the simplistic perceptions she has of everyone she knows, including herself.

When I read this book, it took me a little bit, maybe 20-30 pages, to really sink into it. I had already read The Neopolitan novels and The Days of Abandonment by Ferrante and I think I assumed this book would be derivative of those or could not possible be as good. Soon I was hooked though, after which I read through the book very fast. It picked up density, meaning, and as with all Ferrante's work, the meanings added onto and subverted each-other, creating a self-contained world with a richness that rivals reality. My favorite aspect of Ferrante is the moment is plays with the narrator's reliability by giving them an alternative information and perspective that casts the entire narrative into doubt- we could spend chapters building an idea only to have it subverted, but never answered, only leaving us with questions on all sides- these are books that border omniscience but come from a first person point of view, leaving us to doubt not the narrator as unreliable but the world as unreliable, that it may be fundamentally impossible to arrive at truth, and the characters themselves are aware of this feeling of moving through murky and changeable water. It's through the tension created by the contrasting of opposites the feeling of doubt and beauty comes in, and an entire world in all its contradictions in one person.

One of my favorite books. I read this when I was young and it was very important to me.

The book is a bildungsroman that is somewhat autobiographical to the author, Somerset Maugham. The protagonist, Philip, was born with a club foot and after being orphaned grows up under the care of a somewhat cold religious relatives. He grows up shy and self-conscious, seeking belonging and a refuge from his loneliness in books and fantasies. As he grows he tries on various professions, falls in love with a girl who rejects him, gains and loses friends, finds his own self-definitions, and struggles with accepting himself and the world. The book introduces some concepts that I found really impactful, including some existentialist themes, the meaning of art and artistic fulfillment, romantic obsession, self-deception and self awareness . It's a beautiful book that is told from the point of a hungry soul trying to find peace. The prose is beautiful, elegant, and easy to read, but honest, direct, and evocative.

Simultaneously an excellently written historical romance, and a piece of racist propaganda by an author who believed the “southern lost cause” myth, that being that the civil war was not over slavery and romanticized the plantation-era south, including downplaying slavery as “benevolent”- not remotely historically accurate. Unfortunately it was used by post reconstruction southerners as a piece of political propaganda to support their the romanticization of the antebellum south. Enjoy it but enjoy it critically.

This book has some beautiful scenes, a lot to say about guilt, grief, and love, but it also tended to be a bit wordy and self congratulatory to me. The author occasionally seemed high on her own supply. I did like it but I wouldn't re read it.