Kam
This was a very interesting read. Tickled parts of my brain that haven’t been tickled in a while.
The most notable aspect of this novel is the language. The author writes beautifully, with a lot of emphasis on language that relates to photography: the play of light and shadow, for instance, or describing the way shadows and light play together in a particular scene. The structure of narrative also plays with the idea of photography, with the story being told in snapshots and snippets of varying length. I find this really interesting, since it does some work towards framing JIn as a character whose chosen form of self-expression and creation is the art of photography.
Extending that photography metaphor a little bit, all the characters in this novel appear “framed”, in some way, in Jin’s eyes: the way she describes them, the way she talks about them, even the way she thinks about them is all about giving them a particular framing - especially true with her mother, her spouse Philip, and even more so with Lidija, since Jin’s interactions with her involve not just the metaphorical camera of Jin’s mind and narration, but also Jin’s actual camera. Even Jin attempts to control the way she frames her own self as she tells the story - most noticeable in the way she tackles things she does *not* want to think about. When she encounters something she’d much rather not deal with, she either tells the reader about it in a brief, cursory manner, or simply alludes to it happening, instead of giving all loving details that the reader KNOWS she is fully capable of doing. Throughout the novel the reader gets the sense that she’s always holding something back, always trying to choose her words when she talks about something. While this doesn’t necessarily make her an unreliable narrator, it does make her feel more distant. This is something some critics have pointed out as a negative, but I kind of like the way Jin tries to hold herself back, even when she’s supposedly talking to no one but herself.
The concept of photography also plays into novel’s overall themes. The primary focus is feminism, but the way the author tackles various aspects of it, such as feminism in the context of race, motherhood, and the arts, feels a lot more nuanced in comparison to some other stories, especially given how they all seem compacted together into the space of a single novel without losing too much depth. The novel takes the theme of feminism as a whole, but breaks it up into separate frames, separate photos, so to speak, without diminishing its power - kind of like the way a photographer can shoot a subject from different angles, and each photo will not quite look the same, but will be related to all the other photos of the same subject.
Ballet also plays a role in framing the theme of feminism in this novel. While it doesn’t extend itself all over the rest of the narrative the same way photography does, ballet’s history and its aesthetics do play a role in addressing the concepts of beauty and societal roles that women play in culture and in life in general.
Overall this was a lovely gem of a read, quite mirific (to borrow a new word I learned from this book), something my brain desperately needed after some of my previous reads didn’t scratch an itch I had in my brain. The writing is exquisite, and the exploration of themes multi-layered, but some readers might bounce off the fragmented narrative style and the more elevated language.
Originally posted at kamreadsandrecs.tumblr.com.
This was a very interesting read. Tickled parts of my brain that haven’t been tickled in a while.
The most notable aspect of this novel is the language. The author writes beautifully, with a lot of emphasis on language that relates to photography: the play of light and shadow, for instance, or describing the way shadows and light play together in a particular scene. The structure of narrative also plays with the idea of photography, with the story being told in snapshots and snippets of varying length. I find this really interesting, since it does some work towards framing JIn as a character whose chosen form of self-expression and creation is the art of photography.
Extending that photography metaphor a little bit, all the characters in this novel appear “framed”, in some way, in Jin’s eyes: the way she describes them, the way she talks about them, even the way she thinks about them is all about giving them a particular framing - especially true with her mother, her spouse Philip, and even more so with Lidija, since Jin’s interactions with her involve not just the metaphorical camera of Jin’s mind and narration, but also Jin’s actual camera. Even Jin attempts to control the way she frames her own self as she tells the story - most noticeable in the way she tackles things she does *not* want to think about. When she encounters something she’d much rather not deal with, she either tells the reader about it in a brief, cursory manner, or simply alludes to it happening, instead of giving all loving details that the reader KNOWS she is fully capable of doing. Throughout the novel the reader gets the sense that she’s always holding something back, always trying to choose her words when she talks about something. While this doesn’t necessarily make her an unreliable narrator, it does make her feel more distant. This is something some critics have pointed out as a negative, but I kind of like the way Jin tries to hold herself back, even when she’s supposedly talking to no one but herself.
The concept of photography also plays into novel’s overall themes. The primary focus is feminism, but the way the author tackles various aspects of it, such as feminism in the context of race, motherhood, and the arts, feels a lot more nuanced in comparison to some other stories, especially given how they all seem compacted together into the space of a single novel without losing too much depth. The novel takes the theme of feminism as a whole, but breaks it up into separate frames, separate photos, so to speak, without diminishing its power - kind of like the way a photographer can shoot a subject from different angles, and each photo will not quite look the same, but will be related to all the other photos of the same subject.
Ballet also plays a role in framing the theme of feminism in this novel. While it doesn’t extend itself all over the rest of the narrative the same way photography does, ballet’s history and its aesthetics do play a role in addressing the concepts of beauty and societal roles that women play in culture and in life in general.
Overall this was a lovely gem of a read, quite mirific (to borrow a new word I learned from this book), something my brain desperately needed after some of my previous reads didn’t scratch an itch I had in my brain. The writing is exquisite, and the exploration of themes multi-layered, but some readers might bounce off the fragmented narrative style and the more elevated language.
Originally posted at kamreadsandrecs.tumblr.com.