Kam
So this did the Kafka thing: took an axe to the frozen sea within me. The last time that happened was with Foz Meadows’ A Tyranny of Queens, and then later with Elaine Castillo’s America is Not the Heart. And while I admit the synopsis kind of prepped me for it, I wasn’t expecting how CLOSELY it would resemble the shape of my friendship with my ex-best friend.
What I find interesting about how the friendship between Aliya and Ava is portrayed is how Aliya’s side of things is narrated, versus Ava’s. It’s tempting to try and believe one narrative over the other, but I think doing that would be totally wrong. There’s a line in this book: “That’s just what a novel is. It’s one person’s point of view.” That is basically the author explicitly stating that neither of the protagonists of this novel is right, and neither of them is wrong. They’re both complex, complicated people caught up in a complex, complicated relationship, and to reduce it to black and white “she said, she said”-ism diminishes the authenticity of their portrayal.
Which, frankly, is something I deeply appreciate, and while this novel did the Kafka thing for me. I can usually think about my relationship with my ex-best friend in a fairly equanimous way most of the time, but there’s something to be said about pressing down on the old scar hard enough for it to hurt in the same bittersweet way it did when the wound was still fresh. The fact that this book does precisely that is, in my opinion, an amazing accomplishment on the part of the author.
Overall this was an incredible read that rendered me feeling very emotional, and which I’ll be thinking about for a good long while. The portrayal of a specific type of female friendship here - the intensity, the closeness, and the eventual fragmentation - rings very true and familiar to me, and will likely do the same for a lot of other readers out there. Doubtless it will be a painful, bittersweet experience, but that, in my opinion, is what makes this book amazing.
Originally posted at kamreadsandrecs.tumblr.com.
So this did the Kafka thing: took an axe to the frozen sea within me. The last time that happened was with Foz Meadows’ A Tyranny of Queens, and then later with Elaine Castillo’s America is Not the Heart. And while I admit the synopsis kind of prepped me for it, I wasn’t expecting how CLOSELY it would resemble the shape of my friendship with my ex-best friend.
What I find interesting about how the friendship between Aliya and Ava is portrayed is how Aliya’s side of things is narrated, versus Ava’s. It’s tempting to try and believe one narrative over the other, but I think doing that would be totally wrong. There’s a line in this book: “That’s just what a novel is. It’s one person’s point of view.” That is basically the author explicitly stating that neither of the protagonists of this novel is right, and neither of them is wrong. They’re both complex, complicated people caught up in a complex, complicated relationship, and to reduce it to black and white “she said, she said”-ism diminishes the authenticity of their portrayal.
Which, frankly, is something I deeply appreciate, and while this novel did the Kafka thing for me. I can usually think about my relationship with my ex-best friend in a fairly equanimous way most of the time, but there’s something to be said about pressing down on the old scar hard enough for it to hurt in the same bittersweet way it did when the wound was still fresh. The fact that this book does precisely that is, in my opinion, an amazing accomplishment on the part of the author.
Overall this was an incredible read that rendered me feeling very emotional, and which I’ll be thinking about for a good long while. The portrayal of a specific type of female friendship here - the intensity, the closeness, and the eventual fragmentation - rings very true and familiar to me, and will likely do the same for a lot of other readers out there. Doubtless it will be a painful, bittersweet experience, but that, in my opinion, is what makes this book amazing.
Originally posted at kamreadsandrecs.tumblr.com.