Cold Nights of Childhood

I almost felt punished during my time reading this novel by the end. My first thought upon finishing it was “This exhausted me.” I can see why majority love it, and I can see also why some have rated this quite lowly.

This novel is auto-fiction. A lot of what's reflected upon and events are what the author herself has lived through. Locations being the same, what she experienced at mental hospitals, etc.

It starts off strong for me. Already I found myself in love with the sentences I was reading. Some beautiful passages right at the start, like this one on PG 9: “Thoughts of death chase after me. Day and night, I think about killing myself. My reasons unclear. To carry on with life, or to die - either will do. A vague disquiet, nothing more. Troubled thoughts, pushing me towards giving suicide a try.”

But a few pages later and I felt myself getting lost and struggling to keep up with our narrator. Within a same paragraph, we can be reading a sentence about her childhood home and the next about her penthouse apartment and her an adult. Or, a conversation with a past lover, and the next sentence talking about one of the times she is at a mental institution. This type of narration forced me out of her scope, out of her mind, and left me so close to just simply observing the pages on the book rather than being immersed. The lack of flow in between these moments are jagged and disorientating.

The second biggest issue was how much time, sooo much time, was spent on the minute details of the locations and weather! All told in extraordinary small details, everything needed to be described to even a speck of dust essentially. This is true for her apartment. Her other homes. Her random lovers homes and the places they went. Movie theaters, bars, cafes. How the rain fell, how the heat felt, how the snow looked, how a couch looked, a lamp on a table, how this street interconnected to another street, and that other street connecting to a different town and on and on. I ended up spending about an hour on Google just typing in all these places so I could try and get a feel of what she was talking about. This sparse writing style, and all the jumps between the places didn't give me a good sense of being there with her but rather like as if I was seeing these places by looking at a drawing. My googling helped a bit to help me see Istanbul but still, I was amiss.

The strongest parts were when she was recalling anything around strong emotions. Like her friends, and how many of them betrayed/failed her. Her family. The psychiatric wards. How it felt for her to endure electroshock therapy (all against her will), how the doctors/nurses were physically or sexually abusing her, how she felt about life and what she wanted from it, seeing the good and the bad, questioning her religion, things like that. But it felt too far in between to get these moments. This was when her writing was the strongest as well, other things coming across as late night ramblings.

It's truly a sad story. You can't help but feel her pain, and her passion. But I couldn't connect because I was feeling forced not to. Some unspoken rule amongst the language and writing, that I can only see it, not endure it with her. This also feeling true considering that if I read this story and not the Introduction and Afterwards I'd of known next to nothing about her. I wouldn't of learned that she was in these mental hospitals due to being diagnosed bi-polar. I wouldn't of learned how many times she was married, or what ages she was during some of the bigger events. I wouldn't of learned how her writing mostly blossomed due to her brothers connections (him also a writer). There's so much that I'd of not known without these parts.

Unfortunately, I don't think this book will stick with me for long.