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of.prose

@of.prose

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I read Look At Me about a month ago, and now, sitting down to write about it, and scrolling through the pages to find the highlighted quotes, I feel like this novel was even more important to me than I realized. It’s not life-changing or multi-layered, but the lyrical quality of Brookner’s writing is so pristine, and her depiction of loneliness so true, that I am simply left in awe. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything like this before.

Imagine being young and charming, on the brink of life and ripe for love, and yet so swamped in solitude. The main character of Look At Me is not an experiencer, but rather an observer. After the death of her mother, Frances lives with the family’s old maid, and everything in their house has frozen in time: interior, dining habits, routines — a fact that frightens her. Her evenings are for writing, but sometimes they are so empty they need to be killed.

Her solitude is interrupted by a couple of Nick and Alix, whom some would describe as dazzling and bubbly, yet I would consider adjectives like “obnoxious” or “insufferable” more fitting. They’re attractive, and used to the fact that their pretty privilege justifies their loudness, lack of tact, and self-centeredness; these qualities would be way less forgivable for someone less extraordinarily beautiful.

However flawed the couple is, their presence vivifies Frances’ life. Alix and Nick are a source of spontaneity, as well as material for her writing. Soon another person, a divorced man, joins the friend circle, and he and Frances develop a sort of connection. While Alix feels entitled to influence over the relationship…

Brookner’s prose is immaculate, and I hope you can appreciate many quotes I attached in the carousel. To me, this novel is about introspection, solitude, and how the mold, in which we were brought up, can be immensely hard to break, even if we desperately want our life to change. 5/5 ⭐️ by @of.prose

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3 days ago

low-energy post to end September by @of.prose

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4 days ago

After reading about 30% of this novel, I started to fear that this tale was taking a didactic turn. “Is Zweig about to expose the vanity and bad manners of the younger generation?” I wondered. As postal worker Christine is invited to join her aunt and uncle at a luxurious resort, she becomes so immersed in the joys of carefree upper-class vacationing, that she loosens up control too much to the annoyance of her rich relatives. “Would she be punished by the author for feeling too free, for forgetting her place?” To my relief, the story never developed that way. Instead of examining the morals of the individual, the Post-Office Girl addresses global issues, like societal inequality or dire poverty.

Upon returning home from the resort, Christine is a changed person–now she got a glimpse of life she could never have, and this knowledge gives birth to depression–now she can see the awkwardness and embarrassing nature to the routines of the entire village. Haggling over things, many would consider trash; dirty fingernails and bad teeth; unbearably cold winter nights; humiliating lack of privacy–all this is too much, and too inevitable.

In this world, social mobility is basically non-existent, but even if becoming well-off was a matter of putting in the effort and the energy–this post-war generation, raised on stale bread and breadcrumbs of attention, would likely need some support to persevere. In the beginning of the novel Christine is described: “The war stole her decade of youth. She has no courage, no strength left even for happiness.” The wave of blood covered Europe, and small human beings, like ragdolls, got washed out, and were left laying there bare on the sand, failed by bureaucratic institutions and charitable elites. I can’t imagine what Stefan Zweig felt, writing this novel in the 1920s, aware of all the ruination brought on by war, only to witness yet another outbreak of complete destruction.

Although I didn’t enjoy the prose in the middle of the novel, I thought that the ending was impactful. I was left with thoughts I don’t contemplate often–poverty seeps into all areas of life, stealing childhood, youth, intimacy, trust, hope, safety, dignity; by @of.prose

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16 days ago

I saw not so long ago someone on my feed comparing Tove Ditlevsen (my favorite writer) and Sylvia Plath, and I got the idea of reading more of the latter. (In fact, I’ve spent quite some time on a now-abandoned project—a video essay about Tove, and in its last chapter I compare how women writers are criticized for their perceived moral failures. Both Tove and Sylvia are judged for neglecting or abandoning their children (due to addiction and depression, and due to depression and suicide, respectively). I think this comparison stayed with me, perhaps because it contrasts with the far looser moral standards we impose on male writers. Maybe that video essay will eventually see the light of the day at some point. 😅

I read The Bell Jar when I was eighteen, and in a state of mind similar to the main character’s. Since then, I have heard some criticisms of Plath, but I’m happy they didn’t deter me from picking up her journals. Now the tome is omnipresent on my bedside table, and I savor an entry or two before sleep. I plan to progress slowly, having a bit of Sylvia on my mind every day. I say so because I like her. Her journals clearly show how talented and highly intelligent she was, even though glimpses of immaturity peek through the smart words and self-aware observations (I’m still reading the journal she wrote at 18). So much of her writing formulates precisely experiences known to many young women: self-doubt, conflict between fear and desire, navigating ambition in a patriarchal society, etc. I hope to slowly make my way through all of her journals, while giving myself another chance to learn to enjoy poetry (probably through Ariel). by @of.prose

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20 days ago

When it comes to the major events of the twentieth century like Hitler’s rise to power, most of us have known the causes, the scale, and the consequences since middle school. So much time has passed that it seems crystal clear (I hope) who was on the right side and who was on the wrong one. The horrors of WWII and the Holocaust can even look foreseeable in hindsight. Plenty of contemporaries saw Hitler for what he was from the very beginning, Thomas Mann for one. But what about ordinary Germans, people not especially invested in politics?

Sally Carson’s Crooked Cross paints a picture of exactly that. She published the novel in 1934, and it is fascinating that she (a British woman btw) sensed that Hitler’s fascist politics of the early 1930s were only the beginning. The book is set in a small Bavarian town around 1932, where a happy, close-knit community is drawn in by the appeal of the nazi party. The focus is on Lexa’s family. Her brothers, young men worn down by unemployment and a lack of meaning, embrace the party: it fills their days with work and camaraderie, their status and self-importance grow, and they get to wear handsome uniforms with pride. Meanwhile, Lexa’s engagement is broken off. Her former fiance, Moritz, once a friend of the family, is now estranged from their circle because of his Jewish origins.

I found the book compelling for the way it shows young men latching onto dangerous ideologies when they can’t find direction or purpose — something we can witness today.

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But the story of Lexa and Moritz disappointed me. Lexa is not a timeless character. She is torn between her family and Moritz, and she clings to old friends who have embraced nazi ideology—a conflict that could be understood. She sees the violence and the injustice, but her reflections never seem to go any deeper than that. She never really challenges her family, which I attribute to her being raised to be an obedient sister and daughter in the first place. Another reason for her meekness may be the absence of a free media, which prevents Lexa from seeing the full horrifying scope of the oppression. Both of those factors carry far less weight in the modern world, a by @of.prose

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a month ago

I found Taiwan Travelogue to be an imperfect novel, yet one I’d still add to my list of this year’s favorite reads.

First published in 2020, it pretends to belong to a different time, the year 1938. Aoyama-san, a young Japanese woman writer, embarks on a year-long journey across Taiwan with the goal of experiencing the culture, and especially the food, authentically. Unfamiliar with the local language, she needs an interpreter, and, to her great luck, she finds the perfect person for the job, a young Taiwanese woman, to whom the writer quickly gives the pet name Chi-chan. The services she provides far exceed those expected of an interpreter. Chi-chan acts as a chef, tour guide, courier, personal secretary, and more. Aoyama-san is enchanted by her and wants to be her friend, but Chi-chan always keeps her guard up—something the writer describes as a Noh mask.

What I found interesting about this book, especially its first half, is how Aoyama-san seems like a perfectly nice character: generous and genuine, she even speaks out several times against the expansionist politics of Japan. And still, here and there she utters phrases that reveal her blind spot, a subtle arrogance toward the culture of occupied Taiwan. It comes through in things like wanting to act as a powerful savior to Chi-chan, or comparing and judging local dishes against Japanese ones.

➡️ to continue

There was one example that particularly resonated with me. When Aoyama-san insists they must see the sakura at Alisan, Chi-chan seems reluctant, which the Japanese woman acknowledges, admitting that it is brutish to force sakura onto the island’s soil, but “the beautiful sakura are innocent of any crime.” What makes the line so revealing is that the trees are not incidental to the occupation. They were planted there by the colonial administration, on a mountain it had already stripped of its cypress forests and threaded with its own railway. The beauty Aoyama-san wants to admire is the imposition, growing in ground cleared for it. Innocence is not available to it.

This episode reminded me of conversations with foreigners explaining why some russian artists should not be “cancelled,” given both their by @of.prose

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2 months ago

july 🍓 by @of.prose

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2 months ago

“a camp fever dream”— Broey Deschanel

From the very first pages of Valley of the Dolls, I realized I wasn’t in for beautiful prose or a profound exploration of addiction and mental illness. And yet, I knew almost immediately that I wouldn’t be able to put it down. Nora Ephron described the novel as “like reading a very, very long, absolutely delicious gossip column…” and I couldn’t agree more.

Valley of the Dolls follows three women in search of happiness against the glittering yet deeply misogynistic backdrop of the entertainment industry in the 1940s–60s. There is immense pressure to stay thin and young, and to put up with men who don’t take “no” for an answer. Yet, for all its depictions of sexism, this is not a feminist novel. All three main protagonists are unable to stop orbiting their lives around various men.

The characters resemble several real Hollywood personalities. For example, Neely O’Hara rises to fame and is pressured by the studio into drug use to maintain her relentless workload and slim figure—a story many have seen as inspired by Judy Garland’s life. Although Valley of the Dolls exposes real issues, it does so more in the style of a gossip column than as social commentary or psychological analysis. Many themes are brushed aside, such as Anne’s indifference to the deaths of her mother and aunt, or Neely’s relationship with her twin children, whose existence is easy to forget altogether.

Still, despite its clunky, exposition-heavy dialogue, its repetitive structure, and its emotional shallowness, Valley of the Dolls is compulsively readable. I’m looking forward to watching the film adaptation, which promises to be verging on absurd. by @of.prose

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2 months ago

A young woman’s summer of infinite possibility

This is the kind of book that wouldn’t tire me with its repetitive nights out, unhinged mother-daughter dialogues, and mean-spirited girly bickering. The atmosphere of A Gorgeous Excitement is so thick it could carry the story even if there wasn’t much plot. But the plot is there, too.

It’s New York in 1986, and it’s Nina’s last summer before she leaves for university. She’s determined to get rid of her embarrassing virginity, and in that pursuit she seems blind to how traumatizing her mother’s depression has been for her. Largely, this is a story about parentification and its consequences. I once heard that what some people find in drugs is comfort, acceptance, and soothing, things they couldn’t receive from a parent. I’m not a psychologist, but it was interesting to think of Nina in this way, with all her longing for connection.

Personally, it’s a perfect read for a sticky summer day. It’s hard to put down, dark, occasionally paranoid, sad, and elegantly funny. I felt it all.

“…Nina was bristling with anger, and not because her mother had stood by while a crazed man nearly stabbed her in the throat, but for the pettiest of reasons: Frances’s disdain for her tears, that old irritation that shrunk Nina down to an annoying gnat. She tried to shove away the feeling. What a child, she thought, focused on my own petty grievances when my brain-sick, helpless mother has fallen into the abyss. But another part of her wished she could sit on Frances and suffocate her. She envied the woman who’d just been wheeled in on a gurney, handcuffed to the rails, shouting, “Fucking cockroaches!”-the freedom to let yourself scream your head off.” by @of.prose

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3 months ago

I’ve been reading both slower and less this year. In part thanks to the newfound pleasure of nerding out on a single author. In February I reread the Copenhagen trilogy, got a couple of biographies of Tove, and kept circling back to them during the last three months: highlighting, re-reading, comparing sources. Now these are the books I feel like I truly own, and want to keep forever. It’s an obvious thought, but it felt like a revelation to me—a book’s value is not fully defined by its content, it’s in the relationship one builds with it as well. I really went far with Tove, and I feel almost ready for a new obsession. Which authors resonate with you so much, that you could collect everything that was ever written by and about them? by @of.prose

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6 months ago

These monthsʼ alternative to brain rot: slowly reading books in a language I don’t really speak. My bookish stats have been increasingly unimpressive, but who cares when more and more new and pretty words patiently find their way into my mind. taken in Copenhagen, Dennmark by @of.prose

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7 months ago

So happy to have discovered this gem, which I haven’t seen anyone reviewing in the English-speaking part of Bookstagram.

This year, I’d like to read more books from Eastern Europe, so please share your recommendations in the comments. ⬇️

Note: all the quotes in this post are my own translations from the Ukrainian edition, which is, of course, far from ideal. I didn’t want to buy the English translation just to include a couple of quotes, so I hope you’re not mad, and that they still give at least a small sense of the author’s style. by @of.prose

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9 months ago