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Dear Elizabeth, Irony is your plaything in Diary of a Provincial Lady (1930), to the point where it starts to be slightly subversive. Written as a series…… Read more “The most wonderful thing in the world must be to be a childless widow”
Tag: Family
Impossible to get out of it
Dear Carmen, In Nada, tr. Edith Grossman (2007. Original: Nada, 1944), we have a labyrinth of haunted characters confined in a haunting house in a city haunted…… Read more “Impossible to get out of it”
I do not know how women do it,
Dear Júlia, In A falência (1901, “The bankruptcy”, not translated yet), I could not help but feel you were constantly hiding something in plain sight, in-between the…… Read more “I do not know how women do it,”
Hers was a nature with a wide range
Dear Sarah, In The Beth Book (1897), we feel that we are reading two very different, at times irreconcilable, books: a powerful coming of age novel and a…… Read more “Hers was a nature with a wide range”
Otherwise let this mad world crush us now
Dear Elizabeth, The Morgesons (1862) is that rare thing: a 19th-century novel with a sceptical, areligious, and probably amoral heroine. It reads like a modernist fiction avant…… Read more “Otherwise let this mad world crush us now”
This lonely spot was not without its pilgrims
Dear Sarah, Much like its characters, who seem to inhabit the limbo between past and present, life and death, The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) lies…… Read more “This lonely spot was not without its pilgrims”
Take her away and I’m half of whatever we are
Dear Dorothy, Cassandra at the Wedding (1962) is a nuanced, finely observed character study and comedy of manners, full of a dark, twisted sense of humour, which can…… Read more “Take her away and I’m half of whatever we are”
The view and the woods opening to a light that’s itself untrodden
Dear Ali, Winter (2017) is a novel full of the ambivalence embodied in this season: the dying of light that is also a promise of new light.…… Read more “The view and the woods opening to a light that’s itself untrodden”
I reach for it and reach for it, and it isn’t there
Dear Richard, The Easter Parade (1976) is inhabited by characters who are trapped in self-delusion and false appearances, constantly parading the lives they think they should be living.…… Read more “I reach for it and reach for it, and it isn’t there”
We ourselves became the ghosts
Dear Sarah, Ghost Wall (2018) feels like one of those dreams where a character is trapped in a room whose walls keep getting narrower and narrower. We…… Read more “We ourselves became the ghosts”
Perhaps freedom has no meaning
Dear Iris, The Unicorn (1963) is a tale of imprisonment in a shared fantasy, where the cages, rotating on a blank axle, are full of longing. When…… Read more “Perhaps freedom has no meaning”
I wished I could split my body in two,
Dear Hanne, The Blue Room, tr. Deborah Dawkin (Original: Like sant som jeg er virkelig, 1999) is a novella about a girl who finds herself unable to…… Read more “I wished I could split my body in two,”
I preferred us when my father was away
Dear Birgit, The Mussel Feast, tr. Jamie Bulloch (2013. Original: Das Muschelessen, 1990) is a novella about the collapse of a man’s rule over his family during the course of an…… Read more “I preferred us when my father was away”
You’ve stayed where you were
Dear Agatha, Absent in the Spring (1944) is a character study and a psychological exploration of self-denial, crossed through by a growing sense of unease at each…… Read more “You’ve stayed where you were”
The milk of incomprehension
Dear Nora, Soviet Milk, tr. Margita Gailitis (2018. Original: Mātes piens, 2015) was this odd thing: a butterfly that, going in reverse, moults back into a chrysalis. What…… Read more “The milk of incomprehension”
Hardness was probably his most distinctive quality
Dear Laura, Reading your novel Breathing into Marble, tr. Marija Marcinkute (2016. Original: Kvėpavimas į marmurą, 2006) feels like being trapped in a room of glass: it’s…… Read more “Hardness was probably his most distinctive quality”
Every abyss has its lullabies
Dear Julián, Tomb Song, tr. Christina MacSweeney (2018. Original: Canción de tumba, 2011) is an elegiac account of a writer who tries to reconcile himself both with a troubled past…… Read more “Every abyss has its lullabies”
It was a family of women buccaneers
Dear Gladys, The Matriarch (1924) is a family saga told in a fragmented way, weaving together vignettes, sketches and anecdotes that read like a series of family…… Read more “It was a family of women buccaneers”
