Cat

Tawada ist ein Sprachgenie und ihre Überseezungen das allerbeste, das ich je um Sprache und ihre Beziehung zur Seins gelesen hat.

(Ich bereue nur, dass ich kein Japanisch kann, und das Ende der Erzählung “die Botin” bleibt mir verborgen und undurchsehbar).

A funny little book I received from a friend.
Some of the comparisons / juxtapositions of US/EU things are a little outdated, but it's still a nice thingy to have around.

Young is totally fictional, but he feels so real it's almost like a little miracle.
I loved everything about this book, from the introduction to his zany, rebellious friend Jae-Hee, to the heartbreaking process of holding oneself together after having lost a first love, and again after forcing oneself to letting go of loving Gyu-Ho.

I normally eat up whatever Moshfegh writes. In a way, this is also the case: I wasn't enjoying the experience but I just kept on reading.
This is Moshfegh's literary debut. Her voice is still a little blunt and her unreliable narrator reliably predictable. The writing craft is already strong - there is one page in 118 almost entirely consistent of a list of goods traded aboard 19th century merchant ships that is a joy to read through.
Sadly, the credibility is occasionally marred by lack of historical research or fact-checking: reading that a 1851 drunken sailor had been prescribed ‘vitamins' in the form of ‘pills' by a medical doctor was simply off-putting to me.

Det var en god bok, tenkjer eg, men likevel elska eg den berre ikkje.

The beauty of this terrible, terrible novella is heart-wrenching.

Every single review of this book reads ‘perfect', and so does mine.

The terrible, horrible, no-good book of self-praise, as narrated by extraordinarily strong-willed but otherwise insufferable mountaineer Nimsdai Purja.

Assembly cuts like a knife: sharp, deep, painful. It reads more like a manifesto than a novel, anticlimactic, and anti colonial, upping the ante of its meaning at every turn. Very remarkable.

I feel bad giving this a rating.
All the love to Matty.

There is nothing I don't like about Moshfegh's prose.
She is clean, laser-sharp and full of tough love for her language, in a way that commands respect.

The lunacy of her characters? Also admirable in the way it relentlessly comes at you from left field.

But reading this short story collection was, to me, a sad affair.

I get that the underlying thesis of the book (and perhaps the author's vision) is that people are awful and on my average day I might feel inclined to agree with her.

But I still think someone fumbled with the quantities in this one: the - exquisitely crafted - fascination with filth gets easily repetitive and ultimately boring: There is little to no plot in most of the stories (which probably qualify better as ‘character studies') and while I'm not necessarily a fan of plot-heavy prose, I definitively would have enjoyed a bit more of it, because - with the exception of four of these - ‘awful' seems to have many faces but the same exact tone of voice.

I get how, rationally, an old chauvinist who only sees women as commodities could sound quite like a young chauvinist who only sees women as commodities, but I don't necessarily want to read about it for 300 pages, if this is all I get.

Again: I love Moshfegh's writing and I admire the way she seems to be on a quest to use every single English word (agog!). But I like her best when she takes the time to flesh out her characters a little more and actually puts them up to something.

I'm confused and conflicted about this one.
Aside from being a considerably long book, it's hazy, redundant, morally reprehensible in every which way and strangely anticlimactic. Yet, despite all this, it's good. Very good.

What I enjoyed the most, I was delighted to discover, was something the author himself ended up mentioning in the brief conclusive chapter: his incredible ability to give a believable account of what being a teenager feels like, pristine and unadulterated as if forty years hadn't gone by.

There are many things in this book that I did not enjoy as I was reading it, but whichever way I try to look at it, they all end up becoming essential elements to this daunting tale of manic unraveling.

I have to say, though, as someone who has yet to visit California, I found myself often scoffing in impatience at the constant mentioning of roads and boroughs of L.A.
I was reminded of the SNL ‘Californians' sketch, where the cast pokes fun at Angelenos because they only seem to talk about traffic. Because of this, I feel like I sometimes took the book less seriously than it wanted to be.

This seemed like an attractive concept, but the execution is what I have trouble with.
Aside from the usual Japanese meta-realistic storytelling style, which slowly insinuates something is maybe not really happening the way you thought it was, but then provides no resolution, this also suffers a particularly dry writing style (at times it almost sounds like product placement, see the whole Amazon Prime tangent) and a form of subtle social criticism that's perhaps way too subtle.

I really liked Eileen. Both the book and the “unlikable” character it's about. The only perfectible aspect to this book is that, somehow, it feels a little unbalanced: a lot of build up, for a short development and an ending that could have been shorter, or longer and somehow is neither. Still, this is nitpicking and as a debut novel it's simply beautiful.

Did not care for any of the characters.
A disappointing execution for a very interesting premise.

Actually 3.75, but not quite a 4 stars.
Han Kang writes beautifully as ever, and language, which is everything to this novel, has always been very important to me.
And perhaps it's exactly because of this, because I was already sold on the idea that language truly is the matter constituting our whole world, that I didn't enjoy this book as much as I should have.

3.75 stars, which I'll be rounding up to 4.
This was a difficult read for me.
Being naturally averse to theological talk and having dabbed for too long a time with philosophy and its meandering musings, I have to admit I really struggled with staying interested in the weird, meandering thoughts of brainwashed, ignorant (I mean this in the most non-judgemental way possible) women.

Book talk aside, I shudder at the thought that such insular, coercitive realities as the Mennonite colony described in the book still exist in this day and age.

Given the hype, I was expecting to dislike this.

I didn't.

The protagonist is privileged, inhuman, simultaneously vapid and profound, fake and the realest. A complete basket case.

The writer is incredibly skilled in controlling her naked prose and cut it as close to where it would bleed as possible.
(At one point, she describes the movements of a character's hands as they mimic the box in which their mother's ashes are sitting, unironically, as “voguing”).

The book doesn't really want to teach you anything. And that's okay.
That's honest.

5 out 5 stars. As unethical and slightly painful as it feels to describe this book as “good”, it's impossible not to.

By the time I got to the halfway point, I couldn't wait for it to finish.

The narrative around the protagonist's learning disability sounds genuine, and I would have liked it if it had been developed further.

“If you must know anything, know that you were born because no one else was coming.”

Boy, are the abandonment trauma, gun violence, guilt over sex and internalized homophobia strong in this one!

This been said, this little book is a delight, in spite of all the sadness gore, so gently embroidered with many, mant excerpts of excellent wordsmithery.

I cannot wait to read what else Ocean Vuong becomes as he matures with years and craft.

4.75 stars

Nothing happens in this novel.
But it's such a pregnant silence, fraught with history, shame, impostor syndrome, uncertainty and ultimately a broken relationship with the self, it becomes a hazy echo-chamber of a book, in which readers can actually feels on their own skin the hot and humid, disorientating Japanese summer, occasionally interrupted by the soft plinging and dinging of a pachinko machine.

4.5 stars.

The historical aspects of this book, together with the (somewhat difficult, but quite fascinating) use of Shetlandic, make for a compelling read.

Un libro triste e che sa di vita.
Bello, anche se ne ho preferito la parte riguardante il rapporto col padre, che forse avrei voluto vedere più approfondita.

When you feel like being chastised for the way you speak and write in English, come to this book.

Y/N is a book that begs one fundamental question: not so much “why?” but “how???” How was such a monstrosity even... forget published. I want to know how it was written, because - and this is just my impression, I'm probably wrong about this - it seems really difficult to string together such a cacophony of wildly meaningless things and excessively obsolete words.

Reading it feels like putting your head through a garlic press, while listening to a zombie version of your own teenage self ramble about how your love interest “doesn't love me, they just love the idea of me”.

Maybe it's enjoyable on drugs?