The Details

the whole book is fantastic but that last chapter - knockout.

Short. Impressionistic. No plot. But really lovely portraits. I think this one will stick with me, but must be in the correct mood for it.

A few good lines:

“That's all there is to the self, or the so-called ‘self': traces of the people we rub up against. I loved Joanna's words and gestures and let them become part of me, intentionally or not. I suppose that is at the core of every relationship and the reason that in some sense no relationship ever ends.”

“We live so many lives within our lives – smaller lives with people who come and go, friends who disappear, children who grow up – and I never know which of these lives is meant to serve as the frame.”

“And I suppose that's what's at the heart of it for every person suffering from anxiety; the fact that life, by its very nature, is impossible to manage.”

“When I was younger, I often thought I should travel more and farther, spend more time in foreign countries, that I should be in a constant state of velocity so that I could get out of there and truly live, but with time I have come to understand that everything I was looking for was right here, inside of me, inside the things that surround me, in the money jobs that turned into my actual jobs, in the constancy of the everyday, in the eyes of the people I meet when I allow my gaze to linger.”

It all came together beautifully in the end, not from a plot perspective (there is none), but in the construction of this character. This book's narrator describes people who have been close to her throughout her life and have had an impact. In her descriptions, you get a glimpse of her worldview, her values, what she admires and what she fears. These descriptions also give way to reflections about their differences.

Here's a few of my favorite examples:
“I found her way of turning on and off both admirable and disconcerting. It insinuated that she had that thing known as ‘full control', which came across as mature, but there was an inhuman bent to it, too, an inhuman temperature.”

“She was an ocean of feelings, with more gradients and nuances than she could handle, as if the full cast of Greek gods and all the emotions and states they represented had been crammed in behind her eyelids.”

This is a character study in relation to people close to her. It's understated in its pursuit of the knowledge of the self. The last chapter really made it feel like all the fragments of this person came together and crystallized into a shape that made more sense to me as a reader. No plot, just vibes.

With its non-linear structure, poetic prose, and dreamlike fragmented (literally) recollection of people and the memories clinging to them, this book offers a fascinating observation of how the narrator's characters and life path are shaped by the circumstances and influential people in her life. It presents quotable thoughts on literature, reading, and human relations. However, it falls short of being truly impressive, lacking that special factor to make it highly memorable for the reader. Overall, I would rate it 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Had high hopes for this book. I definitely should not have had those hopes. Boring and unrewarding. Nothing about the book wanted me to keep reading (listening).