Tag: Book Notes

Book Notes: Anthony Trollope’s Cousin Henry

~ Clarissa ~ 2 Comments

Trollope is my favorite Victorian novelist, both as a writer and a human being, and I always read something by him when weather gets colder and nights grew longer because he’s such a cozy author. What an extraordinary culture the one that he describes! What a lovely way of being! The system of property relations and the legal system are just amazing, especially if you are aware what was in existence in other places at the time. If you believe that Jane Austen didn’t write enough, you should be reading Trollope who wrote a stunning lot and in a similar, if somewhat more complex and elevated fashion.

Cousin Henry is an uncharacteristically short novel about the costs of indecisiveness. The Welsh squire Indefer Jones and his nephew Henry Jones are tragically indecisive, and the way that the author immerses us in their inner travails is priceless. The reason the Joneses vacillate so much is that they can’t figure out how to reconcile what they want with the strict moral code that was inculcated in them since infancy. This is Victorian literature, so of course, the moral code always wins, and that’s a good thing in Trollope’s universe of characters and events.

Some of Trollope’s novels can get heavy but Cousin Henry is very easy to read, clear and to-the-point. If you don’t have a lot of time to read but want to experience something high-quality, this novel could be just the ticket.

Book Notes: Claudia Piñeiro’s The Time of the Flies

~ Clarissa ~ 8 Comments

In spite of the inane quotes from Angela Davis and Rebecca Solnit, I still decided to give Claudia Piñeiro’s novel a chance and ploughed on until the bitter, bitter end. And bitter it was, indeed, because it turned out that the whole point of The Time of the Flies is that any man has “the right to be a woman” and it’s “a right that must be recognized.” These are quotes, in case anybody didn’t catch on.

As I’ve been saying, the narrative of “rights” leads to very insane places if we don’t approach this concept carefully and intelligently.

Aside from Piñeiro’s insistence that it’s crucial to trans children in schools and keep it secret from their parents (which is hard to ignore because it’s what the novel is about), nothing about the book works. The way it’s put together is clumsy. The characters make no sense. Everything is fake. And I swear, she used to be an excellent writer. When she wrote about Argentina and things that are happening in Argentina and are relevant to Argentineans, she was an excellent bloody writer. But then, for some utterly confusing reason, she decided to abandon all that and write for the English-speaking admirers of Angela bloody Davis, and I’m so upset because this was one of my favorite Latin American authors and now she’s all “rah-rah, let’s prattle on about the stupid Anglo fixation on transing kids like it’s the most important issue on the planet.” It’s so subservient, so pathetic. The woman threw away her God-given talent for … this? To appeal to some marginal group of overheated Anglos?

I’m really upset right now. I could have spent these two days reading something worthwhile and instead got saddled with this crap.

Book Notes: Rafael Chirbes’s Mimoun

~ Clarissa ~ 1 Comment

Mimoun, the first novel of the great Spanish writer Chirbes, has been, in  my opinion, completely misunderstood by critics. In the novel, a depressive Spanish novelist moves to Morocco and dedicates himself to getting drunk, drugged and having sex with every Muslim man and woman, as well as every colleague, neighbor, and crossing sweeper he meets there. He gets drunk and has sex with them individually, collectively, inside, outside, in a car, in a brothel, and everywhere else he can think of. The novel is short because the endless cycle of alcohol, drugs, sex, depression doesn’t make for a very rich plot.

The whole thing is completely hilarious, and I’m convinced it’s a parody on the novels by the ultra-famous Juan Goytisolo. Everybody seems to have taken Chirbes’s first novel very much in earnest when it’s an obvious parody. The problem is that parody has been done so well in Spanish literature by Chirbes’s precursors that it’s best not to venture into this genre unless you can do something entirely amazing. And I’m not even talking about Cervantes’s attempt at parody that gave the world Don Quijote. In the XXth century, Spanish writer Juan Marse produced his brilliant parody The Girl in the Golden Panties. If you can’t top that, it’s better not even to try. And that’s why I’m not that impressed by Mimoun.

Author: Rafael Chirbes

Title: Mimoun

Year: 1988

Language: Spanish

My rating: 2,5 out of 10