This is a real stunner. Yes, I know, surprise, Nobel-Prize-winning author writes terrific books, but still: this one grabbed me and held me in its thrall. I didn’t read it quickly — I’ve actually been working my way through it over the last three months — but I nonetheless read it rapaciously, with absolute absorption. There’s something deeply magnetic about it, and the very specific affective notes it strikes.
Lots of books get praised as being about life between two cultures, the loneliness of exile, etc, but this one really made me feel it in an entirely different sort of way, as an absolute impossibility and profound alienation, which is further compounded by the violent turbulence of the post-colonial. There is so much damage in this book, yet I would not call it a trauma narrative, exactly, and now I’m trying to figure out why. I’m thinking about this terrific piece, “Reading for Trauma,” by Christina Forgarasi, and about something I wrote awhile back, about bitter laughter as humor that refuses catharsis, and I want to say that this novel doesn’t seem particularly invested in working through anything, but neither is it a sensationalistic display of immiseration. It’s brimming with rage, ressentiment, and a really darkly ironic humor, but there’s also an unfeeling quality to it as well, something extremely flat, unmoving. I’m channeling Wendy Lee’s Failures of Feeling here, because it’s what first started me thinking about this, and I’m excited to read more about it (especially, to read two different books called Disaffected, one by Xine Yao and the other by Tanya Agathocleous) — I think there’s a certain refusal at the heart of this book that is doing something really crucial. But, I must emphasize, it’s doing so in an really mesmerizing way — I was absolutely captivated.
Kasia Reads 